The term “Leadership” has no one set definition within the literature, and arguably can be seen as subjective. One definition of leadership is “the action of leading a group of people or an organisation, or the ability to do this” (Oxford English Dictionary).
Leadership is paramount to any health care profession, without leadership there would be no direction, growth, and/or sustainability (Tempest and Dancza, 2019). Occupational therapy like other professions relays on strong leadership to ensure the effective running of the occupational therapy teams, services, and organisations. As a result, this ensures that as a profession we can meet public demand and assist in what occupational therapists do best, helping others engage in occupations and live not exist. Strong and daring leadership is needed more than ever, as the demand on occupational therapy services grow due to a number of factors such as having an aging population.
Occupational therapists are arguably natural optimizers due to the nature of the profession, bringing leadership skills to the front through their interactions, structuring of the environment and commitment to helping individuals participate in meaningful occupations. Often occupational therapist lead without is knowing it and are in a strong position to lead due to the vast array of skills they hold. This is evident as roles such as Chief Allied Health Professions Officer for England, and Scotland’s new Health Secretary are both occupational therapists by background.
Therefore, due to leadership being such an important topic, the RCOT Northern and Yorkshire Regional Committee will be holding a leadership workshop, this will make up the second half of the upcoming come back learning event in York (See details below).
In preparation for the learning event Paul Wilkinson (Vice Chair of the committee), Helen Tomes (Co-opted Retired Rep) and Ruth Ferguson (co-opted committee member) want to explore occupational therapy and leadership further with the following questions/statements:
Questions that will be asked during the chat
- Occupational therapists make great leaders because……
- Do you think there’s more to leadership than being in charge?
- Did you ever find yourself leading by accident?
- Is passion more important than skill in leadership?
- Is it more important to inspire others, or be the one that gets things done?
Useful resources:
RCOT Career Development Framework – https://www.rcot.co.uk/publications/career-development-framework
References:
Tempest S, Dancza K. Embracing the leadership potential of occupational therapy in the social age: Time for a silent revolution. British Journal of Occupational Therapy. 2019;82(10):601-603. doi:10.1177/0308022619840247
Link to event:
RCOT Northern and Yorkshire region – Comeback learning event – https://www.rcot.co.uk/events/rcot-northern-and-yorkshire-region-comeback-learning-event
OTalk 