As a leader or manager in health and social care, you must:
- take responsibility for your actions and decisions
- hold yourself and others to account for doing the job well, working together fairly and effectively and always looking for ways to improve
That means:
- following the relevant professional codes of conduct, including duty of candour where appropriate
- taking responsibility for your work, including tasks you delegate to others, making sure they are done well
- holding yourself, and those you are responsible for, to the highest professional and ethical standards
- if things go wrong, promptly applying all relevant processes
- admitting when you fall short
- showing humility and a commitment to improve
- setting fair and realistic expectations, balancing ambition with what is possible
- responding to serious incidents and inquiries with honesty and transparency
- taking appropriate steps to rectify issues, including with patients, people who draw on care, their families and communities neighbourhoods and wider communities
- being transparent about decisions and how they are made
- honouring promises and commitments
- recognising personal challenges without losing focus on the job
What do effective and ineffective practices look like?
Effective practice
- Sets realistic goals with clear outcomes, explains what is needed to reach them and measure success.
- Promptly acknowledges mistakes, takes responsibility and works with others to stop them happening again.
- Identifies gaps in support, acts to address them and involves others in finding lasting solutions.
- Takes responsibility for unintended outcomes and works with others to improve results.
- Communicates honestly and sensitively with their teams and those they report to – explaining clearly why tasks have gone well or badly and making sure people take responsibility when they need to.
Ineffective practice
- Lets teams drift from reactive task to reactive task, without clear goals and ways to measure success.
- Avoids taking responsibility, shifts blame to others and fails to resolve issues effectively.
- Ignores feedback, blaming others for problems and allows issues to continue.
- Ignores what is happening and undermines trust by not acting.
- Avoids uncomfortable conversations and doesn’t challenge poor practice.