Subthemes and quotes addressing the theme ‘Shared leadership skills and behaviours’
| Subtheme | Non-clinical managers | Clinical managers |
| Mutual understanding and cooperative attitudes | ‘You have got to find some commonality. Make sure you collaborate, don’t be positional, so don’t assume that just because you’re a GP—which comes with a level of kudos, comes with a level of authority and power—just because of your title, don’t assume that people will do things because of that.’ | ‘They need to understand where the clinician is coming from. For us, it is about the patient and if we keep our patients happy, then our lives will be less difficult as clinicians.’ |
| ‘Having a common strategic vision and engaging in processes that organisations have put in place in order to get towards this common vision.’ | ‘They have got to be able to look at how to communicate intentions in terms of how that improves patient experience, how that improves clinical outcomes and how that improves the day-to-day life of clinicians and non-clinicians on the frontline.’ | |
| Listening, empathy and emotional intelligence | ‘There is something around being able to listen, being able to build relationships and being able to look at how you do things in a collaborative way.’ | ‘Articulating the problem in a way that people can understand it.’ |
| ‘The buzzword is emotional intelligence; [to] read situations well and adapt to them.’ | ‘More inclusion. Keep them informed, ask their opinion and don’t impose things on them because then there’ll be resistance.’ | |
| Effective communication and collaboration to enable knowledge transfer and translation | ‘I spent a lot of time going around practices with the medical director and it instilled in me an understanding of clinicians.’ | ‘I have learnt that having a clinical perspective alone doesn’t work.’ |
| ‘I think you learn something every day from clinicians. I have worked in various organisations but I’m not sure I have ever really understood primary care.’ | ‘I have definitely picked up a far better understanding of the financial decision-making going on in the NHS. I have developed a keen understanding of just how much, at the high level, managers are responsible to politicians. I have got far more knowledge around population health.’ |
GP, general practitioner; NHS, National Health Service.