 The LEADS Learning Series is a unique opportunity to build your capacity, extend your impact, and prepare to lead the future of community and primary health care. It’s also a great chance to build your network.
Having a peer group to learn, grow, collaborate, and work with can be transformative, both for you and your organization. So how can you keep the relationships you develop at LEADS alive? Here are 4 tips for staying connected with your LEADS peers. Combine any or all of them to create the approach that’s right for you and your LEADS cohort. 1. Post in the Community As a graduate of the LEADS Learning Series, you’ve got a free membership to our moderated online Community for Practice until 2020. It’s a great place to discuss your LEADS experience and implementation, share resources, and get support. Use the Community for Practice to engage with your cohort peers, ask questions, and share effective leadership tools while being coached and challenged by our LEADS moderator. This kind of interaction will help you achieve a deeper understanding of the skills and competencies acquired through the 5-day Learning Series. [1] Login here to check out the latest development in the Community. 2. Keep it Real In-person meet-ups create space for spontaneous conversations that can really help deepen relationships and foster collaborations. Planning a meet-up can be as easy as choosing a date, time, and meeting spot and spreading the word. Involve at least 2 or 3 people in organizing meet-ups so they can continue even when one of you is busy. Monthly meet-ups will really accelerate relationships, but quarterly ones can be easier to sustain for both planners and participants. 3. Chat it Up A monthly teleconference can be a great way to stay connected and is often easier to schedule than an in-person meet-up. To make it a can’t miss monthly call, consider using a simple but powerful framework to create a standing agenda. A good place to start:
4. Leverage Collaboration Tools Capacity Builders’ Collaboration Coach has a wealth of information designed to help you collaborate in high-impact ways. You’ll find answers to common questions, practical tools, and helpful insights for new and mature collaborations. This one-stop virtual coach provides great content to guide you on your collaboration journey. Staying connected with your LEADS peers takes a bit of effort, but it’s well worth it. Those relationships will extend the impact of your development experience and create new opportunities for ongoing collaboration in the future. Not a LEADS graduate yet? Find out more about how you and others in your organization can participate in the series, fully funded by LeaderShift. [1] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716661040  Now more than ever, the community and primary health care sector needs effective, dynamic leadership.
Why? To understand that, we have to consider the current challenges facing the entire health system and the new government’s proposed approach to solving them. We will only be successful in ending “hallway medicine” if all sectors across the continuum are part of the solution. The community and primary care sector will be key in increasing access and reducing wait lists, keeping patients informed and engaged, and empowering front line workers.  Integrated service delivery is a major trend right now, intended to create seamless pathways to move people through the health care services they need. Here’s what you need to know about this powerful force in Ontario’s health system.
 Change is a constant in Ontario's health system. And while, historically, that change has been incremental, the pace of change has been speeding in recent years.
Here are 6 trends you need to know about to stay on top of what health care transformation looks like today:  For the past several years, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has been supporting increased access, integrated services, informed and engaged patients, and a sustainable health care system for the province.
Fulfilling that vision means doing things differently – and engaging Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Executive Directors (EDs) in Ontario’s community and primary health care sector as “on the ground” system changers, using their strong leadership skills to fulfill sector wide transformation.  Covering both the individual and organizational leadership landscape, the 5 Leadership Domains of the LEADS framework represent the key skills, behaviours, abilities, and knowledge required to lead at all levels of an organization:
 Historically, health care has functioned on a “knight in shining armour” model of leadership, where one person is largely responsible for saving the day. But our sectors are changing. As millennials bring new energy, new ideas, and new, more collaborative ways of working into our sectors, perspectives on leadership are changing.
A perhaps surprising source of inspiration can be found in one of our national symbols: the Canada goose. Like people in our sectors, Canadian geese have a strong sense of family and group loyalty. Their leadership style suggests some interesting ways forward for humans in health care: |
The LeaderShift project is governed by Community Health Ontario (CHO), and managed by the Ontario Community Support Association. CHO gratefully acknowledges support for this project from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.