Collaborative leadership: what is it and why does it matter?

Collaboration and integration are the buzz words of the health and social care sector at the moment, with the transition towards Integrated Care Systems. However, the social care sector can often be forgotten in these conversations, with NHS, Local Authority and increasingly the voluntary sector being seen as the key players in this arena. However, for many of the most vulnerable people in society, and lets remember that the health and social care system should be person and not organisation centred, their social care provider is the key to their wellbeing. Their care team are the individuals that know them best, notice the subtle changes in their behaviour, appetite and mobility, and importantly see the individual not the statistic.

So, it would make sense that social care leaders have a role in developing collaborative and integrated approaches to care systems, but how many of you are at the table or even consider you have a role there? If you do want to make that difference how do you navigate the system and become recognised as a key architect in the design of the solutions?

Before, we become bogged down in NHS Policy and the rationale for developing Integrated Care Systems, lets focus on what is collaborative leadership. For many the classic debate is leadership vs management, and indeed there have been careers made on exploring the difference. There is a wealth of literature on the difference, which would be impossible to fit into my allocated wordcount. For me the difference is that management is about enabling a team to achieving a defined task or goal, leadership is about forming a team that believe in a vision and enabling them to succeed in the best way for them. One is task focused the other is visionary. So what is collaborative leadership?

In essence collaborative leadership is where you bring a diverse group of people together, potentially from different teams or organisations to develop a vision and achieve success. It sounds simple, right, so why are we not all doing it? Fundamentally, we are all products of our environment and we all know that there will a difference in culture between different teams, schemes and care homes even within one organisation. Those differences are magnified when we try to develop collaborative leadership across organisations especially across sectors. So is it worth it?

My view is that irrespective of policy, collaborative leadership is essential to organisational and system success and more importantly means that we can bring together a more diverse set of experiences and viewpoints to make things better for the people we support. So what are my top tips for developing collaborative leadership?

• Start in your own organisation first
• Challenge situations where we fall into group think
• Reach out to teams and organisations that are different to your core operation and involve them in meaningful opportunities
• Accept that we learn more from failure than success

By Lisa Cowley

Lisa is CEO of Beacon Vision, a health & social care charity, as well as a Non Executive Director at Royal Wolverhampton and Walsall Healthcare NHS Trusts. Lisa is passionate about enabling people and communities to make meaningful and long-term changes for themselves and others.