The NHS needs leadership of the highest calibre if it is to respond successfully to financial and service pressures that are unprecedented in its history. In previous reports, The King’s Fund has argued that we need to move on from a concept of heroic leaders who turn around organisational performance to seeing leadership as shared and distributed throughout the NHS. The Fund has also argued that leaders must engage their colleagues and other stakeholders in bringing about improvements in patient care and transforming the way in which care is provided.

In these new reports prepared with the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), we build on previous work to make the case for collective leadership as the key to unlocking cultural change throughout the NHS. The reports both describe what collective leadership is and outline the key components of a collective leadership strategy. They draw on the combined expertise of staff at the Fund and CCL with the aim of supporting NHS organisations to move beyond high-level concepts to put in place the practical actions needed to develop and strengthen leadership from the board to the front lines of care delivery.