My research data showed that encouraging relational approaches according to the leadership context was most helpful for understanding how these leaders identify with public engagement.
Below is an introduction to the core themes that emerged from my research: curiosity and courage, creativity and kindness, role modelling and reflexivity. Before we jump into the themes I want to acknowledge Ganz (2010) for his seminal relational work on ‘leadership, change and social movement.’
Themes by topic
Curiosity about public engagement emerges where leaders find ways to listen, reflect and experiment through self-understanding and preparedness practices. Leaders were willing to open a line of inquiry into what’s going on and why. Their narratives were closely associated with being curious about their experiences. Purposeful curiosity emerges where leaders find ways to reflect and experiment through self-discovery.
Courage was closely aligned to the concept of curiosity enabling leaders to question some underlying assumptions on public engagement, for example sparking creative insight and connectivity. These leaders emphasise the importance of a willingness to feel vulnerable. Vulnerability did not show as a weakness in the data but rather a sign of courage.
Creativity helped connect people to memories and significant events. It helped move people’s self-understanding on public engagement from process to an emotional connection. Creativity shows up in leaders’ narrative, dialogic and visual practices, e.g., coaching. This means, different conversations, different relationships.
Kindness evoked feelings of importance in transforming leaders’ relationships with the public. Kindness challenges leaders to be self-aware and shows relationships with staff to be central to public engagement; it drives people to pay attention to each other. Kindness is felt and expressed in different ways; kindness to self (self), acts of kindness (relationships) and cultures of kindness (context).
Being a role model is testimony to leader’s potential for transformation by ‘shining the light on relationships’ to spark peoples’ thoughts, emotions, and actions over time. For healthcare leaders in my study, role-modelling relational behaviours was about how they showed up in each interaction, un-tapping shared understanding, and sense of connection. The data conveyed the reciprocal nature of being a role model suggesting that, we get what we give.
Despite variations, most reflexivity definitions share a common theme of referring to a kind of “bending back of thought upon itself” (Webster, 2008, p.68). Here, reflexivity was expressed as a feeling of contact, engagement, and connectedness. It resembles leaders understanding their own reflexive leadership. These leaders described reflexivity as being how they connected with understanding their inner sense of values and motivations for public engagement. Connection emerges where leaders find ways to reflect deeply and discover self-acceptance or belonging.
Themes in practice.
The importance of relational depth.
It is recommended that relational leadership in the NHS is viewed, not as another model, but as an alternative lens through which to understand public engagement:
• Everyone should have the opportunity to tell their story, a catalyst for self-discovery
• Recognising the power of leaning into vulnerabilities, framing understanding for public engagement
• Engaging in different conversations, for different relationships
• Encouraging creativity to enrich relational practice, making messages simple, visual, and memorable
• Creating the conditions through safe reflexive spaces and cultures of kindness
“I’ve noticed again how little we have conversations like this in the system, and yet how important they are and, also how conversations like this, certainly speaking personally, really enable an opportunity for me to talk through - and, I kind of guess it almost strengthens my own identity – my own leadership identity, so it’s kind of, how having the conversation enables that to happen, but it also enables me to kind of challenge, if there’s anything that just isn’t quite consistent, or just I kind of voice an inconsistency, or anything I feel I need to explore - it’s actually for me kind of verbalising that and surfacing that through these conversations – it’s just a really helpful thing to do.”