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Biography
Peter Lees is the Chief Executive of the UK Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management (FMLM). In 2011, he led the establishment of FMLM which became an independent charity in January 2019. FMLM is now the second largest medical leadership organisation worldwide with over 2000 members. It jointly owns the journal BMJ Leader and the international leadership conference, Leaders in Healthcare. FMLM defined the first UK Leadership and management standards for medical professionals in 2015 and awards fellowships against those standards.
Previously, he combined a career in neurosurgery with senior roles in operational management and leadership development at Trust, regional and national levels and in global health. Formerly, he was Medical Director, Director of Workforce and Education and Director of Leadership at National Health Service South Central Strategic Health Authority. He was also Senior Lecturer in Neurosurgery at the University of Southampton from 1989 to 2011.
He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London and a Senior Fellow of the FMLM. He is an Honorary Visiting Professor at Cass Business School, City, University of London and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Medical Educators.
First and foremost, are there any key leadership messages you want to get out to our readership?
This is clearly a highly complex situation…and therefore requires a very different form of leadership from what we are used to as clinicians—accepting that managing complexity may be more familiar to primary care and public health colleagues. Much clinical training is geared to dealing with complicated problems and challenges, for which our expert role is helpful. That expertise allows us to be accomplished in defining a problem, selecting the best course of action and, within a defined range, predicting the likely outcome. But for complex problems, solutions are only obvious in hindsight and can only be found by groups of …