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Leadership and followership
Leadership and followership

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2 What employers look for

Employers place an emphasis on different leadership skills depending on their context, as can be demonstrated by reviewing a variety of leadership frameworks. You will now look at five frameworks from a variety of sectors, from healthcare to corporate finance.

A complex, spiralling metal framework supporting a glass roof on a building.
Figure 3 There are many leadership frameworks.
  1. In the healthcare sector, the NHS Healthcare Leadership Model is made up of nine leadership dimensions:
    • Inspiring shared purpose
    • Leading with care
    • Evaluating information
    • Connecting our service
    • Sharing the vision
    • Engaging the team
    • Holding to account
    • Developing capability
    • Influencing for results.
  1. In the charity sector, the Oxfam Core Humanitarian Competencies Framework includes a competency domain, ‘Demonstrating Leadership in Humanitarian Response’, which lists the following competencies and core behaviours:
    • Self-awareness
    • Motivating and influencing others
    • Critical judgement.
  1. In Higher Education, the Open University Leadership Competency Framework contains six themes:
    • Leading others to achieve results
    • Strategic and analytical thinking
    • Planning and organising
    • Influencing and relationship building
    • Driving and embracing change
    • Student and customer focus.
  1. From the private sector, PwC is a professional services company providing specialist advice to businesses. One of the five attributes in their PwC Professional framework is ‘Whole leadership’, which is explained as follows: ‘We need you to lead yourself and others, regardless of your grade, by making a real difference in the work you do. This means delivering results in a responsible, authentic, resilient, inclusive and passionate way.
    • Do you learn from your opportunities and take the time to develop your personal approach to work?
    • Do you lead others to be the best they can be, whether you’re part of a team or leading one?
    • Do you act with integrity and uphold professional standards at all times?’
  1. The technology sector often takes a less formal approach to listing leadership qualities, for example, an in-house research project at Google came up with the following manager behaviours – listed in order of importance:
    • Is a good coach
    • Empowers team and does not micromanage
    • Expresses interest/concern for team members’ success and personal well-being
    • Is productive and results-oriented
    • Is a good communicator
    • Helps with career development
    • Has a clear vision/strategy for the team
    • Has important technical skills that help him/her advise the team.

Common themes across all these frameworks here are motivating/empowering/influencing; achieving results; and planning/evaluating/analysing. Other themes reflect the priorities of the different sectors, for example, integrity is crucial to a financial services organisation and care is high on the NHS’s list.