Bringing Leadership to Life in Health: LEADS in a Caring Environment - Putting LEADS to Work

Bringing Leadership to Life in Health (2nd Ed) draws on the need to enhance the art of leadership in healthcare, centred around three core functions: i.e., to integrate care across organizational silos; facilitate the creation of psychologically healthy workplaces; and ensure productive change .

To help support these goals, the LEADS framework was created to catalyse the growth and development of health leadership in Canada. It acts as a common vocabulary for leadership; and as a set of standards to guide practice, regardless of one’s role, profession, or responsibility. Widespread adoption of LEADS has generated numerous initiatives aimed at achieving the goals of integration, psychological health, and change.

LEADS 2020 explains the framework and how it has been put to work in a multiplicity of jurisdictions. This edition is informed by research from the past five years, stories about how the LEADS capabilities have been put into action, and five invited chapters showing how LEADS is used in different contexts, including a captivating chapter on Indigenous cultures written by Indigenous leaders and another dedicated to People-Centred Care, written by patient advocates.

Three themes permeate the book. The first is how effective organizational and system performance requires a more distributed approach to building leadership capacity, including the need for greater diversity. The second relates to learning leadership through experiential learning and the role of a shared framework to catalyze that work. A third theme is the power of systems thinking, where leadership practices are fueled by the desire to make a health care system work like a system, not as fragmented parts.

In the context of the APPL, it is important to highlight Chapter 15, LEADs in the Professions, written by Dr. Johny Van Aerde. A recent book, authored by Dr. Peter Angood (AAPL), entitled All Physicians Are Leaders is a call to action for physicians to exercise their leadership capabilities to improve health care. In Canada, LEADS provides the leadership standards for physician leaders; standards that are shared with all leaders across the health system.

If you wish to participate in global efforts to put LEADS to work, please go to the LEADS Global website: www.leadsglobal.ca , to find out more about our invited authors and 53 storytellers. You can also order your copy of the new edition (hard copy, soft copy, or e-version) @ http://www.leadsglobal.ca/buy-book/ . (Springer: Second Edition, 2020)

RELATED BOOKS