Changing social care: an inclusive approach
Leadership for change and improvement: Engage all stakeholders
- Stakeholders can include people who use services, carers, staff, board members, inspectors, regulators, community members and suppliers.
- For any change, know who the stakeholders are, what their position is and how this might impact on what you need to achieve.
- Help people to see the benefits and opportunities offered by engagement. Developing personalised services offers the people who use these services a real chance to influence how the organisation develops and changes – make sure the people using your service are aware of this.
- People can be effectively engaged in a variety of ways, including:
- establishing a core nucleus of staff and stakeholders who are enthusiastic about the changes and who can help persuade their colleagues
- working directly with staff and stakeholders through consultation, brainstorming and one-to-one discussions
- making it clear that inappropriate behaviour or a lack of engagement is not acceptable (Fauth and Mahdon 2007).
The subject of engaging stakeholdersis explored further in later sections of this guide.
How we know this
- Effective leaders have the ability to fully understand and strategically balance the different demands of the environment in which their organisation operates, including social, political, economic and technological factors that might affect the performance of the organisation (Almio-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe 2005; Boal and Hooijberg 2000; Fernandez and Rainey 2006).
- Effective leaders are able to bridge gaps between stakeholders, minimise individuals’ fears, effectively build social capital and peer networks, and act and react effectively to different audiences (Almio-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe 2005; Boal and Hooijberg 2000; Fernandez and Rainey 2006).
