Knowledge and Understanding Framework (KUF): Leadership training programme

This module is designed to develop leadership capacities by exploring leadership of complexity. This module is crucial for leaders who recognise the difference between management and leadership and can inhabit both aspects in one role.

This module aims to:

• develop students’ capacities to take up leadership roles in their own services appropriate to their abilities, and to contribute to the development of psychologically informed leadership culture

• explore complex systems, and people with complex needs within those systems, to enable effective service delivery

• develop an increased understanding of organisational dynamics and how to respond to these within services.

This module will explore what psychodynamic thinking has to offer to our understanding of relational processes. The module will cover human development from a relational point of view and will explore the challenging dynamics that can get activated when working with people who may have histories of trauma and neglect. This understanding is crucial for leaders who recognise the necessity of working relationally.

This module aims to:

• offer an opportunity to explore the underpinnings of ‘relational practice’

• examine why working relationally is such a core component to working with people with complex emotional needs (or ‘personality disorders’)

• assess what psychodynamic thinking might have to offer in our attempts to explore the relational processes (conscious and unconscious) that can both help and hinder work with service users and colleagues

• reflect on the implications this has for leadership.

This module is designed to provide an organisational framework that can predict challenges in service delivery and flex in response to complex dilemmas. It will offer both conceptual resources and practice at recovering thinking as part of developing consultation capacity as a crucial aspect of leadership in this field.

This module aims to:

• offer an opportunity to explore organisational dynamics that affect your work and capacity to think as leaders

• develop ways to take up a consultative stance to support your role as a lead for services working with people with complex emotional needs (or ‘personality disorders’)

• consider what psychodynamic thinking might have to offer in our attempts to explore the leadership processes (conscious and unconscious) that can both help and hinder work with service users and colleagues

• reflect on the implications this has for leadership.

Applicants must be in an employed or contracted role, either within the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway or NHS Service for a minimum of 2 years. They must be leading or managing others or working in a consultancy role.

Applicants need organisational support to be released and given ample opportunity to make use of the learning (each module is 8 days plus a community of practice event and an attendance of 80 per cent is expected).