Evolving Leaders
If you’ve found this page, you might be a leader looking to develop your toolkit or an experienced leader who feels a bit rusty! You might be particularly interested in inclusive leadership practices. We have collated leadership programmes that might support your development and resources for you to read/watch/listen to in your own time. We will update this regularly and hope this will be useful to you.
Programmes
These programmes offer opportunities across social work, social care and health for aspiring, new and emerging leaders. Click on each to explore what they offer.
Learn more about Programmes
- Leadership Bites – an answer to a known appetite? | Leading to Change (for social work, social care and health)
- You As A Collaborative Leader (YaCL) | Leading To Change | NHS Scotland (for health and social services professionals working in integration)
- Developing Your Confidence as a Leader (for social work, social care and health; the link will help you find out more and be notified when courses are available)
- Leading Well for Staff Health and Wellbeing in the NHS | Leading To Change (a King’s Fund course designed for NHS leaders but open and may be relevant for social care, voluntary and community sectors)
- Leading For The Future | Leading To Change | NHS Scotland (for those in health (both clinical and non-clinical), social care and voluntary organisations)
Resources
These resources are suggestions for you to use as you like. We have added suggested time commitments where relevant to help you plan your learning. We hope these offer bite-sized opportunities for self-paced development at a time which suits you.
Learn more about Resources
- The Leading to Change podcast channel offers the opportunity to listen to leadership stories from across the sectors, including alumni from leadership programmes sharing their experience and reflections to help potential future applicants. You can listen on Spotify or watch on Vimeo.
- We have blogs from leaders at all levels across the sectors – you can filter these by sector and topic to find inspiring stories, lessons learned and potential role models.
- SSSC 23 Things Leadership – Activities to support your leadership development in social and health services (information for social workers across Scotland – 23 concepts to explore with accompanying prompts for reflection)
- Leaders and managers | Turas | Learn (the equality and diversity zone on Turas has information for leaders and managers across health and social care, including links to resources about mental health, disability, bias and inclusive workplaces)
- Page 1 of Leadership Collection | Iriss (Resources from The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (Iriss) about Leadership)
- Leadership Links Webinar Recording: Taking control of your career – How to think and talk about your next career steps | Leading to Change (Watch: 40-minute webinar with accompanying checklist)
- Conscious Inclusion learning session | Turas | Learn (Watch: 45-minute webinar which introduces the key concepts and theories of bias and some tips to combat it)
- Cultural humility | Turas | Learn (This resource has been designed to support the development of positive cultural humility values, attitudes and behaviours in the health and social care workforce in Scotland. The resource recommends allowing 1 hour, 45 minutes total, but the content is in three units and you can dip in and out for your own learning at your own time.)
- Social Care Career Options Tool – a Collaboration between SSSC and NES
Recruitment Guidance
As a leader, you might be involved in recruitment. This can be a key opportunity to experience these processes and observe opportunities to combat bias and promote inclusive recruitment practices. Being aware of our bias: Guidance for interview and assessment panels is a great place to start.
Mentoring and Coaching Opportunities
Mentoring and coaching opportunities will vary across sectors and locations. It’s definitely worth researching what opportunities might be available for you or considering asking someone you admire to be an informal mentor. Where we find more formal opportunities, we will list them here and indicate who they are offered to.
Learn more about Mentoring and Coaching Opportunities
- Social Work Professional Support Service (SWPSS) | BASW (offers free and independent coaching for social workers and social work students across the UK)
- SSSC Mentoring guidance.pdf (guidance produced by the Scottish Social Services Council and partners which aims to promote good practice in peer mentoring)
- Coaching and mentoring | Factsheets | CIPD (definitions and further information about the benefits of coaching and mentoring from the CIPD)
- Coaching and Mentoring | Turas | Learn (information, resources and support on coaching and mentoring through the Turas Learn platform)
