Aims Practical leadership skills have never been more important in healthcare professionals than over the last year, during the global COVID-19 pandemic. In response we transformed a four-day face to face programme – Leading through Education to Excellent Patient Care (LEEP) into a webinar/workshop series. These focus on four perspectives: developing as an individual, developing your team, working in a network to improve change, and developing system literacy. He we share our experience of the first webinar delivery focused on ‘developing self’

Methods We ran the first webinar for foundation year one doctors on three occasions. The webinar was integrated within a flipped classroom approach, with pre-webinar learning, and webinars consisting of small group discussion and mini lectures.

Results Forty-eight participants attended; following the course, participants stated that they had greater understanding in the purpose of leadership in healthcare was and understood more about their own strengths and weaknesses in being a leader. Attendees found that their confidence increased in all 11 topics when compared to pre-course (scale 1–10), covered including (pre to post course): leadership styles (5.5/10 to 8.5/10), compassionate leadership (5.6/10 to 8.8/10) and Johari window (3/10 to 8.5/10). Some comments from the course were ‘I felt encouraged to participate and join in as it was very interactive’ and ‘I came away feeling genuinely inspired’. 97% of participants who attended the webinar said they would recommend this course to others.

Conclusion This novel virtual leadership development course was well received and led to globally improved confidence in understanding through a blending approach of flipped learning, mini-lectures, reflection, and interactive discussion. We aim to continue the course by holding a further virtual workshops/webinar for foundation year 1 doctors, as well as developing them for delivery to other healthcare professionals.