Building a connected and empowered leadership community at Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
The challenge
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a specialist organisation providing mental health, learning disability and neurodevelopmental services across north London. The trust was navigating significant organisational change, including a complex merger process, which created unprecedented challenges for its senior leadership community.
The leadership community recognised it needed to work more effectively together to navigate these challenges successfully. It sought support to develop its collective leadership capability, create a shared understanding of its purpose, and establish practical approaches to collaboration that would improve both leadership effectiveness and wider staff experience across the organisation.
Our approach
Our organisational development team co-designed a tailored eight-month development programme anchored in five face-to-face collective development sessions.
We used our ‘Four Ways of Collaborating for Value’ model to help leaders move from vague aspirations about ‘collaborating more’ to specific, purposeful ways of working together.
Using this model as a framework, our conversations focused on five key areas:
- building connections: building affective trust and psychological safety within the community
- defining a shared purpose: agreeing what it means to be a leader at the trust as a basis for connection and collaboration
- learning from each other: sharing best practice and understanding different teams’ strengths and priorities
- aligning plans: using staff survey results to identify shared priorities and develop coordinated responses
- working in partnership: creating practical approaches for ongoing collaboration.
Results
Feedback from the development sessions highlighted that the senior leaders gained a great deal from the process, including:
- Stories of me: an honest and open space for reflection. Leaders valued the opportunity to share their personal experiences, challenges and concerns in a psychologically safe environment
- Stories of we: a deeper understanding of each other’s work. Leaders valued connecting with colleagues they rarely have time to speak with, and gaining awareness of the pressures, priorities and dependencies of other teams
- Stories of now: practical frameworks for collaboration. Clear models and shared language for working together more effectively as a leadership community.
The programme created a strong foundation for ongoing collaboration, with leaders committed to maintaining the relational connections and practical tools they have built, to drive positive change across the trust.