Leadership policy

The preferred and agreed leadership style of Old Hastings House is closest to servant leadership best defined by Simon Sinek. Trusting Teams – The greatness of a servant leader is that they are a person you can reliably trust. Sinek claims that all you must do is ask the members of the team which person will be there when the chips are down.

“The team will always point to the servant leader” – Simon Sinek 3 Mar 2021

Servant leadership is a philosophy (approach), not a checklist. Therefore, the real question is not how to “act” like a servant leader but how to “be” a servant leader.

Those who lead, or who aspire to do so, should start with “why.” Ask yourself, “Why do you have the desire to lead in this particular way?” The key element of servant leadership is to serve others, therefore, it has to come from a genuine motivation to do good, to hold oneself to a higher standard and to provide the conditions needed for others to realise their own path in order to reach their goals. Good leadership links effectiveness with being ethical

At its core servant leadership focuses on the leader at the bottom, rather than the top of the tree. This is a leadership style that aspires to serve by bringing out the best in people and providing the conditions by which they can reach their full potential.

Key behaviours of servant-leaders:

Read on for further detail including the procedure to becoming a leader

Key qualities in a Good servant Leader

Leadership Skill at Old Hastings House aims to contain the following:

The process and Procedure to becoming leader

Old Hastings House is committed to giving everyone the opportunity to develop leadership skills. All established staff can show leadership behaviors when this is lacking. For others, they may wish to become formal leader. This would normally arise as part of an annual appraisal where there is a focus on developing a Personal Development Plan PDP). This would set out, with the support of a supervisor, the route into a leadership role along with the necessary support. This might include the opportunity to run a specific project or shadow shift opportunities to understand the finer details and the realities of leading a team.

It’s the philosophy of the home to constantly look out for opportunities to grow our own leaders as part of succession planning, equality of opportunity and job satisfaction.

Those who aspire to becoming formal leaders will need to show at least the following:

Relationship between leaders and followers:

Summary

The policy took into account recent 1:1 interviews conducted by the manager with staff at all levels from May 2022, which explored improvement ideas including preferred leadership styles. This updated policy also took into account the views expressed by the representative focus group in August 2018. This followed a staff survey where Leadership was identified as a skill which can be learnt shown in the ability to form effective and safe relationships. It was agreed that leaders were not born but made that there are no leaders without followers; that follower can become leaders; and leaders are judged by their actions. In other words, leadership is a behaviour which regardless of whether someone is in a formal leadership role. We call this leading in the moment.

The effectiveness of leading is based on the relationship between followers and leaders. For this reason, we put the ship into leadership by sharing (distributing) leadership throughout the whole team where we seek to grow our own leaders by having the right nurturing culture. We aim to have a succession plan should the manager and, or senior staff leave the service based on developing aspiring leaders. Leadership is from the front and not the back. So, whilst leaders should collaborate and involve others, they are expected to give a clear lead by making decisions.

The leadership direction of the service was validated by Skills for Care (official partners of CQC ) when Old Hastings House won the national award for its approach to leadership and management 2018. This was based on: “the proven ability of the service to deliver personal centred care: the views of those working and using the service; and the distributed (Shared) level of leadership where everyone has the chance to learn the skills, from housekeeper to care team leader”

This policy is centred on the principle that Good leadership (or being well-led) is about being both Effective and Ethical – two sides of the same coin. There is no value in being a good person if you cannot achieve anything or being effective but untrustworthy. Good Leadership should always aim to lead people to a higher place.

Next review date – June 2024