Learning to lead: tools for self assessment of leadership skills and styles

There is now general acceptance that strong clinical leadership can improve a range of important outcomes within health servies, and conversely that lack of clinical leadership and engagement contributes to poor quality of care and patient outcomes. Leadership development for clinicians has been promoted locally, nationally and internationally. However there are many uncertainties about how best to ‘teach’ leadership. Key requirements for effective leadership development at the level of the individual leader are awareness of one’s own skills and styles of leadership, and the ability to reflect on these to identify areas for development. In this chapter we report the use of two self-assessment tools that can contribute to a fuller understanding of leadership strengths and weaknesses in individuals and groups, allowing leadership development programmes to be tailored to the needs of participants and improving their effectiveness