Evaluation of CNWL NHS Trust’s 21st Century Leadership Programme

The Central and North West London (CNWL) NHS Trust launched the 21st Century Leadership Programme (21CLP) in June 2022 with the primary objective of enhancing the skills of managers in fostering compassion. Evaluation was integrated into the 21CLP from its inception, with researchers from Brunel University London being invited to conduct an independent programme evaluation.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated the pressing need for the development of compassionate interpersonal skills within the NHS, particularly among its managerial staff. Defined as a process of noticing, empathizing, appraising and responding to employee or co-worker suffering, workplace compassion and compassionate leadership are of growing interest among researchers and practitioners, particularly in healthcare.

The primary aim of 21CLP is to instigate a profound cultural transformation throughout the Trust, with the goal of enhancing the working experiences of its staff, and improving the outcomes and experience of care for patients. The programme addresses three domains; self-awareness, relationship skills and performance, and comprises ten modules including "trust values", "psychological safety", "coaching" and "compassion for self and others".

The initial rollout of 21CLP ran over the course of a year from June 2022 to May 2023, delivered in the form of online and in-person modules. Since the initial rollout, a second cohort began the programme in June 2023, with a third cohort joining in October 2023.

Evaluation was integrated into the 21CLP from its inception, with researchers from Brunel University London being invited to conduct an independent programme evaluation.

This evaluation of the 21st Century Leadership Programme (21CLP) aims to:

1. Identify the effectiveness of 21CLP on managerial behaviours
2. Assess the acceptability of 21CLP on participating managerial staff
3. Identify areas to improve 21CLP in future iterations
4. Identify the cascading impact of 21CLP to teams

Learnings from this evaluation project can be used to inform the expansion of 21CLP and to develop related compassionate managerial training within health settings.

Meet the Principal Investigator(s) for the project

Dr Emma Norris - Dr Emma Norris is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health, within the Department of Health Sciences and Co-Chair of the Health Behaviour Change Research Group. She is Deputy Lead of the Division of Global Public Health and Lead of MSc Public Health and Behaviour Change (online). Dr Norris is a researcher in behaviour change and health psychology, exploring evidence synthesis of behaviour change interventions, as well as development and assessment of physical activity, smoking cessation and digital interventions. Before joining Brunel, Dr Norris was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London working on the Human Behaviour-Change Project: synthesising published literature on behaviour change using machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. Dr Norris' PhD tested Virtual Field Trips as physically active lesson interventions for primary-school children. Dr Norris is also an advocate for Open Science. She established and Chairs Brunel's Open Research Working Group and is Brunel's UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) Local Network Lead. She is also interested in designing behaviour change interventions to facilitate Open Science behaviours in researchers. Dr Norris is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). She is Co-Chair of the European Health Psychology Society’s Open Science Special Interest Group. Emma is an Associate Editor for Health Psychology & Behavioral Medicine and Cogent Psychology. Follow Dr Norris' research and updates on Twitter: @EJ_Norris

Related Research Group(s)

Health Behaviour Change - Development and evaluation of theory- and evidence-based health behaviour change interventions, across communicable and non-communicable diseases; evidence synthesis of behaviour change interventions.

Project last modified 06/11/2023