Senior Leaders
If you’ve found this page, you might be a senior leader who is passionate about, or curious about, inclusive leadership. You have a key role in influencing culture and promoting an environment where people can truly be valued for bringing their authentic selves to work. You can role model behaviour, set expectations and explore best practices to help us all build inclusive workplaces.
Programmes
Leading For The Future | Leading To Change | NHS Scotland (for those in senior leadership positions 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 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 and lessons learned.
- 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)
- 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.)
Recruitment Guidance
As a senior leader, you are likely to play an important part in recruitment decisions. This can be a key opportunity to improve processes by observing 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.
Ideas for Impact
As a senior leader, you have the opportunity to influence and have a positive impact on the culture of leadership across social work, social care and health in Scotland. By working together, we can make our workplaces more inclusive and diverse. In this section, we will share some ideas about how you might be able to use the power and privilege you hold within your sector to help break down barriers and elevate underrepresented voices.
Learn more about Ideas for Impact
- Support your local networks. Learn about which networks or affinity groups are available in your organisation and consider joining them to learn more about the challenges facing different communities and where you might be able to help. Having an active, senior sponsor can really help elevate the work of these groups!
- Be proactive. Get involved with diversity, inclusion and equality activities in your organisation and champion the use of tools like EQIAs throughout to help keep a focus on reducing inequalities. Help people see this as everyone’s responsibility.
- Prioritise time for learning. If you attend sessions that promote conversations about inclusion, this will encourage others to do so. Likewise, let your teams know that they can make time for their own learning in this space.
- Champion allyship and being an active bystander. We have an Allyship Toolkit to help you get started and many organisations offer their own sessions to explore these concepts. As a senior leader, you have a powerful opportunity to amplify this work and help it impact the wider culture of our organisations.
Mentoring and Coaching Opportunities
Mentoring and coaching opportunities will vary across sectors and locations. Some of these are listed below. As a senior leader, if you are not yet involved in a mentoring or coaching scheme, this is one area to consider as an opportunity for development.
