Personal Leadership in Delivering Compassionate Care: MSc Leadership in Healthcare Assignment Sample

For information and reference only – not to be submitted as your own work.

This extract shows how a strong response to the MSc Leadership in Healthcare Module 1 Part 1 personal leadership assignment can be structured. It uses an illustrative setting, a busy hospital outpatient service, and three theories: servant leadership, emotional intelligence and leadership styles, and collective leadership. For marker-level planning advice, read our guide on how to write a personal leadership and compassionate care assignment.

Planning table

The extract below is shortened to show the quality of argument expected. A full submission would expand each section to the word counts above.

Introduction

Compassionate care is widely treated as a core purpose of health services, yet it depends heavily on the leadership conditions in which staff work. The public inquiry into Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust concluded that a culture focused on targets and systems had allowed patient care to deteriorate, and it called for a stronger focus on openness and patient-centred values (Francis, 2013). This assignment critically analyses three leadership theories: servant leadership, emotional intelligence with leadership styles, and collective leadership. Each is applied at individual, team and organisational level to an illustrative hospital outpatient service, with recommendations and a closing reflection.

Theory 1: servant leadership

Greenleaf (1977) argued that the servant leader begins with a wish to serve and chooses to lead in order to extend that service. Northouse (2021) summarises the approach as placing the needs of followers first and developing them so they can become more autonomous and capable. In a healthcare setting the logic is attractive: if leaders listen to and support staff, staff are better placed to listen to and support patients.

At the individual level, the theory prompts a manager to ask what front-line staff need in order to give unhurried care, for example protected time for handovers. At team level it encourages shared problem-solving rather than instruction. At organisational level it questions whether rosters, targets and resources enable staff to act on their values.

The theory has limits. Northouse (2021) notes that servant leadership lacks a single agreed definition and is difficult to measure, and it can sit uneasily with the accountability demands and time pressures of acute services. A critical analysis should therefore treat it as a useful orientation rather than a complete model.

Theory 2: emotional intelligence and leadership styles

Goleman (2000) described six leadership styles, visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and commanding, and argued that effective leaders move flexibly between them according to context. The styles draw on emotional intelligence, including self-awareness and empathy. Applied to my illustrative role as a clinic manager, a commanding style may be justified during an infection-control incident, whereas a coaching or affiliative style is more appropriate when a new member of staff is struggling with difficult conversations.

The link to compassionate care is direct. Dewar and Cook (2014) evaluated a relationship-centred appreciative leadership programme for health care leaders and reported that building compassion in practice involved reflection, appreciative conversations and attention to relationships. For a leader, this implies noticing how colleagues feel, not only whether tasks are complete.

A critical point is that Goleman’s model rests largely on practitioner observation rather than on tightly controlled research, so its claims should be used with caution. Even so, it gives leaders a practical vocabulary for self-assessment, which is valuable for the reflection later in this assignment.

Theory 3: collective leadership

West et al. (2014) argue that health care organisations need collective leadership, where leadership is distributed across roles and everyone shares responsibility for the quality of care, rather than relying on heroic individuals. West, Bailey and Williams (2020) extend this to nursing and midwifery, arguing that compassionate leadership, meaning attending to, understanding, empathising with and helping colleagues, supports staff wellbeing and the quality of care they can give.

Team-level psychological safety is a useful lens here. Edmondson (1999) found that teams whose members felt safe to take interpersonal risks engaged in more learning behaviour. In an outpatient clinic, that could mean a healthcare assistant feeling able to say that a patient seemed confused about discharge advice. Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky (2009) add that many service problems are adaptive challenges, which cannot be solved by authority alone and require people to change habits and assumptions.

At organisational level, collective leadership implies shared goals, supportive governance and time for teams to reflect. A limitation is that distributed responsibility can blur accountability unless roles and escalation routes are explicit.

Improving the patient and service user experience

In the illustrative clinic, patients commonly report long waits and unclear information (illustrative scenario). Servant leadership would shift the leader’s attention to removing barriers for staff, such as duplicated paperwork. Emotional intelligence would improve how staff acknowledge waiting patients and respond to anxiety. Collective leadership would give the whole team, including administrative staff, a voice in redesigning the patient journey. Non-patient-facing colleagues, such as booking staff, can link their work to compassion by simplifying appointment letters and answering calls with empathy.

Recommendations

1. Introduce a ten-minute daily huddle in which any team member can raise a patient experience concern (start within one month; measure by number of issues raised and resolved).
2. Use a short reflective practice session each month, drawing on the appreciative approach described by Dewar and Cook (2014), to share examples of compassionate care.
3. Co-design the patient information leaflet with patients and administrative staff, and test it in a pilot over one quarter.
4. Agree escalation roles so that shared leadership does not weaken accountability (West et al., 2014).

Reflection on my own leadership

Using Gibbs’ (1988) reflective cycle, I begin with description. In a recent staffing shortage I defaulted to a commanding style, reallocating tasks quickly and giving little time for questions. Feelings: I was anxious about delays and did not notice that a junior colleague looked distressed. Evaluation: the short-term outcome was acceptable, but the team’s learning and confidence suffered, and the colleague later told me she had not felt able to raise concerns. This matches Edmondson’s (1999) point that psychological safety shapes whether people speak up.

Analysis using the three theories shows a pattern. My strength is clarity and pace, a pacesetting and commanding tendency (Goleman, 2000). My development need is the servant-leader habit of asking what colleagues need before directing them (Greenleaf, 1977). Reflection of this kind follows the idea of the reflective practitioner (Schön, 1983), in which professionals learn by thinking about action during and after it.

My action plan has three parts. First, I will begin each team briefing by asking one open question about workload. Second, I will request 360-degree feedback from colleagues within six months and review it with a mentor. Third, I will practise sharing leadership by rotating the chairing of the daily huddle. I will review progress quarterly and note changes in staff feedback and patient comments. Compassionate leadership begins with how I treat colleagues, because that is the climate in which patients are treated.

For a full, original assignment written to your own brief and course materials, see our nursing and healthcare assignment help or our report writing help page.

References

Dewar, B. and Cook, F. (2014) ‘Developing compassion through a relationship centred appreciative leadership programme’, Nurse Education Today, 34(9), pp. 1258–1264. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2013.12.012.

Edmondson, A. (1999) ‘Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), pp. 350–383. doi:10.2307/2666999.

Francis, R. (2013) Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry. London: The Stationery Office.

Gibbs, G. (1988) Learning by doing: a guide to teaching and learning methods. Oxford: Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic.

Goleman, D. (2000) ‘Leadership that gets results’, Harvard Business Review, 78(2), pp. 78–90.

Greenleaf, R.K. (1977) Servant leadership: a journey into the nature of legitimate power and greatness. New York: Paulist Press.

Heifetz, R., Grashow, A. and Linsky, M. (2009) The practice of adaptive leadership: tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world. Boston: Harvard Business Press.

Northouse, P.G. (2021) Leadership: theory and practice. 9th edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Schön, D.A. (1983) The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.

West, M., Eckert, R., Steward, K. and Pasmore, B. (2014) Developing collective leadership for health care. London: The King’s Fund.

West, M., Bailey, S. and Williams, E. (2020) The courage of compassion: supporting nurses and midwives to deliver high-quality care. London: The King’s Fund.