by Belinda Bradley, Head of Best Practice
MacIntyre’s Leadership DNA is our answer to the question of ‘what is practice leadership’. I have come to realise that practice leaders will always emerge within a group of staff regardless of outside influence. Without guidance, sometimes wonderful practice leaders naturally figure out the skills of practice leadership and have a positive influence on the culture and style of support of those around them. However, sometimes what emerges are practice leaders who influence others in ways that develop poor, or even abusive, cultures.
This third MacIntyre Leadership DNA blog post explores the difference we can make by ensuring we have the right (best) practice leaders available to staff teams and how we are trying to guide and coach our practice leaders in MacIntyre using our Leadership DNA.
Defining leadership
Definitions of practice leadership tend to include a consistent focus on the vision of the organisation and quality of life outcomes for people drawing on support. Alongside this focus, the definitions talk about the practical skills of coaching and supporting staff by modelling good practice, working alongside them and giving feedback. Practice leaders are often, but not always, frontline managers. This role has been described as the person who ‘defines the job, provides the training, mediates the stresses, creates the culture, helps people find the personally satisfying rewards... and establishes a well-functioning work environment’*. Wow what an important and highly influential role!
Looking at the impact
Numerous people have demonstrated the impacts of practice leadership. Practice leadership and/or on-the-job coaching has been linked to:
- lower stress and greater positive experiences of work for staff
- positive outcomes for people drawing on support, specifically the amount of time people received contact from staff and the amount of time they spent engaged in meaningful activity
- more capable environments – in MacIntyre we use our DNA Checklist to define and reflect on this
- a reduction in distressed behaviours, or behaviour of concern – in other words less need for people to actively communicate to us that we are not getting their support right
Barriers to lasting change
Conversely, studies into the impacts of traditional, theory-based training have had mixed results. Training has not always led to lasting change to support and improved outcomes for people who draw on support.
I was really interested to read Roy Deveau’s 2021 theory on why this is in the context of Daniel Kahneman’s book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’. The book explains that we use a different part of our brain to think logically (slow thinking) to the part that is activated when thinking instinctually (fast thinking). Most training uses logical (slow) thinking, but people naturally revert to their intuitive (fast) thinking when they finish the training.
Practice makes… intuitive leadership
It is suggested that the best way to overcome this is to provide staff with supported opportunities to practice putting their training into action until this way of working becomes intuitive. Another way to think about this is as helping your team to practice until they build new habits. On-the-job coaching and feedback is critical for developing this skilled, fast thinking, practice.
Coaching barriers
Making time to coach staff regularly and help them embed their learning into practice is one of the main barriers that leaders face. Another key barrier however is having the skills and confidence to give feedback, challenge practice and have difficult conversations.
Some examples from a very recent research publication include participants talking about ‘someone who doesn’t take criticism that well’, ‘firing up all kinds of emotions and allegations’ and ‘very aggressive staff’.**. No wonder leaders can feel anxious about giving feedback and focus on the mountains of paperwork they have to do instead!
