19 The resilient leader:maintaining and recharging your powerbank

Background Health care delivery and leadership essentially revolves around people, their behaviours, ways of working and values. Digitalisation, scare resources, working across organisational and geographic boundaries has created a leadership push and pull effect for health care leaders; as they push for delivery of more with less, and pull for change and innovation to drive efficiency. Challenge Many staff feel their leaders are not leading effectively. This has led to unmotivated workers, low staff morale, and stress. Loss of productivity and continued inefficiencies in delivery, alongside burnout, failed targets and loss of resilience in leaders. There is evidence that an average tenure of health service Chief Exective Officer can be less than two years. Solution To use the tools in their leadership tool kit to lead effectively, (support other employees to deliver their roles, give staff a voice and involve them in decision making), and achieve their desired outcomes, leaders need to understand the need to have the space to learn about themselves and those around them and tap into their value and valubank to maintain and recharge their resilience.