Our learning approaches will be based around the commitment to lifelong professional learning and development, and not as a series of sheep-dip training interventions. We recognise that learning opportunities must be designed predominantly to support learners in the skills of operating through dispersed networks rather than through top-down hierarchies.

Our approaches will and must acknowledge and take account of the fact that integration and integrated care provision is complex and constantly evolving. This requires leaders to explore and develop their capacity to be insatiably curious throughout their professional careers. We desire to create an environment in which our CCPLs wish to explore and demonstrate the skills of inquiry and ‘not knowing’ – graduating from being technical experts in their professional field to being skilful generalists able to critically reflect on their unique local context.

We understand that competency-based approaches to leadership will only take leaders so far in systems work. Therefore, we wish to create opportunities for our CCPLs to learn more widely within our system to foster and promote a culture of perpetual learning and critical reflection in their leadership practice. We hope that this will help them to develop their skills of curiosity, connectedness, and coaching, which we believe are critical to the success of our system.

We will use these behaviours and competencies as the basis with which we select and develop our future system-wide leaders. Initially, we will utilise our respected local programmes, such as our system-wide QI leadership programme and those delivered within our partner organisation to be shared across the system.

We will look to encourage the development of combined cohorts which will help us foster collective understanding and build relationships through learning between organisations.

We will adopt a 70:20:10 approach of job-related experiences, interactions with others and formal education events to develop our CCPLs which, like our philosophy of health and care, start with self-help and developmental relationships.

We will build on the principles outlined in ‘our leadership way’ which emphasises the need for compassionate and inclusive leadership in the NHS and healthcare communities. It introduces six core leadership principles: compassion, inclusivity, collaboration, curiosity, trustworthiness, and celebrating success. These principles promote safe environments, equality, diversity, and open communication. The document aims to set behaviour expectations for leaders at all levels. It provides practical guidance for implementation and assessment.

Data collection and best practice sharing are encouraged. The goal is to improve leadership behaviours and benefit the populations served by health organizations, which you can read more about here.