Building Peer Networks

At the South West Leadership Academy we believe that “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

As we emerge from the intense challenges of recent years and the reactive nature of our work in providing help to keep our colleagues well, we continue to keep an eye on the present whilst shifting focus to our future. The road ahead to truly integrated care is an exciting and daunting prospect. We know that providing excellent patient care and service experience comes down to our colleagues feeling engaged and enabled. There are so many ideas around the development of our leaders and colleagues for improved employee experience and retention that it can be difficult to know where to start.

The South West Leadership Academy has the privilege of regularly connecting with colleagues across Systems to share learning and best practice. In doing this, we identify synergies and opportunities to bring people together to collaborate and scale up development plans. We also recognise the differences in resource and capacity for leadership development across organisations and understand that it can be a lonely place when working in silos with very few connections for a sounding board.

We’d like to invite you to join us in establishing peer networks to serve as supportive environments to discuss leadership development topics. We anticipate respective networks centring on coaching culture, career development and retention, but it’s important that we build these networks together and establish their terms of reference as a collective so we all get what we need from them.

Peer networks are designed to:

• Share best practice and experiences as part of a community of trusted colleagues to accelerate and mobilize change. Covering topics like procurement, development providers and quality assurance can help us all optimise our resources.
• Identify synergies in organisational priorities to collaborate and scale up development provision.
• Build personal networks and long-term professional relationships.

If you are responsible for leading Leadership Development, Coaching and Mentoring, Career Development and Retention in your organisation and would like to be better connected to learn, share and collaborate in a supportive environment, please sign-up by clicking here and we will be in touch regarding an initial meeting in the summer to discuss ideas and next steps.