Kurt April - Leadership, diversity & inclusion - Inspirational!
I was at the South East Coast NHS Best of Health conference and awards ceremony yesterday (more on that later), and had the pleasure to hear the most inspirational and thought-provoking speaker that I have ever heard.

Professor Kurt April defined management as 'tell it like it is' and leadership as 'tell it how it can be' but then went on to give an emotional and inspirational talk about his personal experience of apartheid in South Africa, and how he managed to move on from that (heart-rending and fear-provoking) situation to develop himself personally and work with others. He discussed the difficulty of being told to transcend the experiences of brutality to work with the oppressors and build a shared future, when you have experienced such fear and anger. Yet gave many motivational examples of people who have made a difference.

His focus was on leaders as custodians of values - something I am very interested in, and if any of you are thinking 'what has this got to do with healthcare' - just pause a minute and consider the things we need to do to get healthcare right, fair, diverse and inclusive even in this country.


You can find out more about Kurt at:

Graduate School of Business - UCT - Faculty profiles - Kurt April - Cape Town - South Africa

If I can get a copy of his speech or slides etc., I will post up links.

I was quite stunned, and it is very hard to get the essence of this talk across like this.

I could have put this up under leadership or diversity, but as it was an NHS conference I felt this was indeed the best place.

I would love a discussion about these aspects and how we can all make a difference in healthcare.

kind regards
Stephanie

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Dr Stephanie Morgan
Crosslight Management
www.crosslight.co.uk

One of the things Kurt did was give a definition of Leadership that I think suits the healthcare environment far more than many alternatives.

He suggested that leadership should be defined as:

Leadership begins with the knowledge that we become whole when we exercise our efforts, emotions and spirituality to make others powerful.

Leadership is thus the ability to live on purpose, by being authentic and consciously aware of oneself and others, thereby creating value for yourself and others.

He highlighted that organisations today need to be Efficient, Effective AND Responsible - and that leaders were important for that.

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Dr Stephanie Morgan
Crosslight Management
www.crosslight.co.uk