Table 1

AHP leadership fellow: valued mid-career leadership opportunities

Categories of mid-career leadership development3Valued AHP leadership fellow opportunities
Widening perspectives and boundary testing
  • Working beyond own profession

  • Working in unfamiliar parts of the trust/system and with unfamiliar people/roles

  • System level exposure beyond the employing trust

  • Working across and penetrating traditional boundaries and hierarchies

  • Widening networks and connections

  • Gaining insights through attending strategic forums

  • Vicarious learning through working with, observing or shadowing other leaders including other professions

  • Working with non-NHS organisations—suppliers, educators

Leaps of faith
  • Deputising for the ADAHP at trust forums

  • Being the AHP voice in strategic trust forums

  • Representing the ADAHP and/or trust at system level and other external forums

  • Negotiating/developing specifications for procurement

  • Having autonomy for project design and implementation

  • Daring to adopt a creative or innovative approach or solution

  • Discovering there may not be an off-the-peg approach

  • Working out what productivity looks and feels like in a leadership role compared with more familiar clinical productivity

Building a track record
  • Delivering a live project, within a specified timescale to address a strategic priority

  • ADAHP, associate director for AHPs; AHP, allied health profession.