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This book shows why better leadership helps meet the challenges facing health care. The focus is on the Canadian-developed LEADS in a Caring Environment framework: what it does, how it was developed and how LEADS can be a model to envision and plan change.

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Globally, the health sector faces significant demands for reform and improvement to meet the needs of the 21st Century. To achieve that goal, highly sophisticated and capable leaders are required across all dimensions of the health system. This book describes the key challenges that demand reform, why better leadership is the source code for better system performance, and the issues that stand in the way of getting that leadership. It includes substantive treatment of the modern democratic challenges that healthcare leaders face; and the essence of what it means to be a leader in today s world. The essence of leadership itself is described, and the case made for the need for people to use the workplace as the place to develop leadership rather than relying solely on formal programs. It will also outline a self-directed learning process that any individual leader citizen, clinician, or senior executive can use to develop their own leadership capability, and thus become more active as a leader of change. This book addresses the need for leaders to think on a system-wide scale. A second part of the book focuses primarily on the Canadian Health system and LEADS in a Caring Environment capabilities framework, and the link between LEADS and frameworks in Australia and the UK. LEADS was developed through a partnership between members of the Healthcare Leaders Association of British Columbia and the Canadian College of Health Leaders, the Canadian Health Leadership Network and Royal Roads University. Currently it is stewarded by a not-for-profit collaboration that has endorsed LEADS as an evidence-informed set of national expectations for Canadian health leaders. LEADS has been endorsed by many health organizations in almost all provinces in Canada as a foundation for their talent management programs in leadership (development and succession planning). The book will address the research foundations for the LEADS framework; how it was developed; the framework s contents; its congruence with other national frameworks, and how LEADS can be used as a model to envisage and plan change.

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1. LEADS: A New Perspective on Leadership in Health.- 2. Putting LEADS in Context.- 3. The LEADS in a Caring Environment Capabilities Framework: The Source Code for Health Leadership.- 4. Learning LEADS: A Lifelong Journey.- 5. The LEADS in a Caring Environment framework: Lead Self.- 6. The LEADS in a Caring Environment framework: Engage Others.- 7. The LEADS in a Caring Environment framework :Achieve Results.- 8. The LEADS in a Caring Environment framework: Develop Coalitions.- 9. The LEADS in a Caring Environment framework: Systems Transformation.- 10. The LEADS in a Caring Environment framework as an operating system for change.- 11. LEADS Learning: Epilogue.

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