A bottom-up, scalable approach…
Over the past ten years, FMLM members have consistently raised a question that is, when addressed to many thousands of people working across different regions and with different professional and life experiences, very hard to answer.
From trainees to medical directors, people have quite reasonably asked the question: “what kind of leadership development do I need?”.
The question that often follows rapidly is how one can tell high quality development from the rest. As we are all know, there are countless organisations who can arrange an away-day at a nice hotel with a slideshow presentation and some group exercises. But how much real-world impact will it have on the participants, their teams and their patients? Has this development been assessed for quality, and is it what the participants need at the current stage of their careers?
I am proud to say that the development of FMLM Navigator, our new mobile app, is a major step towards answering these questions and providing a bottom-up, scalable approach to leadership development.
Navigator is a tool that provides bespoke career advice to members of FMLM. It recommends FMLM and third-party leadership development courses assessed to be of high quality, journal articles, podcasts and interventions such as mentoring or coaching – all individualised to the member’s career stage and future career ambitions. CPD and reflections are recorded within the app, and can be exported into various formats for job applications, PDPs and, most usefully, annual appraisal.
It is a technological solution, with significant expert input, that allows us to provide leadership development and guidance writ-large.
This tool is available to all FMLM members, although non-members will have the opportunity to use Navigator for seven days as a free trial until being asked to sign-up for membership. The tool itself has launched with coverage across the medical training pathway; from trainees all the way up to medical directors in secondary care and regional leaders in primary care.
Greater coverage across the dental and medical pathways will follow – Navigator is a tool that will evolve and improve over the coming months and years – but I strongly recommend you to download the app and have a play around. You will be amazed at the depth of content available, and it's relevance to your current professional circumstances.
With a project such as this, there are, of course, many people to thank. The Dinwoodie Charitable Company provided a significant investment to allow us to build the technology and we are deeply grateful for this and their patience in bearing with us as Covid-19 disrupted development. Kate Langford, Andy Haynes, Sarah Schofield, John Aspden and an expert advisory group comprised of some of our most trusted and expert supporters assisted greatly in the development of the project. Navigator development was managed and continues to be steered by angus.waite [at] fmlm.ac.uk (Angus Waite) (FMLM Head of Engagement and Innovation), with support from our National Medical Director’s Clinical Fellows, principally Adam Januszewski, with Asya Mussad, Claire Edwin and Kit Muthuswamy.
FMLM Navigator is a milestone for the Faculty. It allows us to have real impact on leadership development in a truly scalable way. I encourage all of our members to download the app, use it, and feed back your thoughts. We need our supporters to help us to make this app as good as it can be, and to encourage colleagues, teams and others to make use of it. Go forth and navigate!