Compassionate Leadership Training course – Tuesdays

Compassionate Leadership Training for health and social care leaders. Compassionate leadership is linked with improved learning and innovation, and reduced staff stress, injuries and absenteeism, and even reduced patient mortality.

Six online weekly two-hour sessions from Tuesday 14 May until 2 July 2024 (no sessions 28 May and 18 June). There is also a two-hour online consolidation session on 24 September 2024 from 15.00 to 17.00 to review our learning and practice.

Overview

At the heart of compassion is the notion that everyone experiences difficulty, and that we can all play a role in alleviating our own difficulties and those of others. Whether this is compassion for ourselves or the people we lead, people who lead us, colleagues or service users. We won’t always feel like helping and will sometimes be tired or overwhelmed or unable to connect.

Although it helps to have positive feelings, we do not have to feel compassion to be compassionate. We can recognise our physical and mental state, resource ourselves as best we can, and respond from our firm compassionate intention, rather than from impulse or intense emotion.

How does this translate into compassion in health, social care and other organisations? How might we think about compassionate leadership, working with colleagues, service users and their friends and families? Prof Michael West has spent his career answering this question, pointing to research that shows how compassionate leadership is linked with improved learning and innovation, and reduced staff stress, injuries and absenteeism, and even reduced patient mortality. In short, compassion is essential to high quality healthcare.

Dr Robert Marx and Professor Clara Strauss have designed a training programme of six weekly sessions, each lasting two hours, with an additional follow-on two hour session a couple of months following the completion of the course.

Who is the course for?

The course is for anyone in a leadership role in a health and social care organisation, recognising that leadership occurs throughout health and social care roles, and at different levels of seniority.

What is the format of the course?

The course combines in-session mindfulness and compassion practice with reflection and discussion, as well as an invitation for home mindfulness and compassion practice to help cultivate compassion for ourselves and the people we lead and work with.

Facilitators

Clara Strauss

Clara is Co-Lead (Research) for the Sussex Mindfulness Centre. She is a consultant clinical psychologist, mindfulness teacher and clinical researcher. In her research, Clara is particularly interested in developing and evaluating new forms of mindfulness-based intervention, especially for those people who may not be willing or able to access MBCT. Along with other members of her research team, Clara has been evaluating mindfulness courses for people experiencing depression, for people distressed by hearing voices and for people experiencing obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Ruth Sequeira

Ruth Sequeira is as senior trainer, supervisor and mindfulness teacher for the Sussex Mindfulness Centre. She is also a psychological therapist and the Mindfulness and Compassion Training and Retreat Lead at the Mindfulness Network. Ruth has a history of working in mental health services and until recently worked as a clinical lead in the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) in Sussex. Ruth has a longstanding interest in mindfulness, meditation and movement, and is passionate about increasing access to mindfulness courses in different populations.

Catherine Cameron

Catherine is a clinical psychologist working within the community-based persistent pain team within Sussex Partnership. She has a particular interest in mindfulness and self-compassion in pain. She co-facilitates the mindful self-compassion course for staff with Robert Marx having trained to facilitate the Mindful Self-Compassion course in 2014. Before that Catherine ran the mindfulness-based Mindfulness for Pain courses in Hove Polyclinic. She is also involved in the mindfulness all day retreats run for those who have attended the eight -week courses within Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

Apply and book your place

You can book your place below.

Please note, we ask all those who book a place on this training programme to fill in an application form that will be sent to the facilitators. If you haven’t already, please head here to fill in the form. If you are a member of staff at the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, please fill in the form first, before paying. There are a limited number of free places for staff that are offered on a first-come first-served basis.