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Biography
Gillian Leng is the Chief Executive of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). As a junior doctor she was struck by variations in clinical practice and this developed into a passion for using evidence to improve care. Her career has spanned research, evidence synthesis, management and healthcare.
Her aim is to transform the organisation with new methods and processes to put NICE at the forefront of evaluating new medicines, devices and diagnostics and deliver dynamic, living guidelines.
She trained in medicine at Leeds, worked on clinical trials and epidemiological research in Edinburgh and was a public health consultant in London. She was an editor of the Cochrane Collaboration and is now chair of the Guidelines International Network.
First and foremost, are there any key leadership messages you want to get out to our readership?
The most important thing to remember is that, in different ways, we are all leaders. Do not assume that the leader is only the person at the top of the organisation—we may all lead teams, projects or acute emergencies that need leadership skills.
However, in the current climate leadership is particularly challenging. We are facing a range of new, unprecedented issues that no one would have imagined in 2019. Leaders need to show empathy and understand the problems their staff are facing; they need to be flexible and sometimes take some tough decisions.
There is a great quote from Rosalynn Carter, First Lady of the USA (1977–1981): ‘A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they …
Footnotes
Author note Date of interview: 30th October 2020
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
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