Robert Marx, Sussex Mindfulness Co-Lead, and Arden Boucher, Psychology Undergraduate, share some encouraging findings from an evaluation of the Compassionate Leadership Training course developed and led by Professor Clara Strauss and Robert Marx.
We’re so pleased that our Compassionate Leadership training has taken off and has been met with an enthusiastic response from senior nurses nationally, managers in a Talking Therapies service, NHS leaders in our own organisation and individuals wanting to use the ideas and practises in it. We developed this training to be rather different from some other comparable programmes because although we value giving useful information, we also believe that it is through personal engagement that lasting change really happens. So the training has a lot of experiential exercises and practices, with recordings to keep listening back, and real life scenarios and role plays of challenging situations. This makes sure that participants come away not just with good ideas for generating a compassionate culture in their workplace but an internal experience of having practised doing it in the training, and access to the resources to keep practising afterwards. This way, participants can keep developing and drawing on their experience, and not just their knowledge, in an organic way. They can apply what they learn in all of their relationships, including with themselves.
We rigorously evaluate everything we do and so asked participants to complete a survey with various measures before and after the training to assess its impact. We used five measures: wellbeing, self-compassion, compassion for others, compassionate leadership, and work managed on days bothered by health problems at work.
We found significant improvement across most measures, with participants particularly improving in wellbeing and self-compassion. Participants said they appreciated “understanding the benefits of taking a step back” and gaining “skills in how to approach some of the difficulties in [their] role and how to support others that [they] lead”. Participants reported that “there was so much wisdom to borrow”.
I do highly value the opportunity for our team to attend together – and think the material is invaluable for our own development and perspective and lived experience of leadership, as well as for the joint work of the leadership group.”
Another participant commented, “I will continue to attend Sussex Mindfulness Centre courses as I find them deeply nourishing and enriching.”
We also did not want to just offer something and then leave people wondering how to continue to apply it. So everyone who completes this training is invited indefinitely on a monthly drop-in session with one of the teachers of the programme. In these sessions leaders can bring inspirations and challenges and continue to connect with the growing community of people who are using this approach. This way, we also get to hear how the ideas in the training are being implemented. We can see from this that the impetus from the training is not just a flash in pan, but is helping to bring about lasting change.
You can find out more about our Compassionate Leadership Training and upcoming dates for courses here.
