Foundation of Nursing Leadership

Free Resources

There are a number of free tools, which are designed to support your own self-understanding.

Improving Leaders Guides published by the NHS Leadership Centre
For everyone involved in improving patient care and experience, these are a summary of current thinking, advice and tips for improvement. These guides provide practical help for anyone involved in a leadership role who is trying to improve service delivery.

Process mapping, analysis and redesign
Process mapping is a simple exercise. It helps a team to know where to start making improvements that will have the biggest impact for patients and staff. The 'Model for Improvement' helps a team to set aims, targets and measures, and introduces a way of testing ideas before implementing them. (download this guide - Adobe pdf format - 233k)

Matching capacity and demand
Improvement of a patient's healthcare journey will not necessarily improve with just more staff, more equipment and more facilities. It has been proved in various projects that our valuable resources are not always best used and if there is a need for investment, the location of that investment should be carefully considered. (download this guide - Adobe pdf format 240k)

Measurement for improvement
"The first step is to measure whatever can be measured easily. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't easily be measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't easily be measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide." Charles Handy

You are about to set off on your journey of improvement. You have agreed your overall aims and objectives and an outline project plan. You have contacted key stakeholders and got their support. You may have produced your first process map and are beginning to really understand the whole patient's journey. If you did not collect the right information to measure progress, you will not have the evidence to back up your gut feeling that things have got better. So how do you go about collecting the evidence to demonstrate the impact you've had? How can you impress colleagues with graphical representations of improvement? (download this guide - Adobe pdf 203k)

Sustainability and spread
Recent years have seen tremendous growth and change within healthcare, supported by the use of improvement methods such as those described in this series of guides. Staff in health and social service organisations have demonstrated better ways to provide clinical care, manage patient flow, reduce waste and so on. Whilst most organisations can list many change efforts that have led to successful improvement, health and social care staff are increasingly experiencing two major frustrations:

The "improvement evaporation effect" (lack of sustainability). Staff have made major efforts to achieve improvement - only to discover later perhaps for a variety of reasons, that there has been slippage or decay in maintaining the approved process or the outcomes achieved. For example, we work to improve flow and patient experience in A&E, only to find that a year later the improvements have not been maintained and that improvements in flow and patient experience have slipped back.
The "islands of improvement" effect (lack of spread). Great improvements occur in parts of the organisation, but the learning does not spread naturally. For example, nurses on one ward develop a better way to monitor pain, but that better way does not become the hospital's standard. Or, networks for better care of the elderly emerge from great work in one part of the country across primary care, acute care and social services, but the new knowledge about these better ways of doing things does not naturally spread to others.

In this guide, we will describe actions, that you as an Improvement Leader can take to sustain the gains from past improvement efforts and improve the way ideas for better practice can be spread across the NHS. (download this guide - Adobe pdf format 217k)

Involving patients and carers
Patient and public involvement is a large and complex subject. Before breaking it down into more manageable chunks, a look at the big picture can help us to understand where we are focusing our improvement and who we should be involving. Broadly speaking, the guide suggests that involvement may occur at a number of different levels of contact, ranging from patients' treatment to strategic policy making, with essentially three broad modes of participation: informing, consulting and partnership.
An increasing number of initiatives in health and social care explore how to actively engage members of the public in determining local priorities. Such approaches demand active involvement of local community members in dialogue about local provision. Guidelines for undertaking activity at these levels are being developed collaboratively by the Department of Health, the Modernisation Agency and other organisations such as the Commission for Health Improvement. They are not included in this guide. Our focus is more around the shaded elements in the table below: on service delivery and treatment, with the emphasis on active partnership leading to jointly designed and implemented improvements in these two areas. (download this guide - Adobe pdf 220k)

Managing the human dimensions of change
Many change projects fail, and the most commonly cited reason is neglect of the human dimensions of change. This neglect often centres around a lack of insight into why people resist organisational change, a poor appreciation of the process of changing people and a limited knowledge of the tools and techniques that are available to help Improvement Leaders overcome resistance to change. This guide will help you to understand and to better manage these fundamental aspects of the change management process, and help you to empower, enable and engage those you work with. The psychology behind the human dimensions of change is an ever-growing area and there has been much research and theorising on the subject. This guide has been written by experienced Improvement Leaders who are involved in healthcare improvement initiatives. We have put together the models and frameworks that have helped us while working with the wide variety of people in healthcare. It is a starting point for you as an Improvement Leader. (download this guide - Adobe pdf 197k)

Budgeting for change(pdf format) - developed by the NHS National Nursing Leadership Project

This is a workbook designed to help nurses understand and manage budgets. The guide is divided into nine sections

Budgets.
Managing & Controlling spend.
How is the Health Service financed?
Benchmarking & sharing best practice.
Preparing a Business Case & Managing Change.
Managing the Nursing resource.
Leadership Skills.
Numerical Exercises.
Practical Case Study.

Each section includes case studies to help practically illustrate each subject area.

Leadership Style Survey - Questionnaire
This questionnaire was developed by Don Clark and is a 30-question self-assessment to assess your leadership style. You will be measured on how much your leadership style is autocratic, democratic or participative.

Click here to take the Questionnaire

Team Development Tools
Developed by Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Canada

Tools for building & developing a team
There are two critical elements to effective team building: a connection between all members of the team and a shared understanding between the leadership and each team member. These four tools can help you create a group identity and a sense of shared purpose:

The Stand-up
The 12-minute Interview
360-degree Feedback
The Daily News

How do we involve all the team members
If everyone is involved at the beginning, everyone will understand what the group is doing, why it is doing so and how they can contribute. Here's how to give your group a mission statement and work plans that mean business:

The Team Charter
The Team's 30-minute mission statement

Problem solving
It could happen this Tuesday, sometime in March, an hour from now, or every day next week. At some time you and your colleagues will face a problem. These tools will help you understand what is really going wrong and why. They will also help you find solutions:

The Process Map
The Workout
The Win-Win tool

How to develop a learning culture in your team
Effective learning is not just about signing up for another course. It is about sharing knowledge with your colleagues, respecting the wisdom of long-time employees, and encouraging creativity. These tools will help you make learning an everyday event:

The Learning Team
The Learning Centre
The Brainsqueezer
The Open Space Conference

Tools for improving team performance
If your team is already the best in its line of work, these tools will guide you in sharing your secrets with others. If you are like most of us, however, you probably would like to do some things better. These tools can help you save time and money and improve your effectiveness:

The 12-minute Briefing
Benchmarking
The Service Standard

Working with the people we serve
The most effective groups change constantly. Why? Because they are responding to the needs of the people they serve. These tools will help you ask the right questions and use the answers to make your work relevant and effective.

Strategic Partner Consultation
The Survey
The Focus Group
The Future Search

Leadership and Learning Guide: Teams Handbook
Developed by Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Canada

Section 1 - The basics

-What is a team?
-What does teamwork mean?
-What are the benefits of teams?
-Are teams needed all the time?
-Types of teams
-Characteristics of an effective team
-Summary

Section 2 - Understanding team dynamics/process

-Stages of team development
-Guidelines for team discussion
-Problem-solving model
-Learning from conflict
-Effective team meetings
-Summary

Section 3 - Checklists

-Setting up an effective team
-Leading a team meeting
-Sample Agenda
-Adjourning a team

To view "Sections 1,2,3" click here (PDF 1,215Kb)

Section 4 - Tools

-Brainstorming
-Nominal group technique
-Mind map
-Force Field Analysis
-Consensus
-Team performance index
-Summary

Section 5 - Resources

-Internet sites
-Books
-Handbooks
-Workshop
-Other

To view "Sections 4,5" click here (PDF 848Kb)

Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid - Questionnaire 5

Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid was developed by Don Clark .
Objective: To determine the degree that a person likes working with tasks and other people.
Time: 45 Minutes
The Grid provides a basis for comparison of styles in terms of two principle dimensions:

concern for production
concern for people

Instead of presenting a manager with a dilemma of choosing one or the other alternative, it shows how a leader can simultaneously maximize both production oriented methods and those that are people orientated.

Click here to take the fifth Questionnaire

Centre for Coaching and Mentoring - Leadership Quizzes

This area conatains a number of self-development quizzes covering:

What Are Your Influencing Tactics?
Coaching Up - Test Your Readiness
How's Your Team Spirit
Test Your Coaching Skills
The Empowering Work Environment
Teams: What's Your Coaching Climate
Finding a Coach
Are You Ready To Manage In The 21st. Century?
How In Step Are You With Generation X?
What's Your Commitment to Yourself?
Leadership Trustworthiness: How Far Can They Throw You?

Centre for Coaching and Mentoring - click here to take the Leadership Quizzes