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Psychological safety at work: four stages for thriving

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Psychological safety at work: four stages for thriving

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As crucial as the physical well-being of employees is at the workplace, it is equally vital for companies to maintain psychological safety at work. A psychologically safe workplace fosters trust, collaboration, and innovation, paving the way for employees to thrive

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Recruiting Resources: How to Recruit and Hire Better

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Psychological safety at work: four stages for thriving

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Learn how to create psychological safety in the workplace with four key stages to foster trust, innovation, and team success.

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Find Leadership current awareness bulletins on our Leadership Local Faculty Group Padlet (under evidence updates section)

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Current Awareness Service from the Clinical Librarian team

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Current Awareness Service from the Clinical Librarian team

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Current Awareness Service

Never miss important developments in your field.

Stay informed with on:

New policies and guidelines

Latest health news and research breakthroughs

Upcoming events and opportunities

Specialty-specific developments

Contact us for support and more information- mtw-tr.clinical.librarians@nhs.net

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Clinical Librarian Services - Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust

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Imagine having instant access to the latest research evidence right when you need it most – our Clinical Librarian Service does exactly that

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Access with your NHS OpenAthens account

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BMJ Leader — Current Issue — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

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British Journal of Healthcare Management

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British Journal of Healthcare Management

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Access with your NHS OpenAthens account

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British Journal of Healthcare Management — Current Issue — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

# data[].attributes.body
Access with your NHS OpenAthens account

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Townsend, Kate; Dougherty, Will; Housley, Rebecca; … Cruttenden-Wood, David

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BMJ Innovations — Current Issue — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

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Access with your NHS OpenAthens account

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Journal of Healthcare Risk Management — Current Issue — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

# data[].attributes.body
Access with your NHS OpenAthens account

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BMJ Quality & Safety — Current Issue — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

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International Journal of Health Policy and Management

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International Journal of Health Policy and Management

# data[].attributes.body
Access with your NHS OpenAthens account

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Bhopal, Anand; Bærøe, Kristine; Norheim, Ole F.

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International Journal of Health Policy and Management — Current Issue — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

# data[].attributes.body
Access with your NHS OpenAthens account

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Milbank Quarterly — Current Issue — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

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Journal of the American Medical Directors Association

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Journal of the American Medical Directors Association

# data[].attributes.body
Access with your NHS OpenAthens account

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Choi, Jennifer L.; Lepore, Michael; Trinkoff, Alison M.; … Mattingly, T. Joseph

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Journal of the American Medical Directors Association — Vol. 26 Issue 12 — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

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Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation

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Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation

# data[].attributes.body
Access with your NHS OpenAthens account

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Wong, Charlene A.; Allin, Sarah; Swanson, Chelsea; … Cholera, Rushina

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Healthcare : The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation — Current Issue — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

# data[].attributes.body
Access with your NHS OpenAthens account

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Ramachandran, Rupa; Sathar, Farzana; Mokome, Pride; … Ivanova, Olena

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Frontiers in Health Services — Current Issue — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

# data[].attributes.body
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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
M@n@gement — Vol. 27 Issue 5 — Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust — BrowZine

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Leadership Online: A Directory of Resources

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Leadership Online: A Directory of Resources

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This directory of leadership and management development elearning and online resources will be of interest and value to leaders and managers everywhere, especially in the NHS and the public sector in the UK. It is an educational resource and started life as a resource for leaders and managers within the NHS in the south of England, and has been developed extensively since. This is the eighth edition and it now gives details of about 1,000 weblinks, all of which have been tested a bit of time ago. Old links that no longer work have been deleted and for some of those replacement links have found, and some completely new resources have also been added.

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Welcome to Leadership Online: A Directory of Resources
This directory of leadership and management development elearning and online resources will be of interest and value to leaders and managers everywhere, especially in the NHS and the public sector in the UK. It is an educational resource and

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We offer leadership development opportunities for future and current leaders empowering you to create a truly inclusive and vibrant leadership community across the South East to deliver better health and care outcomes for our patients. Working with NHS organisations and systems in the region, we harness the talent and potential of all our workforce so we can collectively meet the objectives set out in the People Plan and the ambitions of the Long-Term Plan. Find out more how we can support you, your team, your organisation and your system.

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We offer leadership development opportunities for future and current leaders empowering you to create a truly inclusive and vibrant leadership community across the South East to deliver better health and care outcomes for our patients. Working with NHS organisations and systems in the region, we harness the talent and potential of all our workforce so we can collectively meet the objectives set out in the People Plan and the ambitions of the Long-Term Plan. Find out more how we can support you, your team, your organisation and your system.
NHS South East Leadership Academy

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We offer leadership development opportunities for future and current leaders empowering you to create a truly inclusive and vibrant leadership community across the South East to deliver better health and care outcomes for our patients.

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How we change what others think, feel, believe and do (ChangingMinds.Org)

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How we change what others think, feel, believe and do (ChangingMinds.Org)

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Leadership is a subject which includes a great deal about changing people's minds, often in fundamental ways. Just think about some of the great leaders of the world and the impact they have had on the lives of other people.

Find information about:

Leadership theories

Leadership styles

Leadership actions

Followship

Leadership articles

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Disciplines > Leadership

Leadership is a subject which includes a great deal about changing people's minds, often in fundamental ways. Just think about some of the great leaders of the world and the impact they have had on the lives of other people.
(Note: There is a total of around 60 pages in this section)
See also

Change Management, Military commanders
Blogs by subject: Leadership
Leadership articles, Management articles
Leadership books

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Disciplines > Leadership Leadership is a subject which includes a great deal about changing people's minds, often in fundamental ways. Just think about some of the great leaders of the world and the impact they have had on the lives of other people.

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These elearning modules are designed to develop your knowledge and understanding of a range of management and leadership topics. Each module covers real life examples that reinforce your understanding of the key principles and skills in that area.

They are suitable for multi-professional health and social care team leaders and managers or aspiring managers at all levels.
Programme modules include:

Appraisal Skills

Assertiveness in the Workplace

Behavioural Based Interviewing

Coaching Skills

Coaching to Support Change

Dealing with Difficult People

Delivering and Receiving Effective Feedback

Empowering the Manager – Managing Upwards

Innovation in the Workplace

Large Scale Change – Managing Personal Transition

Leading, Managing and Dealing With Change

Managing Absence

Managing Stress in the Workplace

Performance Management

Service Improvement

The Situational Leader

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This programme is in partnership with...

About the Management and Leadership Skills programme

These elearning modules are designed to develop your knowledge and understanding of a range of management and leadership topics. Each module covers real life examples that reinforce your understanding of the key principles and skills in that area.

They are suitable for multi-professional health and social care team leaders and managers or aspiring managers at all levels.

These modules were developed by the Yorkshire and the Humber elearning Club.

Programme modules

Appraisal Skills

Assertiveness in the Workplace

Behavioural Based Interviewing

Coaching Skills

Coaching to Support Change

Dealing with Difficult People

Delivering and Receiving Effective Feedback

Empowering the Manager - Managing Upwards

Innovation in the Workplace

Large Scale Change - Managing Personal Transition

Leading, Managing and Dealing With Change

Managing Absence

Managing Stress in the Workplace

Performance Management

Service Improvement

The Situational Leader

Project team

Mark Bardsley

elearning Developer, YH elearning Club

Louise Gardham

Learning Technologist and Lead Developer, YH elearning Club

Paul Hughes

Project Manager, YH elearning Club

Authors

Learning and People Development Team, Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

How to access

In order to access the Management and Leadership Skills programme, you will need an elfh account. If you do not have one, then you can register by selecting the Register button below.
Register >
To view the Management and Leadership Skills programme, select the View button below. If you already have an account with elfh, you will also be able to login and enrol on the programme from the View button.
View >
NHS healthcare staff in England

The Management and Leadership Skills programme is also available to NHS healthcare staff via the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). Accessing this elearning via ESR means that your completions will transfer with you throughout your NHS career.

Further details are available here.

Not an NHS organisation?

If you are not an NHS health or care organisation and therefore do not qualify for free access elfh Hub, you may be able to access the service by creating an OpenAthens account.

To check whether or not you qualify for free access via OpenAthens, you can view the eligibility criteria and register on the ' OpenAthens ' portal.

Registering large numbers of users

If you are a HR, IT or Practice Manager and would like to register and enrol large numbers of staff within your organisation for access onto the Management and Leadership Skills programme, please contact elfh directly.

Organisations wishing to use their own LMS

For HR departments wanting to know more about gaining access to courses using an existing Learning Management System please contact elfh directly to express interest.

More information

Please select the following link for more information on how to use the elfh Hub.

elfh is a NHS England programme in partnership with the NHS and professional bodies

© elearning for healthcare 2023

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Management and Leadership Skills - elearning for healthcare

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This programme is in partnership with... These elearning modules are designed to develop your knowledge and understanding of a range of management and leadership topics. Each module covers real life examples that reinforce your understanding of the key principles and skills in that area.

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Developing your team (NHS Blood & Transport)

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Developing your team (NHS Blood & Transport)

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Have you ever wondered how:

you could run more effective team meetings

to resolve team conflict

to run your own development session with your team. Encouraging great teamwork

to develop team morale and have a positive impact on productivity and relationships

Here you will find a number of resources and tools designed to address these areas. They can help you take the lead in the development of your team, without the need to call on outside help.

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Have you ever wondered how;

you could run more effective team meetings

to resolve team conflict

to run your own development session with your team. Encouraging great teamwork

to develop team morale and have a positive impact on productivity and relationships

Below you will find a number of resources and tools designed to address these areas. They can help you take the lead in the development of your team, without the need to call on outside help.

If the activities don't quite have the right impact, or you need more support around how to use the resources contact HR Direct via the Contact Us page.

Foundation - First Steps

Creating the Right Environment. How to create the right environment when using any of these activities and resources

The Team as an Iceberg. Explores the reasoning why 'invisible' work is just as important as 'visible' work

Relationships and Team Dynamics. Outlines the importance of the working relationship in securing the 'buy in' of the team

Team Working

Let's agree how we are going to work together. A document to advise how to support team engagement

What are we here for? A shared purpose. How to give the team the opportunity to express their feelings

How to form a team and keep it developing. To raise awareness of the different stages of developing a team

Why does this team exist? How to ensure the team has a shared view of its purpose

Developing a Team Charter. How to know and understand the characteristics that make a team effective.

Managing Time Effectively. Helps to assess how much time the team spends on their primary duties and achieving their key results

Communication Styles. Demonstrates different styles of speaking and conversation handling

Creative Thinking. Demonstrates there is more than one way of approaching problem solving

Team Climate. A chance for the team to examine its working climate and to prepare an action plan for improving it.

Create Effective Teams. A chance for teams to identify what they are good at and further identify areas for improvement

Vibrant Values. NHSBT's behaviours that link to the Core Framework

Perfect Day 10 out of 10. What factors would make a team the best it could be?

Merrill and Reid Behavioural Styles. Workbook to understand and determine behaviour styles

Merrill and Reid Behavioural Styles. Presentation on how to understand and determine behaviour styles

Conflict in the Team

Relationships and Team Dynamics. Understand the impact of teamwork and team dynamics

You've Been Called Out for a Microaggression. What Do You Do? - How to respond when a colleague calls you out for committing a microaggression

Let's agree how we are Going to Work Together. Helping the team and manager to define the relationship they will have during training sessions.

How to give and receive feedback. How to practice giving and receiving effective feedback. This supports improving colleagues and team performance.

Conflict Styles. Introducing different conflict styles. This is identified in the work of Thomas Kilman

Team Meetings

How to have a Great Team Meeting. How to support you to hold effective Team meetings

Problem Solving and Decision Making

Solving Problems Creatively. The key ingredients required for creative problem solving

Solutions and Actions. Showing a team how they can improve their ability, to produce lasting solutions to problems

Reaching an Agreement. How to raise awareness of the power an effective team can bring to any decision making process

Living with Change

Supporting the Team Through Change. To support techniques to help achieve change in any aspect of a person or teams job, career or personal life.

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Developing Your Team Activities and Resources

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Activities and resources on how to develop and support your team.

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“91% (of leaders) said compassion is very important for leadership, and
80% would like to enhance their compassion but do not know how.”
— Power Can Corrupt Leaders. Compassion Can Save Them, Harvard Business Review

The Center for Compassionate Leadership helps you address the “how” by integrating best practices of modern leadership, evidence-based science, and contemplative wisdom. The Center’s proven curriculum and training deliver the tools, techniques, and practices that enable leaders to go beyond simple understanding to embody and live fully as compassionate leaders.

Check out the resources tab

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Are you feeling the call to lead with heart and humanity during these unprecedented times? What will it take to reimagine outdated, unsustainable systems that are breaking apart right before our eyes?

As compassionate leaders, we can be the change by responding to the visceral cries for peace, justice, and common humanity. It's time to bring our innate wisdom and the power of compassion to the forefront of leadership so that individuals, organizations, and systems can thrive.

"91% (of leaders) said compassion is very important for leadership, and
80% would like to enhance their compassion but do not know how."
- Power Can Corrupt Leaders. Compassion Can Save Them, Harvard Business Review

The Center for Compassionate Leadership helps you address the "how" by integrating best practices of modern leadership, evidence-based science, and contemplative wisdom. The Center's proven curriculum and training deliver the tools, techniques, and practices that enable leaders to go beyond simple understanding to embody and live fully as compassionate leaders.

Our proprietary research shows that team members perceive a wide compassion gap, as well as a vulnerability gap, between what their leaders say and what they do. With intentional action, we can close the gaps. Together we can bring equality, belonging, community, and connection to all leaders and all people, everywhere.

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Are you feeling the call to lead with heart and humanity during these unprecedented times? What will it take to reimagine outdated, unsustainable systems that are breaking apart right before our eyes? As compassionate leaders, we can be the change by responding to the visceral cries for peace, justice, and common humanity.

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Managing conflict (NHS Blood & Transport)

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Managing conflict (NHS Blood & Transport)

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“Nipping it in the Bud” is a training resource designed to equip and support management colleagues with the skills to ensure that early signs of workplace conflict is recognised and stopped before it progresses. We aim to give you the confidence to have early dialogue with team members to create more productive conversations leading to a happier and healthier workforce. This training is just one of the ways in which we are working towards a better working environment for all colleagues, an environment where we can minimise and seek to prevent conflict from happening from the start, or responding in a quick, and effective way when it does.

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You can't just switch on teamwork. It takes time for a new team to "gel" and work to its full potential. What's more, team members go through stages as they move from strangers to co-workers.

Bruce Tuckman's Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing model describes these stages. When you understand Tuckman's model, you'll know how to help your new team to become effective – faster. Let's look at how.

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At this stage team members may challenge your authority or management style, or even the team's mission. Left unchecked, this can lead to face-to-face confrontations or simmering online tensions.

If roles and responsibilities aren't yet clear, individuals might begin to feel overwhelmed by their workload or frustrated at a lack of progress.

How Do I Recognize the Norming Stage?

Gradually, the team moves into the norming stage. People start to resolve their differences, appreciate one another's strengths, and respect your authority as a leader.

Now that they know one another better, your team members will feel more comfortable asking for help and offering constructive feedback. They'll share a stronger commitment to the team's goals, and they should make good progress toward it.

What Does the Performing Stage Look Like?

Now your team is in flow and performing to its full potential. With hard work and structured processes, the team is likely to achieve its goals efficiently.

Judith Stein, from MIT's HR department, says of this stage, "Roles on the team may have become more fluid, with members taking on various roles and responsibilities as needed. Differences among members are appreciated and used to enhance the team's performance." [2]

What About Tuckman's Adjourning (or Mourning) Stage?

Many teams reach this stage naturally. For example, projects come to an end, or permanent teams are disbanded and people redeployed.

People who like routine, or who have developed close working relationships with colleagues, may find this time difficult.

Using the Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing Tool

Follow the steps below to ensure that you're doing the right thing at the right time:

1. Identify the stage that your team is at from the descriptions above.

2. Consider what you need to do to move on to the next stage.

3. Schedule regular reviews of where your team is at, and adjust your behavior and leadership approach accordingly.

Tuckman's model isn't a one-way street - teams may go back and forth between stages. When you hit the performing stage, keep observing your team's progress in case it slips back. For example, a new team member can disrupt the group dynamic, or a new business direction might mean you have to reevaluate your team roles and goals.

Leading Through the Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing Stages

Forming to Storming

To establish clear objectives for the group at this first stage, create a team charter. And help team members to set personal goals so that they can see how their work will fit with the bigger picture.

Storming to Norming

Storming can make or break a team, so it's essential that you establish processes to track the progress and success of tasks.

Norming to Performing

Use your regular one-on-ones to encourage individuals to step back, review their goals, and take responsibility for them.

Performing to Adjourning

When the team has settled into the performing stage, you can focus on other goals and new areas to benefit the business. Free up more time for yourself - and boost team engagement - by delegating tasks and projects.

You should also make time for the group's personal development. Discuss with your team what opportunities and resources are available to them.

Adjourning (or Mourning)

If any team members feel uncertain about what's ahead, boost their confidence and career prospects by praising them at company meetings. And offer to provide LinkedIn recommendations and references if they're moving on.

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Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing - Tuckman's Model for Nurturing a Team to High Performance

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Nurture your team to high performance with Tuckman's Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning (Mourning) model.

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NHS Leadership Academy Future Learn Courses

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NHS Leadership Academy Future Learn Courses

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Access 6 online course by NHS Leadership Academy

Core Managers: Effective Allyship in Health and Care

Core Managers: Noticing and Challenging Microaggressions

Core Managers: Inclusive Workplaces (Creating a Psychological Contract)

Core Managers: Inclusive Leadership in Health and Care

Edward Jenner: 0  - An Introduction to Personal Development

Foundations in System Leadership: Collaborating for Health and Care

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About

As part of NHS England and Improvement, the NHS Leadership Academy's philosophy is simple - great leadership development improves leadership behaviours and skills. Better leadership leads to better patient care, experience and outcomes. Our purpose is to work with our partners to deliver excellent leadership across the NHS to have a direct impact on patient care. We offer a range of tools, models, programmes and expertise to support individuals, organisations and local partners to develop leaders, celebrating and sharing where outstanding leadership makes a real difference.

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NHS Leadership Academy Online Courses | FutureLearn

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As part of NHS England and Improvement, the NHS Leadership Academy's philosophy is simple - great leadership development improves leadership behaviours and skills. Better leadership leads to better patient care, experience and outcomes. Our purpose is to work with our partners to deliver excellent leadership across the NHS to have a direct impact on patient care.

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Restorative Justice Culture Community of Practice

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Restorative Justice Culture Community of Practice

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This Restorative Just Culture Community of Practice brings together those people who are bound together by a genuine passion to bring about a restorative just culture in their organisation. It aims to serve as a resource and knowledge exchange for people and organisations making the shift from learning to implementation of a restorative just culture.

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This Restorative Just Culture Community of Practice brings together those people who are bound together by a genuine passion to bring about a restorative just culture in their organisation. It aims to serve as a resource and knowledge exchange for people and organisations making the shift from learning to implementation of a restorative just culture.

As a COMMUNITY we will engage, share, support and learn with each other as we navigate our way through the restorative just culture journey. As a community of practice, we differ from other entities such as work groups and informal networks in that our focus is on the co-development of skills and the construction and exchange of knowledge in this area.

Through PRACTICE we will share and apply the restorative frameworks, ideas, tools, information and stories as we connect and communicate with each other. We hope that by being an active member of this community you will benefit from having an arena for problem solving, find quick answers to questions, feel a sense of belonging and empowerment, find resources for implementing strategies, develop your own practitioner skills and behaviours, enhance your individual and shared learning and many more benefits that will organically evolve from all of your being part of this community.

TOGETHER we will build synergies that will empower people with the knowledge, skills and resources to implement the changes that result in that transformative organisational culture that will be unique to each of your organisations. Creating even the smallest shift in culture requires passion, commitment, leadership, influential champions and significant investment in the design and implementation of systems, process and policies. So as a community, lets help each other to achieve this and who know where this can take us.

We are excited and we hope you are too... so lets get started!

Brought to you by:

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This Restorative Just Culture Community of Practice brings together those people who are bound together by a genuine passion to bring about a restorative just culture in their organisation. It aims to serve as a resource and knowledge exchange for people and organisations making the shift from learning to implementation of a restorative just culture.

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We have a range of resources available to support you through at all stages of your leadership journey, including: Toolkits, case studies, e-learning, publications, videos, and podcasts and more

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Toolkits & Documents | NHS North West Leadership Academy

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NHS North West Leadership Academy@nhsnwla

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We tune into the latest change thinking and practice in healthcare and other industries around the world – translating this learning into innovative, practical approaches to change.

We positively impact people’s lives by building a generation of transformational leaders who together can tackle the biggest challenges in health, care and beyond.

A diverse team, specialists in our fields. What unites us as a team is our vision, values, and versatility.

The team has emerged through years of supporting change in the NHS and the wider health and care system.

Unique approaches from working in a space at ‘the edge’

Expertise from subject leaders with background in the NHS and related disciplines

Facilitating new approaches, accelerating change

Creating change agents and change agency – helping people find their own solutions to challenges

Brokering connections between the traditional ‘system’, and the ‘grassroots’, including frontline staff and service users

Building energy for change

Thought leadership, curating the latest developments in system change

Changing conversations.

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We tune into the latest change thinking and practice in healthcare and other industries around the world - translating this learning into innovative, practical approaches to change.

We positively impact people's lives by building a generation of transformational leaders who together can tackle the biggest challenges in health, care and beyond.

A diverse team, specialists in our fields. What unites us as a team is our vision, values, and versatility.

The team has emerged through years of supporting change in the NHS and the wider health and care system.

Unique approaches from working in a space at 'the edge'

Expertise from subject leaders with background in the NHS and related disciplines

Facilitating new approaches, accelerating change

Creating change agents and change agency - helping people find their own solutions to challenges

Brokering connections between the traditional 'system', and the 'grassroots', including frontline staff and service users

Building energy for change

Thought leadership, curating the latest developments in system change

Changing conversations.

You can find out more about who we are and what we do by exploring this site, or you can contact us or follow us on Twitter.

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We tune into the latest change thinking and practice in healthcare and other industries around the world - translating this learning into innovative, practical approaches to change. We positively impact people's lives by building a generation of transformational leaders who together can tackle the biggest challenges in health, care and beyond.

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Welcome to the home of health and care leadership development. Our curriculum of programmes, resources and activities bring world-class learning and development to NHS people and partners

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Welcome to the home of health and care leadership development. Our curriculum of programmes, resources and activities bring world-class learning and development to NHS people and partners

News and blogs

Ras Kahai, Disability and Wellness Network Co-Chair at Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals, explains how increasing visibility of disabled leaders is key to shifting mindsets.
Senior leaders

Our senior leader offers include access to rest and restore spaces, mental wellbeing support, executive coaching and support for new CEOs Find out more about our support offers
Programmes and apprenticeships

Our programmes and apprenticeships are designed to help everyone in health and care discover their full leadership potential and achieve the highest standards Find out about programmes and apprenticeships
Support for ICS development

Explore our range of flexible offers to support integrated care system (ICS) leadership development and resources for newly appointed integrated care board leaders including podcasts, articles and much more Find out more about support available
Our Leadership Way

Our Leadership Way sets out the compassionate and inclusive behaviours we want our leaders at every level to show towards colleagues and individuals Find out more about Our Leadership Way

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Leadership Academy - Better Leaders, Better Care, Brighter Future

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Welcome to the home of health and care leadership development. Our curriculum of programmes, resources and activities bring world-class learning and development to NHS people and partners Ras Kahai, Disability and Wellness Network Co-Chair at Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals, explains how increasing visibility of disabled leaders is key to shifting mindsets.

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In its simplest form, civility and respect is about how we treat each other at work. In highly pressurised NHS systems, behaviours of incivility and disrespect can become common place. People report that bullying and harassment is prevalent in the NHS, and this rude and unkind behaviour can have a detrimental impact on staff wellbeing and patient care.

Find Civility and Respect toolkit and other resources

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What is civility and respect?

In its simplest form, civility and respect is about how we treat each other at work. In highly pressurised NHS systems, behaviours of incivility and disrespect can become common place. People report that bullying and harassment is prevalent in the NHS, and this rude and unkind behaviour can have a detrimental impact on staff wellbeing and patient care.

This type of uncivil and disrespectful behaviour is unacceptable. It is unprofessional, unnecessary, and has no place in our NHS.

The NHS Long Term Plan recognises that levels of bullying and harassment must come down if the NHS is to achieve its aim of becoming the best place of work and being an employer of excellence.

The People Plan for 2020/21 sets a vision which places a compassionate and inclusive culture at the very heart of the NHS and emphasises that all NHS employees and employers are responsible for tackling bullying and harassment and the importance of creating a civil and respectful culture. We know that staff with one or more protected characteristics, for example, disabled, BAME and LGBTQ+ colleagues, are twice as likely to experience bullying and harassment.

Within NHS England, the national civility and respect programme aims to support and promote cultures of civility and respect in the NHS, creating positive working environments that are kind, compassionate and inclusive for all. The programme uses a preventative approach, with practical resources and evidence-based approaches, to raise awareness of what bullying looks like in the NHS and consider how to reduce it.
Reach Out, Speak Up, Take Care: a series of events were held in November 2022
The theme for Anti-Bullying awareness week 2022 was 'Reach out', to support this theme, the NHS England Civility and Respect team are hosting a series of three events for all our NHS people, 'Reach out, Speak up, Take care.' These events were to help encourage and support colleagues to 'reach out' about issues around bullying and harassment and promote cultures of civility and respect.

The events were recorded and are available for NHS staff via the Civility and Respect events FutureNHS Collaboration Platform alongside a number of event recordings from previous years and further information on the Civility and Respect programme.

To deliver on the NHS People Plan's commitment to support trusts in creating a positive workplace culture, the civility and respect programme has developed a practical, flexible and interactive toolkit and additional resources which you can find below

Civility and Respect toolkit and other resources

Find out more about the innovative ways colleagues are helping to create cultures of civility and respect in the NHS, creating positive working environments that are kind, compassionate and inclusive for all.

Restorative Just Culture

Restorative Just Culture aims to repair trust and relationships damaged after an incident. It allows all parties to discuss how they have been affected, and collaboratively decide what can be done to repair the harm. To ensure learning is put into practice in organisations post-training, a 'Restorative Just Culture' virtual community of practice has been launched to encourage sharing of resources and strategies that help embed good practice and support the creation of inclusive and compassionate cultures.

The community forum runs in collaboration with the Mersey Care Foundation Trust and will run events for delegates to engage with, as well as access online forums and helpful resources to refer to after their training. Registration is open to anyone in the NHS with recognised Restorative Just Culture training to share and learn together to implement this approach back in their own organisation. For more information or to register to the Virtual Community of Practice, please visit: RJC CoP (restorativejustculture.org)

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In its simplest form, civility and respect is about how we treat each other at work. In highly pressurised NHS systems, behaviours of incivility and disrespect can become common place. People report that bullying and harassment is prevalent in the NHS, and this rude and unkind behaviour can have a detrimental impact on staff wellbeing and patient care.

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Our work on leading across organisational boundaries

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Would you like help in developing your skills or a strategy for approaching population health? We offer a range of support to health and care leaders who want to improve population health at an individual, team, organisation or system level.

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Would you like help in developing your skills or a strategy for approaching population health? We offer a range of support to health and care leaders who want to improve population health at an individual, team, organisation or system level.

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Leadership and Management Zone (Turas Learn)

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Leadership and Management Zone (Turas Learn)

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The purpose of the leadership and management zone learning site is to provide all health and social care staff across Scotland with an easy point of access to a range of development resources about leadership and management. You might currently be in a leadership role wanting to develop your capabilities, or you might be aspiring to develop as a leader, or you might wish to support others' learning. In this site you will find: toolkits; events; topics; programmes; and links.

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The Leadership and Management Zone is where you will find resources to help you be the best you can be, as a leader or manager in health and care.

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Our work on the role of clinicians leading change in their organisations

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Leading Well for Staff Health and Wellbeing in the NHS

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Leading Well for Staff Health and Wellbeing in the NHS

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Develop your understanding of your own health and wellbeing to better lead and support your colleagues, and organisation.

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Develop leadership skills that support staff mental and physical wellbeing

The health and wellbeing of NHS staff is essential to the quality of care provided to patients, service users and communities.

The Covid-19 pandemic placed unprecedented pressures on the health care workforce and is now compounding longstanding inequalities. Inadequate resourcing and chronic excessive workloads pre-date the pandemic, when stress, absenteeism and retention were already at very concerning levels.

Deepen your understanding of the health and wellbeing needs of your staff

The role of a manager and leader in protecting, supporting and promoting the health and wellbeing of staff has never been more necessary and urgent. Even if many of the forces that undermine workforce health are beyond the gift of any individual to change or influence, there are still things that managers and leaders can do to create cultures of care that foster wellbeing and create better mental and physical health.

Learning from specialists in leadership and organisational development within the UK health and care sector, you'll explore different leadership styles and reflect on how your personal style impacts on staff health and wellbeing.

Learn where to focus your attention as an effective leader

You'll consider how physiological, structural, cultural, and individual interventions and needs can inform a leader's approach to supporting staff wellbeing.

Referencing real-life case studies, you'll be able to shape a more inclusive and equitable work environment.

Put your leadership and communication skills into action and develop a culture of care

You'll finish this course by exploring emotional self-awareness and self-compassion as a foundation for effective leadership, learning how to foster team dynamics using open dialogues, problem-solving, and inquiry and advocacy.

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for current and aspiring leaders within the NHS. It's suitable for those working in clinical and managerial contexts, as well as senior leaders, team leaders and managers.

Whilst the course is focused on NHS leaders, it may also be beneficials to leaders and managers working in related fields such as social care and the voluntary or community sectors.

Learning on FutureLearn

Your learning, your rules

Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning

Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities

Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores

Join a global classroom

Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners

Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course

Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others

Map your progress

As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning

Whenever you're ready, mark each step as complete, you're in control

Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate

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Leading Well for Staff Health and Wellbeing in the NHS - FutureLearn

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The health and wellbeing of NHS staff is essential to the quality of care provided to patients, service users and communities. The Covid-19 pandemic placed unprecedented pressures on the health care workforce and is now compounding longstanding inequalities. Inadequate resourcing and chronic excessive workloads pre-date the pandemic, when stress, absenteeism and retention were already at very concerning levels.

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Fab NHS Stuff is social movement for sharing Health & Social Care Ideas, services and solutions that work

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As we prepare for the #FabAwards23, take time to reflect on the work you have done. No matter how big or small, submit your QI projects and service improvements to be part of the #FabAwards23PrizeGiving Event.

Find out more about #FabAwards23

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As we prepare for the #FabAwards23, take time to reflect on the work you have done. No matter how big or small, submit your QI projects and service improvements to be part of the #FabAwards23PrizeGiving Event. Find out more about #FabAwards23

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A fun sketchnote from NHS Horzons

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NHS SE Leadership Academy - Independent and Bitesize Learning

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NHS SE Leadership Academy - Independent and Bitesize Learning

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Here you will find a mixture of learning opportunities, including virtual sessions, group support, 1:1 support, work based learning and positive action initiatives in the form of 3 key areas;

Leadership Bites – Short learning guides to “learn in 20 minutes” about key topics to enhance your self-awareness and understanding, to develop your skills as a leader, including virtual leadership and leadership styles, and wellbeing for you and your teams.

Leadership Shorts –Short recordings of key leadership topics, hosted by the South East Leadership Academy with leaders from across the South East to share their learnings and experiences.

Leadership Espressos and Masterclasses – 60-90 minute group sessions, based on key leadership topics, which will be theory based and practical. These will also offer a great opportunity to network with other leaders across the South East and share your learnings and experiences.

Development Opportunities and Support

Independent and Bitesize Learning

Leadership Shorts

Leadership Bites

Leadership Espressos – Virtual Learning Sessions

Regional Programmes

National Programmes

Graduate Management Training Scheme (GMTS)

Coaching and Mentoring

Systems Leadership

Organisational Development (OD)

Primary Care

Our Workforce Initiatives

Executive Offers

Leadership Dispatch

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Learning plays an important part in our day-to-day roles, and we know that your time is precious. That's why we've designed and developed our bitesize learning interventions to be short, sharp and agile, with the ability to be accessed whenever its convenient for you.

Here you will find a mixture of learning opportunities, including virtual sessions, group support, 1:1 support, work based learning and positive action initiatives in the form of 3 key areas;

Leadership Bites - Short learning guides to "learn in 20 minutes" about key topics to enhance your self-awareness and understanding, to develop your skills as a leader, including virtual leadership and leadership styles, and wellbeing for you and your teams.

Leadership Shorts -Short recordings of key leadership topics, hosted by the South East Leadership Academy with leaders from across the South East to share their learnings and experiences.

Leadership Espressos and Masterclasses - 60-90 minute group sessions, based on key leadership topics, which will be theory based and practical. These will also offer a great opportunity to network with other leaders across the South East and share your learnings and experiences.

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Learning plays an important part in our day-to-day roles, and we know that your time is precious. That's why we've designed and developed our bitesize learning interventions to be short, sharp and agile, with the ability to be accessed whenever its convenient for you.

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Today, it’s not enough for leaders to drive strong employee performance. They need to take care of their team’s wellbeing, too. Here are a few ways to build a psychologically safe workplace:

Don’t focus too much on building the “perfect” team. As a manager, it’s normal to want to hold everyone to a higher standard. But perfectionism can make you reactive, distrustful, and a micromanager. Instead, let your team make mistakes, avoid blaming individuals for problems, give them the space to learn and grow, and recognize the good work that individuals do.

Advocate for diversity, inclusion, and equity. First, understand how diversity works. As you do, understand the biases that stop you from making more thoughtful and inclusive decisions. Finally, build skills like cultural competence that can help you lead more diverse teams.

Communicate with care. For people to trust you, you have to learn with vulnerability and openness. When you’re open about your struggles and opinions, it’ll help your team members practice the same behaviors. Building this culture of openness also requires that you lead conversations with empathy and use language in a way that affirming rather than alientating or intrusive.

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A Guide to Building Psychological Safety on Your Team

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Today, it’s not enough for leaders to drive strong employee performance. They need to take care of their team’s wellbeing, too. Here are a few ways to build a psychologically safe workplace: Don’t focus too much on building the “perfect” team. As a manager, it’s normal to want to hold everyone to a…

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Management tips for dealing with conflict

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Management tips for dealing with conflict

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Harvard Business Review article on tips for dealing with conflict

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When your go-to leadership style stops working

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When your go-to leadership style stops working

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Harvard Business Review article on different Leadership styles

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When you’re overloaded and delegation isn’t an option

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When you’re overloaded and delegation isn’t an option

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Harvard Business Review article on managing workloads

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When managers are overloaded as many are now, the usual leadership advice is to delegate more. But what if you've delegated everything you can and you still have too much work? If your team is drowning too, delegating more work simply means shifting the overload. This is not a sustainable option.

is an Amsterdam-based Frans van Loef executive coach and former CEO, specializing in helping overwhelmed leaders and their teams offload the overflow of initiatives and inefficiencies in work, refocus on high-impact priorities, and unlock the full potential of their leadership teams, which leads to accelerated meaningful progress on strategic goals while maintaining a balance between what is needed and what people can contribute. His upcoming book Offload publishes this fall. Frans also chairs the advisory board of The Amsterdam Institute of Finance. Connect with him on LinkedIn or email him at frans@freecapacity.net.

, a Partner at Jordan Stark Next Step Partners, is a CEO and C-Suite coach with over 30 years of experience helping leaders successfully navigate leadership at the top. She acts as a confidential sounding-board, a truth-teller, and a seasoned leadership expert, enabling senior leaders to scale effectively, build strong teams, and lead strategically. She also leads board evaluations, helping boards provide effective strategic oversight. Learn more about Jordan, connect with her on LinkedIn, or email her at jordan@nextsteppartners.com.

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When You're Overloaded-and Delegating Isn't an Option

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If you and your team are too busy, it's essential to take time to figure out how to work differently. Here are three key strategies you can use to reassess and reconfigure the work you do to free up vital time and energy for what matters: 1) Make sure your team really understands what "good enough" looks like.

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Harvard Business Review article on dealing with conflict in your team

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In uncertain times, ask these 3 questions

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In uncertain times, ask these 3 questions

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Harvard Business Review article on above topic

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In Uncertain Times, Ask These Questions Before You Make a Decision

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In today's perma-crisis world, waiting for stability is like waiting for a train that's never coming. When everything around you feels unsteady, four questions can serve as strategic tools to help you work through ambiguity, reframe risk, and strengthen your decision-making muscles: 1) What decision today will still make sense a year from now?

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Harvard Business Review article on above topic

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When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, people across the globe faced new anxieties about their health, families, income, and stability. For company leaders, all that upheaval put worker mental health into the can't-ignore category of issues affecting their organizations.

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HBR's Best Practices for Supporting Employee Mental Health

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External forces affecting employee mental health have proliferated steadily in the past few years, with the fast pace of AI implementation changing the shape of many careers, geopolitical tumult bringing worry about stability, and murky and shifting economic outlooks leading in some cases to cost-cutting measures like layoffs.

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Is your flexible schedule burning you out?

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Is your flexible schedule burning you out?

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Harvard Business Review article on burn out

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When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, people across the globe faced new anxieties about their health, families, income, and stability. For company leaders, all that upheaval put worker mental health into the can't-ignore category of issues affecting their organizations.

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HBR's Best Practices for Supporting Employee Mental Health

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External forces affecting employee mental health have proliferated steadily in the past few years, with the fast pace of AI implementation changing the shape of many careers, geopolitical tumult bringing worry about stability, and murky and shifting economic outlooks leading in some cases to cost-cutting measures like layoffs.

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Harvard Business Review article on coaching styles

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4 Styles of Coaching—and When to Use Them

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A 2×2 matrix to help you identify how much guidance your employee needs.

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Harvard Business Review article on above topic

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Social scientists have recently developed a new appreciation for how your conception of yourself can affect your professional and personal lives. The good news is that recent research has shown that you can curate your identity in the workplace in ways that will improve your performance as a leader, the trust you're able to inspire in others, and even your overall well-being.

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Harvard Business Review article on above topic

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Despite a century of research on work design, managers continue to struggle to deliver a positive employee experience. Trends that emerged in the post-Covid labor market, from quiet quitting to heated disputes over return-to-work policies, laid bare a stark reality: Many employees are dissatisfied with the experience their jobs offer. People stay in roles out of necessity rather than loyalty-an unsustainable arrangement that results in predictably low engagement.

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Is there a better way to approach the employee experience? The authors challenge traditional paradigms by proposing that work be viewed as a product employers offer to employees. Drawing on the jobs to be done theory, they suggest that employees "hire" their jobs to fulfill specific needs, much as customers choose products.

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Harvard Business Review Podcast on the above topic

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A conversation with entrepreneur Marc Zao-Sanders on his favorite productivity tool.

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Harvard Business Review Podcast on being an inspirational leader

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A conversation with Columbia Business School’s Adam Galinksy on honing your style.

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Harvard Business Review Podcast on improving conversations

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ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard.

I like to think of myself as a pretty good conversationalist. After all, a big part of my job is interviewing experts for this show and HBR events, and I spend the rest of my time talking to academics and executives about how to shape their ideas into articles. Away from work, you'll also find me chatting up people pretty regularly, family, friends, the guy at the gym, the stranger I just met at a party.

Still, when it comes to conversational skills, there's always room for improvement, and I'll admit that even I come away from some interactions unsure of myself. Did I talk too much, ask questions of everyone, share too candidly? No matter the topic, setting, or partner, conversations can be tricky, and yet, navigating them well, from water cooler to boardroom, school drop-off to dinner outing, can yield both professional and personal benefits. So, whether you're a practiced talker or more socially awkward, it pays to better understand how conversations work and how to get better at them.

Our guest today is here to help. Alison Wood Brooks is an associate professor at Harvard Business School, and she wrote the book Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. Alison, welcome.

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Thank you so much for having me, Alison. How you doing?

ALISON BEARD: So, we all know people who are just fabulous, fluid conversationalists and others who just aren't that good. How much of that is due to just an extroverted, confident, warm personality or the way you were brought up in a talkative family or just having lots of interesting things to say versus being a more shy or self-conscious person, growing up in a less chatty environment, or just not having that much to contribute to the conversation?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: I think at the heart of your question is how much of our conversational ability is from nature versus nurture? When we think about things like personality, extroversion, and introversion, or even other parts of individual differences in the ways that our brains work - if you're on the autism spectrum, if you have ADHD, all of it matters in terms of who you are and how your brain works, but ultimately, what really matters is how are you feeling when you're talking to other people, and how are those things influencing your behaviors, your little micro-decisions that you make at every moment of every conversation?

Some introverts are fabulous conversationalists. Some extroverts are terrible. What really matters is what are you thinking about? How are you feeling, and how is it affecting your choices as your conversations unfold?

ALISON BEARD: So, it seems like you're saying that anyone can learn to be a good conversationalist?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Absolutely. You can learn to be a better conversationalist. You can also learn and change your preferences around conversation over the trajectory of your life and even from one moment to the next.

ALISON BEARD: So, you mentioned micro-decisions. You also say in the book that conversations are a unique coordination challenge each time. So, explain what you mean by those two things. Why are they so complicated and complex?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: It's so funny. We learn to have conversations starting around the age of one and a half, when we're toddlers. So, by the time we get to adulthood, it feels like conversation is one of those things that's second nature and that we should be great at it and that it should be easy and that it's this task we're doing all the time.

But when you start to look under the hood of what's going on in people's brains when they're talking to each other and what about all of these little choices that we're making at every moment of every conversation, when you look under the hood, conversation is so much more complex than it first appears. In fact, it's sort of a miracle that humans learn to have dialogue, to take turns speaking and listening with each other in pursuit of goals like information exchange and connection and fun.

And so, I call it a coordination game because you're coordinating hundreds of thousands of little decisions together with another human mind that you don't have control over, and those coordination choices are hard.

ALISON BEARD: Why is it so important to think about the context and purpose of a conversation before getting into it, before you start making those decisions?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: What it means to have a good conversation or to be a good conversationalist depends so much on both the context, the who, what, where, when, why, how of each individual interaction, but also the purposes. So, every conversation, every person involved has their own set of needs and desires, sincere needs and desires. Sometimes we want to learn from each other. Sometimes we want to keep secrets.

Sometimes we want to persuade someone else, and sometimes we don't want to be persuaded by them. And so, these needs and desires, these purposes profoundly shape the meaning of what it even means to have a good conversation. And every human has their own set of purposes, their own set of goals in every interaction.

So, in the book, I work really, really hard to have principles that are helpful guides to having good conversations regardless of the context, right? We can't actually script what it means to have good a conversation. You can't memorize lines. You never know what your partner's going to say. There's so much uncertainty around conversation, but in the book, we talk about these principles that can be applied and helpful across all conversational contexts, whether it's work, non-work, and as we move fluidly from one context to the next.

ALISON BEARD: Okay. So, let's dig into those principles. You call it TALK, T-A-L-K, which stands for topic, asking, levity, and kindness, and I want to address each of those. So, first, what do we need to know about choosing and moving between topics?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Yeah. So, I think the topics part of the framework is the one that I continue to sort of ruminate about the most personally. At every moment of every conversation, everyone involved is making little micro-choices that help to steer topics. So, it's not like you're just starting a conversation, and you're like, "Oh, we're going to talk about our hiring decision." Actually, every time you speak, you sort of have your hand on the steering wheel of the topical flow, and you're choosing, "Should we stay on this current topic? Should we drift gently in another direction? Should we jump cut to something else entirely? Should we end the conversation?" All of these moves steer the trajectory of the conversation itself. They determine what the content of the conversation is and therefore what you're actually able to accomplish.

ALISON BEARD: So, what's an exercise that I might do to get better at picking topics and switching between them?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: So, I teach a course at Harvard called TALK, and there are a number of exercises that I have my students do to practice. To start with, a great exercise is to try topic prep. Some people do this naturally, and other people are like, "What are you talking about? That's a terrible idea. It's going to make my conversation awful and rigid and scripted," but don't knock it until you try it. In our research, we find that people who spend even 30 seconds thinking ahead about possible topics they could talk about leads to more enjoyable, less anxiety-ridden, smoother conversations.

So, you can push yourself to try and come up with a list of two to three bullet points of ideas of things that you might talk about, and not just with work colleagues for a 20 or 30 minute meeting, but also for people you're really close to. When you call your mom or your best friend, think ahead about what they're going to find fun to talk about or important. What's been going on in their life that you should ask them about? What did you see in the world that reminded you of them? Maybe you'll have the chance to bring that up and make them feel really loved and seen.

So, topic prep helps in all of these ways. In the experience of topic prep, the fears about it making the conversation seem scripted or rigid turn out to not be true. It actually usually makes the conversation feel more exciting and more smooth.

Another idea and another exercise I have my students do is about topic switching once the conversation is underway. Whether you've done topic prep or not, once you're in the conversation, you're making these choices on the fly about, "Well, should we stay on this topic or switch to something else?" On average, people tend to make the mistake of staying too long on topics more than jumping around too quickly. It's more common that you have a lull and you start saying things you've already said or having long pauses because, usually, because people are polite, and they feel weird switching to a new topic, but in those moments, it's really important to be courageous and confident and switch to something else.

So, an exercise I have my students do is take a list of a lot of topics, maybe 10 or 12, and just challenge yourself to switch more frequently. Anytime it seems like your partner's not interested or you haven't landed on something that's dazzlingly exciting or there's ... Even if you have landed on something exciting, push yourself to sort of switch more frequently than you naturally would and see how it goes. Most people are pleasantly surprised to learn that it just makes their conversation more exciting and more interesting and actually doesn't feel as rude as you think it might in theory.

ALISON BEARD: It's interesting because one of my tricks when I'm entering a group conversation is to figure out something that two people have in common and mention it, or even if I don't know what they might have in common, just sort of give a quick backstory on one person and then the other so that they can find a topic to come together on. I sort of just now realized in talking to you is that that's what I'm trying to do, help them choose a topic.

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Totally. That's such a nice service to the group, and we can do the same thing one-on-one essentially, right, especially ... That was kind of the main thing that I did when I interviewed for all my jobs, right, in a job interview. I mean, everybody's desperate for commonality and ease, and so, finding, landing on something, even something really insignificant that you have in common makes conversation feel so much easier and like you're developing a really meaningful shared reality together.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Okay. That seems like a good transition to asking questions because that might be another way you can find commonalities. So, I think most of us know that this is a path to better communication and understanding, particularly in the workplace, but why do you think so many people still do tend to share more information than they solicit and talk more than they listen in conversations? Because that's the worst conversationalist, right, the person who just talks at you and doesn't ask questions and doesn't engage you.

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Listen, there's a million ways to be a bad conversationalist, which is part of the challenge in becoming a better one, but certainly, talking too much about yourself is a very quick and common way that people fail. One reason that people under-ask questions is just that our brain, the human mind was built to be egocentric. We're most familiar with our own perspective. We're most interested in our own experience of the world. And so many people, because they're so focused on their own perspective that they really forget to ask and realize, "Oh, I'm talking to another human mind that has had maybe even more experiences and have even more knowledge than I do, and I should be trying to pull that information out of them." You just sort of forget that that's even possible in the chaos of conversational flow.

Another reason is that even if you think to ask people questions, there are lots of barriers there too, right? We worry that by asking, it'll make us look incompetent or too intrusive or that we'll ask a question on a topic that they don't actually want to talk about or is too sensitive. I mean, there's all kinds of hesitations and worries that prevent us from asking questions, even when we ask, even when we think to do it.

ALISON BEARD: As you might imagine, I am the opposite, and very often, my husband will be in a conversation in a group setting. And he'll say, "You really have to forgive her for asking so many questions. She's a journalist." But what does your research show about good types of questions to ask people?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Yeah. So, let me tell you about a specific data set that I think is really illustrative of the power of question asking. We got our hands on this great data set of speed dates. It was about a thousand speed dates, four-minute conversations between strangers on heterosexual speed dates, and there's all kinds of stuff you can study about their conversations, have this beautiful outcome of does the person want to go on another date with you or not at the end?

There's a very strong and clear effect of question asking such that, for both men and women, asking more questions means that your partner's more likely to want to go on a date with you, a second date with you, but when you look at that effect, when you dive in and look at the content of what people are asking about, you see that that effect is almost entirely driven by follow-up questions. Follow-up questions are such a superhero because they show that you're listening to your partner and you care about their answer, and then you want to know more. And that's what psychologists call responsiveness in action, right? You are actually listening to them. You actually care, and you actually want to know more.

So, follow-up questions are such a superhero. They help us get away from small talk. And it helps us share with each other. It helps you say, "Look, I really want to hear more from you on this. Don't be afraid to share it with me."

In a different data set, we looked at question asking in negotiations. So, this is a much more conflictual context compared to dating, where your incentives are very much aligned, right? It's very cooperative. You have a lot to learn about each other. When you're negotiating and you're working through disagreement, you could feel like, "Oh, I shouldn't ask as much because they're going to feel like I'm trying to learn information that I'm going to use to exploit them and use for my own gain, right?" It's more competitive, but even there, even in negotiations, we find that people who ask more questions are, on average, better liked by their counterpart, and they learn more information that helps them identify creative solutions and value creating solutions and helps them claim more value in the negotiation.

And this was particularly true for open-ended questions. So, closed questions, of course, have a sort of predetermined set of answers like yes, no. Open-ended questions are more like, "What do you think about cell phones?" or, "What did you have for breakfast this morning? What's on your mind?" They beg for more information, more open sharing from your partner, and in fact, in conversation, by asking an open-ended question, people respond with more than twice the word count when you ask them an open question compared to a closed one.

And then we could look at the wording of these questions that negotiators ask each other, and what we saw was really stunning, very helpful in practice. People who asked open-ended questions that start with the word "what" seem to strike the right balance between relational outcomes like likability, trust, as well as informational outcomes, so eliciting more information that's helpful in the negotiation. So, "what" questions strike that good balance compared to, let's say, a "why" question. So, I say, "Why did you have cereal for breakfast? Why don't you like cell phones?" which can feel more accusatory and more threatening.

ALISON BEARD: Hmm. Interesting. So, how might I practice being a better asker of questions?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Great. This'll feel very good to you, Alison. It's an exercise called never-ending follow-ups. I feel like you're doing it to me right now, which is awesome. It's an exercise I ask my students to do where, one, it's in a pair. One person is put in this role of asker. The other person is answerer, and the asker's job is to ask a follow-up question every time they speak. So, you can make it feel smooth and natural. You can disclose things about yourself, but before you turn the conversational microphone back over to your partner, you end with a follow-up question based on something they just shared with you.

This is the most extreme version of question asking, right? If you're asking a question every time you talk, that's a lot of questions. A lot of times, my students are like, "Oh my God. That's crazy. It's going to be too much." In the experience of it, it feels amazing. And when I ask my students at the end, they describe it with words like "fun," "amazing," "authentic," "learning," "connective," because there's so much information and sharing that comes from asking so many follow-up questions.

ALISON BEARD: And it's also fewer decisions in a way because you're not thinking about what you need to say or how you should respond. You're just purely focused on the other person.

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Yeah. I think a lot of people put pressure on themselves to be knowledgeable about things, like, "Oh, I need to have something smart or funny or surprising to say," but questions are so beautiful as an improvisational tool because you don't need to know anything about anything if you know that you can always just ask more questions.

ALISON BEARD: Okay. The L is for levity. Does this mean telling jokes or finding ways to make the conversation lighter with smiles or laughter or self-deprecation? What are we talking about?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Yeah, there are very obvious killers of conversation like anger and hostility, conflict. But the quieter killer of conversation is actually boredom and disengagement. Even if one person becomes disinterested or bored or wants to leave, it's very hard to continue a conversation a fun and productive way, and it happens all the time, right? It's very, very common, more common, probably, than anger and hostility.

So, levity is the antidote for boredom and disengagement. It includes any moment or any move that infuses lightness into the conversation. And that can come through humor and laughter, but also through unfunny things like compliments or topic switching, which is ... I hope for people who think they're not funny and never will be, I hope they find that very empowering.

People tend to think of these moves like compliments and laughter and jokes as this sort of extra, sparkly bonus thing that sometimes happens in conversation. When you start to study the psychology of status, hierarchies, and connection, you realize it's not actually this extra bonus. It's a core determinant of how people relate to each other and who earns status and maintains it. In our research, we found that even one mildly funny joke, like kind of a bad joke, confers so much status to the person who tried. Even when the joke flops, that person is seen as much more confident than a person who's sort of afraid to make a joke like that. If the joke succeeds, that person is much more likely to be voted as the leader of the group. And so, in terms of status striving, which is the basis of all humanity and how people relate to each other, it seems like levity actually is a very important factor in how we relate to each other and how we hold each other's attention.

ALISON BEARD: So, it sounds like this is as important in work settings and serious professional conversations as it is in social settings.

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: I think it might be even more important at work. This is just a hypothesis, but because ... We have this data, this Gallup data with millions of people. They ask them all kinds of survey questions, but one of them is how often did you smile and laugh yesterday? And you see this cliff, this very dramatic drop off in people's answers to that question around age 23. And what happens at age 23? You've entered the workforce. At age 22, 20-

ALISON BEARD: That's depressing.

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Very depressing. At age 22, 23, you're going to work. The norms of so many workplaces and office conversations, work related conversations seem to dictate that you're no longer allowed to express levity in conversation. In some ways, people think of it as unprofessional, and you could make the argument that that's a huge loss, right? If we are aiming for psychological safety, trust, playfulness, creativity, discovering solutions, innovation, making good decisions, all of those goals that we cherish in the workplace, you actually can't achieve them very well without levity.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I feel like I've always been blessed to have bosses who are very good at that. Are there ways to practice it?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: You are blessed to have had bosses that are good at it. So lucky. And colleagues too, right, when we think of our work besties and the people we love working with, often it's the people who make us feel engaged and happy and excited.

How can we practice it? Going back to this idea of topic switching, topic switching is a really easily accessible way to infuse more levity in your conversations. Pushing yourself to switch topics more frequently and not let conversations get boring I think is a really good thing to practice and push yourself to do.

I'm not convinced as a scientist and as a teacher that I can make people funnier. Of all conversational skills, I think it's the one that I have the most skepticism that is very, very easily learnable, but I do think that there's a lot to learn from the funny people in our lives. And most importantly, what we've learned in our research is people who end up being viewed as funny, it doesn't mean that's what they're trying to do. They actually don't go through the world thinking, "I want to be funny." Often, their mindset and their goal is, "How do I make this conversation fun? How do I make this situation fun?" And sometimes that's as simple as making sure that you yourself are smiling and laughing. A lot of people put pressure on themselves to be funny and I think that's the wrong goal.

ALISON BEARD: And finally, kindness, what exactly do you mean by that, and why is it critical?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Oh my goodness. In a way, topics, asking, and levity are all working their way up to the most important maxim of the talk framework, which is kindness. They are all helping us make these micro-decisions, these coordination decisions more effectively, but ultimately, the question is in service of what? Are you becoming a better conversationalist to pursue your own goals and needs, or are you doing it - are you thinking about other people's goals and needs and sort of more collective pursuits?

People who push themselves to move beyond natural human egocentrism and really focus on their partner's needs are much more well positioned to actually fulfill those needs, and being able to do that at work and in our relationships outside of work is the key to having great relationships and great conversations.

ALISON BEARD: Okay, and then how do you show kindness in a conversation?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Listening lives within kindness, and I think one thing we've uncovered in our research that was surprising to me is that we have decades and decades of work on active listening, right? And it's mostly nonverbal stuff like eye contact and smiling, nodding, trunk lean, leaning towards your partner while they're talking. Those are all great, but they also don't necessarily align with what's going on inside your mind. The human mind was built to wander, and it wanders a lot while we're talking to other people. And the whole time, you can be smiling and nodding while you're actually thinking about your grocery list or that thing that they said earlier in the conversation. So, it's not a high fidelity signal of what's actually going on.

A way to become an expert listener is actually showing that you've put in the hard work to listen to someone through your words, so repeating back what you've heard from someone, trying to paraphrase or reframe it in some way, calling back to things that people, your partner said earlier in the conversation or even earlier in your relationship, and, of course, as we talked about earlier, follow-up questions, which you can't ask if you weren't listening in the first place.

In my class, I ask my students to do a number of exercises that nudge them to repeat and affirm what their partner has said. So, one of them, they'll go around in a group, and you could do this at a work group or with your family, where you do sequential validation. So, let's say they're going around, and everybody's sharing one of their favorite songs or musical artists. So, I start by saying, "I love the song Yesterday by the Beatles. I used to listen to it with my mom. I just think it's the most beautiful song in the world." And then you, Alison, go next, and you say, "Oh, I love that you listen to that song. The Beatles were so amazing, and I know a lot of people think it's the best song ever written. It's funny that you say that because one of my favorites is Blackbird by the Beatles," right? So, then you keep going around the circle, but you have to affirm the person who came before you before you share your own thing.

ALISON BEARD: See, you preempted me. I was going to say, "Yes. I love that song too, and it was one of my favorite Carpool Karaoke episodes was Paul McCartney with James Corden."

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: There was a Paul McCartney Carpool Karaoke episode?

ALISON BEARD: Yes.

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: You know what I'm going to do right after this. I'm looking it up right after we're done talking. What an epic karaoke partner in the car.

So, in this exercise, you just practice affirming your partner before you share your own thing. It seems so simple and obvious, but in the practice of our lives, we just forget to do it. And the validation process of saying, "Oh, it makes sense that you would love that. It's so epic that Paul McCartney did a Carpool Karaoke with James Corden," the practice of doing that becomes even more important when you've landed on things that are not so straightforward and easy. So, when you get into a realm where you're disagreeing with each other, it's even more important to say, "It totally makes sense that you feel strongly about immigration.

Tell me more about your family's history with immigration and living in Miami," or whatever before you go on to say, "For a second, I wonder if we could think together about how immigration can be harmful too." So, instead though, most people just move immediately to the hard thing. We fixate on the point of disagreement and forget to do that first half part where we validate and affirm our conversation partners, and that's a very dangerous omission.

ALISON BEARD: Is the conversational calculus different for people in leadership positions?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Absolutely. There's a chapter in the book about group conversation. So, every group has a sort of inherent status hierarchy. Leaders sometimes have high status, sometimes have high power or control over resources. Sometimes they have high power and low status, where they're not actually very well-liked or respected, but certainly, their sort of official position in a status hierarchy in an organization and within the sort of social status hierarchy matters tremendously.

When any of us find ourselves in high status positions, we should be thinking about how we can help the lower status group members feel safe and feel invited and feel valued. One really simple thing they can do to start is try to make more equitable eye contact with people during group conversations. In our research, what we have found is humans naturally look at the highest status members of a group while a conversation unfolds. And so, even just a little bit more effort to try and catch the eyes of more people in the group makes them feel like they're not invisible, like they're included. And when they do have something valuable to say, they are more likely to actually speak up and say it. And it's much more gentle than putting someone on the spot, like saying, "Hey, Alison. You've been quiet. What do you have to add here," at a moment when you don't actually have something to say. So, eye gaze can be incredibly powerful.

ALISON BEARD: Do we need to think about all four of these points for every single conversation that we have throughout the day?

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: That would be so much to think about, Alison. Right? It's too much. It's too much. In a way, this four part framework is very ambitious. I'm trying to capture everything about this very complicated task of conversation in just four things. I think it does a pretty great job. The first two topics in asking focus on informational exchange. The last two, levity and kindness, focus on relational outcomes, but the idea of trying to hold all of them in your head at once is overwhelming, especially because that's part of what makes conversation hard is there's already a lot going on. We have to pay attention to our partner and to ourselves and read the room and make all these choices relentlessly while we're together.

I think it can be really helpful to revisit each of them every so often and remind yourself about the major takeaways. "Oh, yeah. Maybe I should, tomorrow, try and prep topics more than I usually do," or, "Ooh, in this next conversation, I'm going to push myself to ask more follow-up questions," or, "Ooh, looking back on that meeting we had yesterday, I think, actually, the mistake we made is there weren't enough moments of levity."

Using the framework to identify your own strengths and weaknesses can be helpful. You, as a journalist, are an amazing question asker, but if you really search your soul and your life, reflecting on, "If I have wobbles or weaknesses, where is it?" Maybe it lives somewhere in levity. Maybe it lives somewhere in kindness. Maybe it's in topic switching. Maybe you get so excited about topics that you forget to switch to new ones. And so, using this framework to identify those areas of strength and weakness can be incredibly empowering, I think.

ALISON BEARD: Alison, thank you so much for being with me today.

ALISON WOOD BROOKS: Thank you so much for having me, Alison. It's always so fun.

ALISON BEARD: That's Alison Wood Brooks, associate professor at Harvard Business School and author of Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. And we have more than a thousand IdeaCast episodes now, plus many more HBR podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at hbr.org/podcasts, or search HBR at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Dooe, associate producer Hannah Bates, audio product manager Ian Fox, and senior production specialist Rob Eckhardt. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I'm Alison Beard.

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A conversation with Harvard Business School's Alison Wood Brooks about improving your casual communication skills.

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Harvard Business Review Podcast on navigating the Hybrid work dilemma

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A conversation with HBS professor Raj Choudhury on what research really shows about hybrid work.

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What all leaders can learn from Taylor Swift

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What all leaders can learn from Taylor Swift

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Harvard Business Review Podcast on leadership skills and Taylor Swift!

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ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard.

Anyone who's been following pop culture over the past decade knows the story of Taylor Swift. An aspiring teen songwriter moves to Nashville and becomes a country music ingenue, then a country star. She crosses over into pop and becomes a star in that genre too, while also dabbling in indie rock. She wins multiple Grammys. She breaks album sales and streaming records, and then she does a two-year stadium concert tour that is an absolute sensation, the most popular and highest grossing of all time. At age 35, she is now probably the most famous woman on the planet.

That kind of ascent takes a whole lot of talent, no doubt, but it also takes business savvy, a clear vision, an innovative mindset, smart collaboration, and clever marketing. HBR's own senior editor, Kevin Evers, has done a deep dive into what's made Taylor Swift so successful, and he says there are lots of lessons for corporate leaders, and in fact, anyone trying to get ahead in their career.

He's the author of the new book, There's Nothing Like This: The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift. And he's here today to talk about how to bring a little of her magic to your own organization. Kevin, congrats on the book. I'm so excited to have you here today.

KEVIN EVERS: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

ALISON BEARD: First, I want to make sure that you disclose this at the top. You are a longtime HBR editor, a very serious business journalist, but also a longtime Swiftie, thanks to your daughter Macy, right?

KEVIN EVERS: That is true. Yeah. My daughter is eight years old now. She's been a Swiftie for the last four years or so. She's a hardcore fan.

ALISON BEARD: And so, you're bringing some fan biases to the table?

KEVIN EVERS: Maybe a little bit. I did go into this trying to write a book from a neutral and authoritative standpoint. But some of the fandom and my relationship with my daughter definitely played a little bit of a role in the writing, for sure.

ALISON BEARD: What do you say to people who might be initially skeptical that there are actually things everyday managers, and even C-suite leaders, can learn from this pop star, this once in a generation talent?

KEVIN EVERS: I've heard a lot of the skepticism. It did not take much soul-searching, I'll be perfectly honest with you. Taylor Swift has been in the music industry for 20 years. She's more successful and popular now than she was 20 years ago, and she was very popular 20 years ago. She's a great songwriter. She's exceptional at songwriting, and that's contributed mightily to her success. But she has great entrepreneurial instincts.

And the fact that she's a female pop star made it even more interesting to me, because the music industry is fickle, it's a cutthroat market. But she's been able to find success and scale that success and popularity multiple times.

ALISON BEARD: So, after doing all of this research on her rise in longevity, what is one key business applicable lesson that really stood out to you?

KEVIN EVERS: The first one is her fan obsession. She reminds me of Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos, in a very famous shareholder letter, I'm going to paraphrase here, said, "Our customers are delightfully dissatisfied. They may tell us that they love our services and that we're doing a great job. But deep down, our customers always want more. And it's our job to delight them and to use their dissatisfaction to drive innovation."

And I think that fits Taylor to a T. She understands that superstars aren't self-made, they're created by fans. So, she goes above and beyond. She has sent her fans Christmas presents, she has invited fans into her home for listening parties.

And we saw this at the Eras Tour. She could have played two hours, two and a half hours and I think her fans would've been happy. But she plays three and a half hours. She devotes a mini set to every album in her career, except her debut. That's going above and beyond. But this is the reason why she's been able to build such long-standing relationships with her fans, because she doesn't take them for granted, and she's always looking for ways to delight them.

ALISON BEARD: Talk about how she figures out what her fans want next. How does she figure out how to not just adapt and change, but make the right changes, make the right decisions?

KEVIN EVERS: I think she has an innate sense of what they want, but she's also a lurker. She's online all the time, and she's our first extremely online superstar. She's used social media to great effect throughout her career. But she's always lurking in those message boards. She's always lurking on TikTok trying to understand what her fans want and trying to find new ways to delight them based on what they're saying on social media. She's notorious for doing things like this.

ALISON BEARD: And community building is a big piece of it too, right? So, what lessons can consumer-facing companies take away from the guerrilla way that she's done that, made people feel as if they have an intimate connection to her even when she has millions of fans and followers?

KEVIN EVERS: Her fan community at this point resembles true-crime communities on Reddit. There's so much speculation on what she's doing. And Taylor has changed her strategies recently. She used to have a lot of direct contact with her fans on social media, and she doesn't as much anymore. There's more scarcity to her strategies these days. But that has actually increased engagement, because whatever she does, whether she wears something on an outing and gets shot by a paparazzi, or she's at an event, whatever she wears, leads to a lot of speculation. And whatever she says on social media leads to a lot of speculation.

And a lot of it, she's fueling this fire. She's dropping hints in everything that she does, so every interaction that she has with a fan has potential meaning. And that's really driven engagement, especially in this TikTok era. During the Eras Tour, between two and 300 million videos were viewed a day at the peak of the Eras Tour about Swift. So, she really has this innate sense of building curiosity and engagement with her fans.

ALISON BEARD: It's almost like gamification of being a fan.

KEVIN EVERS: For sure. For sure. And it's in her lyrics too. I don't think she's trying to game the system with her lyrics, but I do think that it leads fans to speculate. Everything she does increases some sort of engagement with her fans.

ALISON BEARD: Her initial fan base was this, at the time, untapped market of teenage girls who might be interested in country music. So, talk about how she knew that was a market to be tapped, and then how she convinced others in the music industry that she could be the one to do it.

KEVIN EVERS: This is a classic entrepreneurial story. She seized an opportunity that other people were ignoring. Let's go back. She's 14 years old, 15 years old, and she's trying to make it in country music. And she had a very clear vision for what she wanted to do, and she was very headstrong about this. She wanted to write her own songs, which at the time was rare in country music, especially for someone her age. It's usually done by professional songwriters. And she wanted to write those songs for an audience of her peers, teenage girls. That was a market that executives and country music, based on data and based on past failures, said, "That market doesn't exist." And she wanted to put out an album as soon as possible.

And country music said, I think you need to wait, right? There's no market for this. But she said, "I listen to country music. I'm not hearing songs that talk about my own perspective. My friends are listening to country music." So, she was really close to her fan base, her customer base. While others in country music, they looked at the data and they looked at past experiences and they said, "I don't think this is going to work." But it did work. It's a classic blue ocean strategy, and this is something that Marvel did also in the 1960s. She went after an audience that people didn't think existed. And because of that, she found great success because she really didn't have much competition once she broke through.

ALISON BEARD: So then, how did she expand her fan base, especially when she was entering the really crowded pop music scene, without alienating what we would call her core customer? How did she go big while also maintaining that intimate connection?

KEVIN EVERS: Classic adjacency strategy. She made sure, and her team made sure, not to alienate country music. So after her first album, after that first breakout in country music, they still maintained a country first attitude. All of her singles went to country radio first, and then they released new versions to pop radio stations. So, they really made sure that those relationships were fostered and cultivated in country music, while at the same time expanding into pop music. So, she was able to expand her audience into the pop market while not alienating country music at the same time. That's a strategy that she used the first three, three and a half albums of her career, and it worked really well for her.

What's unique about Swift is she was able to transition out of Teen-Dome. That's something that a lot of artists struggle to do, right? But because she's been able to transition out of that, it feels like her fans are growing up alongside with her. So, that core fan base has always remained. And then, of course, she's evolved her sound over time at the same time. She moved to pop music. She's recently moved to more of an indie rock sound, and that has brought in new consumers, new fans.

ALISON BEARD: There's an authenticity, I think. She evolves, but it's always authentically and reflecting who she is at the moment. And so, it's almost as if that's what people identify with. And I feel like you can see the same things in corporate America. The brands that always stick to their purpose or values are the ones that consumers really feel loyal to because they know what they're getting.

So, this capacity for innovation and reinvention is pretty astonishing, even though she's, at her core, a songwriter, always authentic, et cetera, she has made some colossal changes in terms of her image, in terms of her music. And you say that's a result of productive paranoia. So, how did she avoid complacency that many people would feel being as successful as she was early on, and then, again, pick the right collaborators to ensure that she was changing just enough?

KEVIN EVERS: Productive paranoia, it's a great term. And it fits Taylor to a T. She has voiced many times in her career that she was worried that her popularity would dwindle. This is something that most artists, especially musical artists, worry about.

ALISON BEARD: And businesses, right?

KEVIN EVERS: And businesses, of course. Look at the startup market, MySpace in 2006 was the biggest social media platform. And now, it's Facebook and TikTok, and MySpace doesn't exist anymore-

ALISON BEARD: Right.

KEVIN EVERS: Yeah. So, she's always had this fear that her popularity may dwindle. This is something that Elvis also stated. He said, "I'm worried that the light will go out just as quickly as it went on." And Swift has also voiced that one of her biggest fears is that her songs will sound the same, that her audience will feel, you're not growing.

And this has really pushed her to make bold decisions at times when you wouldn't think that she really had to make such bold decisions. She made this huge transition to pop music in 2014. She left country music completely behind. She had three straight number one albums at that time.

Her strategy of going after country music and pop was a great strategy. It was working really well for her, but she decided, because she's a personal brand and she's a songwriter, that her music was evolving, her personal tastes were evolving, and she thought it'd be much better for her and her fans if she chased what she was really passionate about. And in that case, it was pure pop music. That was risky, but again, it ended up really working out for her because she had multiple number one hits. And that album, 1989, is one of the best-selling albums of the 2010 decade.

ALISON BEARD: So, the advice for business leaders then is to be paranoid, to always be questioning your market position and figuring out ways to pivot and capture new markets or move in a new direction so that you don't stay complacent?

KEVIN EVERS: Yes, and be paranoid when things are going well. I think that's the key point here. And there's been research on this, Morton Hansen has done research on this. He looked at leaders across all different industries, and he found that the leaders who were productively paranoid, who were really trying to assess risk even when things were going really well, perform much better when things actually weren't going well because they were prepared to pivot and change when things changed.

ALISON BEARD: You mentioned MySpace before and it is really amazing to think that Taylor started her career before the rise of all the social media platforms, before streaming. And she's now really thriving in this digital era. So, what were the key skills or strategies that she used to make sure that she's always ahead of the game when it comes to these new technologies?

KEVIN EVERS: If you look at the Eras Tour and how successful it was, it was successful because Swift had radically adapted her strategies to account for the changing behaviors of listeners in the streaming age. If you go back to 2019, Swift had arguably plateaued. She wasn't growing as quickly as she had earlier in her career, so she made big changes. She used to have a very precious release strategy. It's a very classic traditional strategy. Every two years, she'd release a new album. It would come out with great fanfare, she'd make a big deal out of it, mass media push, she'd go on tour, she'd stop and then do it again.

But around 2020 or so, she'd turned very prolific. In the last five years, she has released four studio albums and she has released four re-recordings. She has two more re-recordings to go. And rumors are she'll release a new studio album soon as well. That's a huge shift for her, that is so much content. And it's a strategy that Marvel has used, and Star Wars has used, and other companies that have great IP.

It's really hard to engage consumers and fans and listeners at this stage because of streaming and the attention economy. But once you have their attention, it's important to continually engage them. And that's what Swift has done. And I don't think the Eras Tour would've received so much demand if she didn't change her strategy to adjust to streaming and our changing behaviors in the attention economy.

ALISON BEARD: Now, she has been criticized for insinuating that a lot of these moves are intuitive, whereas people think, "No, this is totally calculated. And you're more a business woman than you are a musician." What do you make of that?

KEVIN EVERS: I think her decisions are very intuitive, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that's a good thing. She has a real innate sense of what her fans want and what she should be doing. She received an Innovator of the Year award by iHeartRadio a few years ago. And she said, "I don't wake up every day saying, 'I'm going to innovate today.'" She really looks at the environment and she does what's best for her, and I think that's a big reason for her success. She's not a copycat. She really has an innate sense of what she should be doing.

And we saw this with her re-record project, right? That's another decision that seemed kind of crazy on paper. She decided to re-record all of her old music. Not re-release it, re-record it. And she was essentially telling her fans, "Don't listen to the old stuff, listen to the new recordings."

ALISON BEARD: And that was because her initial manager, Scott Borchetta, had owned the rights to the masters. He then sold it to Scooter Braun, a producer who Taylor didn't like or respect or trust. And so, she said, "I don't want this guy to own my music."

KEVIN EVERS: Yes, exactly. It was a classic battle between people who own stuff and people who make stuff. And people who make stuff usually lose those battles because they don't have a lot of leverage. And Swift didn't have much leverage either, but the only leverage she had was the fan community that she had built for so long. I think she knew innately that whatever decision that she made, that her fans would rally behind her. And that's exactly what they've done, because those four re-recordings that she's released have been number one hits on the Billboard 200.

ALISON BEARD: You mentioned that she is a woman in a male-dominated industry. How do you think that that's changed the way both she's perceived and then also the way she has operated and navigated in that environment?

KEVIN EVERS: It's had a big impact on how she's perceived. Taylor's career follows a modified version of Newton's third law. For every positive reaction, there's an equal or greater negative reaction. And we saw this from the very early days of her career. Now, traditionally, artists who have predominantly female fan bases aren't taken that seriously. Can even go back to The Beatles. Now, The Beatles are, obviously, a sensation. But that term, Beatle Mania - there's this idea that female fans are more driven by emotion and they're not driven by logic.

And this has affected Taylor in her career. She's gone through many controversies, especially earlier on in her career. We can go back to 2009 when Kanye West rushed the stage at the VMAs and took her microphone and said, "I'm going to let you finish, but Beyonce had the greatest video of all time." And what he was saying is, "You don't deserve to be here. You're not talented enough." And Swift was heavily criticized throughout her career for this. That her voice wasn't good enough, that she had a princess fixation, that her lyrics were twee.

But I think what's really important about Taylor is that she has turned these moments into opportunities for empowerment for her and her fans. That even when she's faced these controversies and these harsh criticisms, she's doubled and tripled down on what she does best. And she did this after the Kanye controversy with her third album. She said, "If you're going to criticize me, I'm going to write this album all by myself. I'm not going to use co-writers." And then, she used that as a big selling point for the album. That was a big part of the promotional campaign. And she finds ways to improve and grow based on those criticisms, but also grow closer to her fans in the process.

ALISON BEARD: There's also been a lot of reporting on the kind of leadership that she showed during the course of the Eras Tour. It was a massive operation. She wasn't, obviously, managing the day-to-day logistics of it, but she did oversee the team for two years. So, what most interested you about the way that she managed that?

KEVIN EVERS: She's very humble. I've never met her in person, I've never talked to her, but-

ALISON BEARD: Soon, hopefully. Soon.

KEVIN EVERS: Maybe. Who knows? My daughter would be delighted. Yeah. She's very humble. Again, she's been doing this for 20 years. If she wasn't humble, or if there's something off about her personality, or if her persona or the way that she presents herself to the world was manipulative or a fraud, we would know by now. And even though she's very headstrong and she makes bold decisions, she's humble. I think she understands that she's not self-made, that she's created by her fans. And she's always had this innate sense that the people around her are just as important as she is.

And we saw this when she gave bonuses to her truck drivers and her crew. Big bonuses, over $100,000 to her truck drivers. And you can see it in the Eras Tour. You can see that she's in control of every aspect of that production. And I think fans can sense that, right? I went twice to the Eras Tour with my daughter, and it was very clear that every detail was well-thought-out. It seemed like a very personal experience, even though we were watching a show with 70,000 other people.

ALISON BEARD: It's interesting you think about the other musical acts that have been as commercially successful as Taylor Swift, The Beatles, Michael Jackson. The stories around them weren't necessarily that they were savvy business people, it's that they had good teams around them who knew how to make the best of their music and their talent. But with Taylor, it really does seem that she is the one in charge. So, did your research confirm that, that it's really her driving the show?

KEVIN EVERS: Yes, for sure. You could see it when she was 14, 15 years old. You could see it at every... Every moment of her career, you can tell that she's the CEO of her own career. She has a great team around here. She runs her business like a small family business. Her parents are involved, her brother is involved, and many of the members on her team have been there since the very beginning. So yes, she is the CEO of her own career, and much of the decisions are driven by Taylor herself. But she also has a great team that she's been extremely loyal to over the last two decades.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And she trusts all of them too.

KEVIN EVERS: For sure. Yeah. Without a doubt.

ALISON BEARD: Just to wrap up, we've covered the business lessons for managers and executives, but I'm also really interested to hear what you think that each of us working in our day-to-day jobs can learn from Taylor. How can we make better career decisions based on what she's done? When Macy gets her first job, what's one way that you think she can bring a Taylor Swift sensibility to whatever workplace she chooses?

KEVIN EVERS: What I would tell my daughter is, based on my own research on Taylor Swift, is keep creating stuff. Whatever you do, don't stop. There's so many times in our careers where we stall, we struggle. And Taylor Swift has gone through all of that. She's gone through many challenges and many controversies. But the reason why she is as popular and successful as she's today is because she's never stopped making music. She's never stopped. Every two years she's released a new album. Didn't matter what was going on in her life or what was going on in her career at the time.

And of course, over the last five years, that output has accelerated. And I think that's really important. I just wrote a book and I want to take a nap. But it's important that I keep going, I keep promoting, and maybe I'll write another book. And I think that's important for all of us to know. We all hit plateaus in our career. We all struggle, but it's important to push as hard as we can every day.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Keep finding the thing that lights your fire, I guess, and pursue it. Keep going.

KEVIN EVERS: And don't get complacent.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

KEVIN EVERS: That's something that Taylor Swift has never been, and that's complacent. She's always trying to adapt and grow.

ALISON BEARD: Kevin, thank you so much. It's been terrific talking to you about this.

KEVIN EVERS: Thank you. This was fun.

ALISON BEARD: That's Kevin Evers, senior editor at Harvard Business Review, and author of the book, There's Nothing Like This, The Strategic Genius Of Taylor Swift. And we now have more than 1000 IdeaCast episodes, plus many more HBR podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at hbr.org/podcasts, or search HBR in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Dooe, associate producer Hannah Bates, audio product manager, Ian Fox, and senior production specialist, Rob Eckhardt. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I'm Alison Beard.

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What All Leaders Can Learn from Taylor Swift

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A conversation with HBR senior editor Kevin Evers on unexpected takeaways from the music industry icon's career.

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Leading through crisis with Jacinda Arden

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Leading through crisis with Jacinda Arden

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Harvard Business Review Podcast with Jacinda Ardern

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ALISON BEARD: I'm Alison Beard.

ADI IGNATIUS: And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.

ALISON BEARD: Adi, imagine that you have just been appointed to a big leadership position and the people and businesses you're responsible for are hit by a series of crises. Disease outbreak, a terrorist attack, several natural disasters, and then COVID-19. Do you think you would be able to navigate through all of that?

ADI IGNATIUS: Definitely not, but I have to say, it reminds me a little bit of the era we're in right now. The details are different, but we're in an era of perpetual crisis, and I think business and political leaders have to just accept that. There's no smooth sailing. It really is crisis management all the time.

ALISON BEARD: And that's why we wanted to talk to Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand, who during her tenure from 2017 to 2023, managed her country through all of those crises, one after another. We do think she has really important lessons for business leaders today who are having to deal with so much geopolitical and economic uncertainty, that volatile, complex, ambiguous VUCA world that we don't love, but we have to deal with.

ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah, I want to hear what she has to say. We've just launched a new subscription offer called HBR Executive that really is aimed at exactly everything we're talking about, which is how to help leaders in this very, very, very difficult, very volatile, very crisis filled time.

ALISON BEARD: Yes. So she has lots to teach us about crisis management, how to make decisions when you don't have a lot of information or that information is changing, how to gather experts with different views and find consensus, how to communicate those choices when other people might not agree, and how to navigate burnout.

Crisis management may be the most important skill that leaders can have today. So here is my conversation with Jacinda Ardern, former prime minister of New Zealand. She also has a new memoir called A Different Kind of Power.

Jacinda, thanks so much for being with me today.

JACINDA ARDERN: Thank you very much for having me.

ALISON BEARD: You did face many crises during your time as PM. How did the early ones prepare you for the global pandemic?

JACINDA ARDERN: Probably the one that bore the most relevance was the biosecurity incursion that we experienced. The major take home for me was making a decision in a really uncertain environment where there wasn't a template. So when Mycoplasma bovis came into New Zealand, we brought together those who are most affected, and that was our farming community. We gathered together an expert advisory group to give us advice on how to respond. At that point, we also panned around other countries. I particularly wanted to know who else had ever tried to eradicate this illness from their national herd, and the answer was no.

One of the questions we asked ourselves was, well, if we seek to get rid of this disease and we fail, we'll ultimately end up being no worse off than any other country and the response they then had and the aftermath, and that path of least regret. Probably there was a psychology in that that played out then in the approach that we took during the pandemic. If we choose a path no one else is traveling and we fail, we simply end up in the place that many others are in.

ALISON BEARD: And so when you're in these very uncertain, chaotic environments, when there's a dearth of information, how do you approach decision-making? How do you make sure you have the right people in the room to advise you? And then how do you work through and finally decide on a course of action?

JACINDA ARDERN: This is where I found that one of the traits that perhaps I carried into leadership that I might've previously seen as a bit of a weakness, this notion of imposter syndrome or a confidence gap really actually drove me towards an approach that I think helped me in decision making. It meant that I wanted to fully understand everything I could about a problem. I would read as much as I could. I would then bring in people who had expertise in the issue.

After reading all of the research, observing all of the data, speaking to all of the experts, then a decision needed to be made. It wasn't the case that after doing all of that, there was a one obvious conclusion to reach. And I think the most important approach at that point was sharing openly, not just the decision that we'd made, but the choices that we had and sharing that openly. People could often see why we landed where we landed, and that really helped with then enacting the decision because we needed people to be on board with the approach that we were taking. And so that was really critical.

ALISON BEARD: So as a person who was making some of the most important decisions that your country would ever face, how did you get over or get past that notion of imposter syndrome? I'm young, I'm a woman, I'm responsible for a population, and this is a life or death situation. So how did you have the confidence to make those calls?

JACINDA ARDERN: I think it's really interesting because often I think there's an assumption that if you doubt yourself, that means that you won't be decisive. Actually, I found the reverse to be true. Yes, I carried some self-doubt, you know, would question myself or from time to time feel internally that lack of confidence. But because, as I say, it drove me towards being very well-prepared. I wouldn't walk into an interview without fully trying to understand the problem that I was being called in to address. The same with every policy decision. All of that led to me being confident in the decisions I was making.

ALISON BEARD: Politics is inherently sort of a tough business. You're always going to be criticized in these heightened crisis situations it gets even worse.

JACINDA ARDERN: Yeah, it's a blood sport.

ALISON BEARD: Exactly.

JACINDA ARDERN: Yes.

ALISON BEARD: So how did you develop the sort of thick skin that you needed to get through your early career, but then also these really high stakes situations?

JACINDA ARDERN: I'm not sure I did, which probably means that at various points, politics for me felt like sometimes quite a difficult experience. But again, the idea of being thin-skinned or maybe if you're being uncharitable, describing it as being emotional. Actually, isn't that just empathy and isn't that a character trait that we want more of in leadership?

One of the things that surprised me though is I knew going into politics, I was thin-skinned and I thought that the way that I needed to deal with that was to toughen up. Over time, I think I learned that the most important thing was to try and feel the things I needed to feel because we shouldn't isolate ourselves from criticism. Criticism and a feedback loop can drive us to re-examine decisions we've made, motivate us to work harder on issues. And in politics in particular, we need to hear that, but then filter out the things that might just be political or might just be a personal insult. Those things didn't bother me as much.

The way I was able to decipher between the two often was just asking the question, what's the motivation of the person pitching that forward right now? And if the motivation was purely political, it was a little easier to compartmentalize that.

ALISON BEARD: So you became a symbol of empathetic leadership after the Christchurch shooting, and that was a shooting at a mosque where 51 people were killed. After that, you got gun control legislation passed in 27 days. So how did you marshal support and mobilize action so quickly?

JACINDA ARDERN: Here, I really have to credit the New Zealand public. People were really seeking a response that was a never again approach. What do we do to prevent this ever happening to us or anyone else? That turned us towards gun control. In our case, it was an Australian who came to New Zealand with the intent to take the lives of members of our Muslim community and illegally acquired multiple weapons including AR-15s.

And we are a country with reasonably high gun ownership, but New Zealanders still looked around and said, "Is this a weapon that we need to have widely available in our country?" And the answer was no. It's worth noting that 119 of the 120 members of Parliament voted in favor of that legislation. So yes, we led the charge, but I believe we were simply channeling the sentiment that existed in New Zealand at that time.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. As all of these crises were hitting you, how did you make sure to manage and protect your time to ensure that you were also tackling all of the critical policy issues that you'd campaigned on, not just sort of moving from crisis to crisis?

JACINDA ARDERN: Great question, but actually even if you don't, in politics have these singular, significant large scale events, there are micro versions of those happening behind the scenes all of the time. And so that time management and making sure that you're continuing on with a policy agenda in spite of what's happening either politically or day-to-day is critical.

One of the things though that we tried to deploy particularly during COVID was this notion of a crisis is upon us, it requires a response. We have these persistent other issues, be it inequality, child poverty, a housing crisis, climate change. How do we do both in singular policy ideas?

We, amongst many other countries, were told that we would have the potential of an economic slowdown. High levels of unemployment were a particular concern. So we produced a package to try and ensure that we maintained high levels of employment. And part of that was, for instance, creating schemes around climate adaptation, where we were employing people to build flood banks, for instance. We had child poverty issues. We rolled out a food and schools program, knowing that the hours would suit those who are often in precarious work who had lost their employment during COVID. So we created thousands of jobs whilst also addressing child poverty. So making sure that in those moments of crisis, you use that, if you can, as an opportunity to accelerate your other policy agenda. And that was something we focused on.

ALISON BEARD: A lot of win-wins.

JACINDA ARDERN: Double duty.

ALISON BEARD: So how did you avoid burnout?

JACINDA ARDERN: I like to think that I did. And some people have, in some cases, misinterpreted my departure when I did as being burnout, when that was never the way I would have characterized my decision to leave. And so maintaining a level of stamina during that five years, it was difficult, particularly with those back-to-back crises that we experienced.

I thankfully had a team that were very careful to try and throughout everything we were going through, try and maintain just small portions of time that I would have with my family, particularly my young daughter. In the evenings they would try and give me 90 minutes at home to put my child down, read a story, do bath time, and then I would go back to it whether it was working at my home office or back into the building for meetings. And that long-term plan I think helped act as a layer of extra resilience by just giving me that connection point back to my family as often as I could, that helped build up the stores a little bit. And sleep.

We martyr ourselves I think in leadership to sleep where people assume that we don't sleep. In fact, if they ask, you feel like it's wrong to tell people that you try to get enough sleep. But actually as decision-makers, I think we need to be much more protective of sleep because it is a decision-making tool. And without it, I think we are the poorer for it.

ALISON BEARD: I am a big proponent of at least eight hours of sleep a night.

JACINDA ARDERN: I failed miserably most of the time, but I really did try.

ALISON BEARD: I'm sure. And are there any sort of overarching leadership lessons that you took away from all of those crisis management experiences?

JACINDA ARDERN: I think probably one of the most significant is this notion in leadership that we have that confidence is built through absolute knowledge and displaying a sense of the fact that we have all of the answers all of the time. We should be trusted because we show no shred of a gap in that knowledge at any point.

I think confidence is built through trust, and trust is built by people seeing that in whatever moment of crisis you're in, that there are inevitably going to be gaps in what information is available to you. And COVID was such an obvious example. The whole world was grappling with this new illness, and if we all knew what to do, we all would've had the same plan, I imagine possibly at least. And so being open about our knowledge gaps, sharing with people, everything that we knew and everything we didn't know, I think became a tool to build trust and confidence. And I think we should be more willing to be open in those moments and transparent as a tool to build trust.

ALISON BEARD: And as someone who had to negotiate with opposition parties as labor leader, had to negotiate with foreign counterparts as prime minister, how do you approach high stakes negotiations when there is big disagreement over what the right thing to do is or sort of differing needs?

JACINDA ARDERN: What comes to mind as an example is some of the times in office where we were trying to work through really difficult policy challenges around climate change. Often I think a starting point was just understanding the history of that debate was really important because I often found that the people that you might be engaging with might represent communities that felt a sense of blame for an issue that actually it was in everyone's interest to find solutions to and blame took us nowhere.

And so the first thing that we did on some of those tricky things, like for instance, addressing agriculture as a contributor to our emissions profile was to get everyone, the leaders of those communities who were affected around a table and just find a point of consensus. When we did that, it was really clear that actually for almost everyone around the table, the environment did matter to them. It did. Our reputation mattered to them. Our profile on the international stage and our value proposition as a clean green nation, as an exporter mattered to them.

When we found that starting point, that really opened up the conversation, well, if we agree that then what do we do next? And having the ability to work through those challenges together, there were practical questions that without them around the table, we just could not have designed appropriate policy without them. I found that really key for some of those really tricky issues.

ALISON BEARD: And what about when you were discussing issues like climate change, like the COVID crisis with foreign leaders?

JACINDA ARDERN: When you come into those conversations, often you'll be coming from entirely different political perspectives. You'll often have very different value sets that are dictating the way that you are operating in your own home environment. But actually when you leave the country and you sit down to a bilateral conversation with someone else, what is sitting in front of you at that point is, how do I advocate best for my country? How do I advocate best right now for New Zealand's needs?

And so I always found that in those circumstances, understanding where the person across the table, how they were going to be thinking in that frame, what they needed in that conversation as well, what they were looking for, that was the best way to prepare walking into those conversations. So a lot of my conversations were about trade. They were about tariffs. They were about New Zealand's interest on the world stage, about the importance of a rules-based order because that is how I could best represent New Zealand's interest and needs.

ALISON BEARD: Tariffs are obviously a hot button issue right now. What's your view on whether adversarial trade policies are good or bad for business?

JACINDA ARDERN: New Zealand has long been a proponent of free trade. And not only have we advocated, I'd like to think that we have been key in trying to establish agreements that acknowledge the role that trade can play in development, but also in acknowledging some of the really significant issues of our time, incorporating environmental issues into trade agreements, acknowledging labor issues in agreements.

So we see them as tools that can achieve a great deal and sometimes address some of the domestic harms that people worry about. New Zealand's really prospered as a result of the significant agreements that we have.

ALISON BEARD: What is your advice to business leaders about how they handle their positions on political issues like tariffs and climate change, but then also how they can work with governments to help solve these sort of big existential challenges?

JACINDA ARDERN: One of the things I heard the most from business leaders during my time in office was how much they valued certainty. Often that conversation would be focused on climate policy, how can you give us the most certainty where we can around climate policy, environmental regulation, and so on. My message always back to them was that if you're seeking certainty in an environment where from time to time you'll see political parties taking different positions, if you operate at the highest bar that you can anticipate being set, then actually you're creating a level of certainty for yourself. Because if the expectation drops lower, then you're already operating at a place where you are insulated against that.

If someone raises the bar, then they'll simply meet you at the point that you are already operating. And some might say, well, there's an economic cost to that, but policies that are highly variable or creating uncertainty in the way that you are operating comes at a cost as well. And alongside that, I would also argue that there's a moral case to be made for operating at a bar that demonstrates you're taking climate action within your own organization.

So that was often my message. They equally saw where we would be operating as a progressive party. One example that might illustrate the point is that when we came into office, we placed an end to the offering of offshore oil and gas exploration permits in New Zealand. Now, those were future permits. We honored all those that were already in place, but we said we would not continue to offer the chance to keep exploring for fossil fuels offshore. And some might say, well, the next government will come in and put them back on the table, but they knew where we stood. And the now labor opposition has continued to say, and we will honor that. You might call that uncertainty. Actually, we would call that certainty. You know that if there's a change in government exactly what's going to happen, and it should indicate at what level you would choose to then operate at.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about how you got in a position to manage all these crises as the leader of New Zealand. You say that growing up in a struggling forestry community was what initially politicized you. So why?

JACINDA ARDERN: To be really clear, and I was small, I was young, these were the observations, observations through the eyes of a child. But I think there's anyone who's ever heard a child observe a rough sleeper and ask questions, "Why doesn't that person have a home?" And then they dig deeper and deeper, and you really find yourself acknowledging that there is something very broken. And so there's something about the simplicity of the way that a child views the world.

And I was living in a place in the 1980s that had really felt the brunt of New Zealand's significant economic reforms during that period. I didn't know about that. All I knew is that I saw kids that didn't have food to eat at school or didn't have shoes in the winter, and that didn't feel right to me. And so with hindsight, I'm sure that that contributed to the way I see the world and my motivation to go into politics.

ALISON BEARD: And when you first went into politics, New Zealand already had its first female prime minister, Jenny Shipley, and she was succeeded by the second Helen Clark. What did that mean to you as a young woman at the start of her career?

JACINDA ARDERN: I mean, how lucky was I? How lucky was I? And for all the young women and girls in New Zealand who, as a result of those two women, grew up thinking and believing that political leadership was in reach.

When I think about some of that period, in our history at one time, we had a female speaker of the Parliament. We had a female governor general, we had a female chief justice. I did not grow up thinking that my gender would get in the way of me doing what I might've aspired to do. And instead, as I talk a lot about, I thought my character would. Because although I saw female leadership, I didn't see imposter syndrome because people don't often talk about that for really obvious reasons. I didn't see always what I would label as someone who wears their heart on their sleeve. You saw a bit of it, but not too much. And so that was what I questioned.

ALISON BEARD: So you saw diverse female role models, not just sort of one type. How did you develop your own leadership style?

JACINDA ARDERN: There was a series of experiences that particularly I think made me feel more resolute in the way that I wanted to do politics. I wouldn't call it a leadership style because I didn't necessarily see myself as a leader on a trajectory towards leadership, but I was a politician. I'd come into an existing culture that I found pretty hard. We have a Westminster style in New Zealand, which crudely, I would describe a bit of a bear pit. So when you're in the debating chamber, there's heckling and yelling, whilst you are meant to stay focused on delivering an answer across all of the noise and ruckus.

Often, it can be personal. And when you're in opposition, success is often measured by how many other politicians careers you end. That never sat that comfortably with me. So I do remember through a couple of experiences that I talk about in the book, just determining, well, okay, if that's not the kind of politics that I'm going to engage in, I'm probably not going to be seen as that successful, and that's okay. So making peace with that was a way of deciding I was going to do things on my own terms, and I would just see where that led.

ALISON BEARD: You were going to stay human.

JACINDA ARDERN: I was going to stay human.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. So when Andrew Little, who was prime minister before you, said that he was standing down as Labour Party leader and asked you to step up, your initial reaction was hesitant. What-

JACINDA ARDERN: Oh, I just said no. So very clear hesitancy, I would say.

ALISON BEARD: Okay. So why did you ultimately realize you were up to the job and say yes?

JACINDA ARDERN: I think anyone who reads a different kind of power will see this lifelong battle between questioning whether or not I'm the person that needs to do something versus this overwhelming sense of responsibility that for whatever reason, I have always had. And that was just a really clear example with our party, roughly seven weeks out from the election, our internal polling telling us that we are sliding badly and the leader of our party deciding openly to talk to me about whether he should stand down and I should take over. And my immediate reaction was that it would be bad for the team, that it would be perceived by voters very poorly, that we needed stability and that a campaign would help us revive our chances.

That was my instinct. Underneath that was also a concern that I would not be able to carry the party to where it needed to be. Ultimately, not to create a spoiler, because it's fairly obvious what happened. The leader of the party really forced things by coming to work a week later and resigning, and they're nominating me. And at that point, whatever questions I had immediately flipped into, this is now my responsibility and I am not going to let people down. So I do think it's possible to have those two conflicting emotions and still stand up with confidence and say, "Here I am, and I'm here to do a job."

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And you won. So you said that burnout was not why you ultimately gave up the job. Why did you and then how did you think about your second act?

JACINDA ARDERN: Coming into year six, we were approaching an election. We were a year out. And so that was the point where I really needed to decide, am I renewing this potential contract for another term after this? If I was going to stay that year, I needed to stay, commit to a term.

And having gone through, close going on six years where we'd had significant crisis, I knew what you needed to have in reserve should another one arise. And my view was I could have kept going, but I didn't believe that I would be operating at the capacity and the level I needed to do the job well. And all of the traits that I valued so much in leadership, curiosity, keeping a handle on a sense of defensiveness, being open-minded, high levels of energy, the reserves, I could feel them waning. And so again, I pulled on that sense of responsibility. Initially, I thought considering the idea of leaving felt selfish to me, but when I reversed it and thought about the responsibility, I had to make sure I was operating at full capacity. And if I wasn't, then the duty I had was to go. And so that was how I made that decision.

ALISON BEARD: Well, thank you for being a wonderful leader, and I hope that everyone learns from you.

JACINDA ARDERN: Thank you for your time.

ALISON BEARD: That's Jacinda Ardern, former prime minister of New Zealand, an author of the book, A Different Kind of Power.

Next week, we'll explore the question of whether hybrid work is working well, and we now have more than a thousand IdeaCast episodes, plus many more HBR podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at hbr.org/podcasts or search HBR in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Thanks to our team. Senior Producer Mary Dooe, Associate Producer Hannah Bates, Audio Product Manager Ian Fox and Senior Production Specialist Rob Eckhardt. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I'm Alison Beard.

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Lessons in Leading Through Crisis From Jacinda Ardern

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A conversation with the former leader of New Zealand on how to make good decisions in uncertain times.

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Harvard Business Review Podcast on above topic

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A conversation with Simon Fraser University’s Jeff Yip about common mistakes managers make.

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The importance of psychological safety: Amy Edmondson

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The importance of psychological safety: Amy Edmondson

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We spoke to Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, about the importance of psychological safety in health and care.

As a leader how can you foster a work environment where people feel safe to speak up, share new ideas and work in innovative ways? Amy Edmondson explains why psychological safety at work is so important and what leaders can do to create it. With thanks to Novartis for supporting Amy’s contribution.

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We spoke to Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, about the importance of psychological safety in health and care.

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What Is Psychological Safety at Work? How Leaders Can Build Psychologically Safe Workplaces

These 8 steps will help leaders build greater psychological safety in the workplace, so their teams are more successful and engaged.

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What Is Psychological Safety at Work? How Leaders Can Build Psychologically Safe Workplaces

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What is psychological safety at work? Learn how to assess and build psychological safety in the workplace to improve collaboration and culture.

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Library presentation for exceptional leaders

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Library services for healthcare leaders (Powerpoint)

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Library services for healthcare leaders (Powerpoint)

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The presentation gives an overview of the facilities, services and resources available to MTW's healthcare leaders

contact your clinical librarians, mtw-tr.clinical.librarians@nhs.net for information and support

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How to be a great leader playlist

What makes a great leader? These TED Talks offer surprising, nuanced approaches on how to inspire and empower others to do their very best.

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What makes a great leader? These TED Talks offer surprising, nuanced approaches on how to inspire and empower others to do their very best.

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NHS Leadership Academy - Results for Compassionate Leadership

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Search Results for “compassionate leadership” – Leadership Academy

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A range of learning talks to support your growth as a People Manager/Leader.

Little TED comes from the world of ‘Action Learning’ and it literally means: Tell, Explain and Describe. The aim of these talks is to help you to reflect on your current practice, as well as challenge yourself to do something different.

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Little TED's - Mini Knowledge Talks

OWD have developed a range of learning talks to support your growth as a People Manager/Leader.

Little TED comes from the world of 'Action Learning' and it literally means: Tell, Explain and Describe. The aim of these talks is to help you to reflect on your current practice, as well as challenge yourself to do something different.

Leadership as a Process Videos 1-4

Video : Leadership as a Process Talk 1 - Pathfinding - A short video to help to understand the different roles undertaken, when managing and leading a team.

Video : Leadership as a Process Talk 2: Alignment - A short video about considering are your team aligned to do the work you have set out to achieve?

Video : Leadership as a Process Talk 3 - Empowering - A short video discussing the importance of supporting your team to help deliver on required outputs.

Video : Leadership as a Process Talk 4 - Modelling and Summary - A short video regarding modelling your behaviour to meet the needs of both the team and your customers.

The Differences between Leadership and Management

Video : The differences between Leadership and Management - This video explores the main differences between the roles of Leaders and Managers.

The Change Equation

Video : The Change Equation - What you need to know about change - This short video will guide through the basics of the Change Equation.

The Circle of Influence

Video : The Circle of Influence - Choosing your Reaction - This short video will help you to understand why people might react in the way they do to a range of situations. It also looks at the pitfalls that may bring.

Time Management Basics

Video : Time Management Basics - This short video will allow you to take some time out to assess where you are spending your time at work.

Influencing Skills

Influencing Skills - Push and Pull Part 1 of 3 - In this NHSBT 'Little TED' talk, Warren Scott introduces the concepts of both 'Push' and 'Pull' influencing styles and how they might be effective in the workplace.

Influencing Skills - Push and Pull Part 2 of 3 - This short NHSBT 'Little TED' film continues from part one and explores how to use the 'push' and 'pull' energies when you are trying to influence others. It also explores the pitfalls of using too much of overusing either of the energies and the impact it can have.

Influencing Skills - Push and Pull Part 3 of 3 - In this final video with Warren Scott talking about the art of influencing, he discusses some of the practical applications of using both 'Push and Pull' energies and some of the benefits of using them too. Warren also poses some meaningful questions about how you might currently influence and what you could do to improve this beyond where you are now. This is the final video in this three-part series.

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OWD have developed a range of learning talks to support your growth as a People Manager/Leader. Little TED comes from the world of 'Action Learning' and it literally means: Tell, Explain and Describe. The aim of these talks is to help you to reflect on your current practice, as well as challenge yourself to do something different.

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Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust Libraries: People and Organisational Development - Leadership Reading list

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Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust Libraries: People and Organisational Development - Leadership Reading list

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Leadership book titles available from NHS Libraries at MTW & KSS. We can borrow books for you from other NHS Libraries on this list

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What people get wrong about psychological safety

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What people get wrong about psychological safety

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Harvard Business Review article on above topic

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What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety

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Psychological safety-a shared belief among team members that it's OK to speak up with candor-has become a popular concept. However, as its popularity has grown, so too have misconceptions about it. Such misunderstandings can lead to frustration among leaders and employees, stymie constructive debates, and ultimately harm organizational performance.

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Faculty of Public Health: Health Knowledge Modules

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Faculty of Public Health: Health Knowledge Modules

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The modules in this teaching section cover a variety of different subjects ranging from information and intelligence for commissioners through to undergraduate training and a range of ‘soft skills’ required for an holistic education, such as leadership and management, and collaborative working for health.

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Change Management
This module introduces you to tools that will support the planning, implementation, effective communication of managing change.

Collaborative Working for Health
Participants will learn to understand the principles and methods of partnership working and the benefits which collaboration can bring.

Getting the Message Across
Participants will learn effective communication techniques and styles appropriate for a range of audiences.

Health Everyone's Business
These modules introduce those working in local authority settings to the public health skills that are central to decision making that has positive impacts on health and wellbeing.

Health Service Planning
These modules introduce you to the competencies that will support the commissioning and planning of services, maximising resources and patient outcomes.

Knowledge Management
This module explores the subjects of learning and knowledge, their characteristics, their roles in organisations and in society.

Leadership and Management
This module introduces participants to the key concepts of management and leadership and to tools that will help to motivate and maximise human resources.

Policy and Strategy Development
Participants will understand the strategic context of policy development, its importance and its complexities for organisations when setting their strategies.

Prioritisation and Performance Management
Participants will understand the key elements of strategic thinking, prioritisation and performance management practices.

Programme and Project Management
Participants are introduced to the component parts of programme & project management tools and techniques.

Supporting the Analyst
These modules cover the competencies public health intelligence practitioners require in different organisational settings.

Teaching Public Health for Action
These resources introduce pre-qualification health students to public health so that they understand their potential for improving health beyond treating the individual.

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The modules in this teaching section cover a variety of different subjects ranging from information and intelligence for commissioners through to undergraduate training and a range of 'soft skills' required for an holistic education, such as leadership and management, and collaborative working for health.

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Access with your NHS OpenAthens account