Go Back Cross-functional Leadership: Integrating Perspectives in Health and Social Care

Please note that the North East and Yorkshire Regional Hub is co-ordinating all bookings on behalf of the seven regional hubs and you may be redirected to book at our web site.  Confirmation emails and links to all sessions will be issued by the North East and Yorkshire Leadership Academy.

This eight week programme will introduce participants to tools for integrated or interdisciplinary work. 

This programme is designed to support anyone involved in collaborative, integrated working in Health and Social care. You might be leading a multi-disciplinary team, partnering with other providers, or working across services and sectors.

The programme features four sessions hosted once a fortnight over an eight-week cycle. The sessions will focus on ideas that you can implement quickly to help with breaking down complex problems, effective planning and communication across siloes, and making use of different kinds of evidence and expertise. 

In the intervening weeks, you will work to apply what you have learned with support from a self-paced learning platform. Videos, recaps, and activities will help you to move from understanding a concept or tool to putting it into practice and getting feedback. The programme is designed for a time commitment of 2 hours per week.

An Introduction to Cross-functional Leadership and Integrating Perspectives

Cohort 1: Thursday 30th March, 10am - 11:30am

Cohort 2: Wednesday 10th May, 10am - 11:30am 

Join our introductory session to learn more about the programme, an introduction to some of the key concepts from the programme and how they might be applied. 

By attending this session you will:

• gain new ways to identify the challenges of integrated working (working in multi-disciplinary teams or cross-sector collaborations);
• understand the type of conceptual thinking and changes in communication that can help you to tackle these challenges, in time-pressured contexts;
• practise applying at least one tool.

Following the session, there will be an opportunity to register for the full programme.

Please note, if you register for the full programme you will need to attend all four sessions. 

Full programme overview 

Session 1 - Talking with experts: Using what others know

Cohort 1: Thursday 20th April, 10am - 11:30am

Cohort 2: Wednesday 31st May, 10:00 – 11:30am

Integrated working beings together people with a range of extensive knowledge, skills and experience: different forms of expertise. 

This session will introduce tools to: 

• Diagnose the kinds of problems you are working on and how different kinds of expertise can help you

• Understand the level of understanding you need to have about the expertise of others in your teams, organisations or systems

• Communicate more effectively as a leader working with different kinds of experts and helping those experts work together.

Session 2 - Beyond what works: Using a range of evidence 

Cohort 1: Thursday 4th May, 10am - 11:30am

Cohort 2: Wednesday 14th June, 10:00 – 11:30am

There are well-established ways to integrate certain kinds of evidence, such as randomised controlled trials about tried-and-tested interventions. In the context of complex challenges, uncertainty, or crisis, however, we often do not have the luxury of this kind of evidence.

This session introduces ways to access other forms of evidence, going beyond the ideas of ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’, to more deeply understand different data sources and what they can tell us.

Session 3 - Seeing the wood and the trees: From insights to big picture

Cohort 1: Thursday 18th May, 10am - 11:30am

Cohort 2: Wednesday 28th June, 10:00 – 11:30am

Leaders can integrate perspective by working to both 'see the big picture' and have an eye for the important details: being able to ‘zoom in and zoom out’ on what is happening and what is needed.

This sessions introduces tools for working with abstraction and complexity to help to connect a birds-eye vision or strategy to more concrete details and evidence of change.

Session 4 - More than words: Communicating effectively across health and social care 

Cohort 1: Thursday 1st June, 10am - 11:30am

Cohort 2: Wednesday 12th July, 10:00 -11:30am

Working across teams, organisations or systems requires new ways to communicate about what we are doing that will make sense in different roles, contexts, and specialisms. The work we are trying to talk about and carry out can be very complex.

This session demonstrates how different kinds of maps, metaphors and models can be used to help in this work and explain some of the principles of what makes a good representation or analogy.

We recommend that you hold the above session times in your calendar until you decide if you want to join the full programme.