About you
Our health and care system seeks to do remarkable things for people when they most need it. You and your colleagues joined to make a meaningful difference.
Not so long ago, health and care staff were applauded in the streets weekly. Now, adulation has been subsumed by expectation. Health and care teams are under constant scrutiny and ever-increasing pressure. There is always more to do with diminishing resources. Challenge is relentless.
Leaders, teams and organisations are being asked to:
- Deliver more and better services with fewer resources.
- Recruit and retain a motivated and healthy workforce.
- Find the sweet spot between achieving continuous efficiencies and developing sustainable, long-term strategies for service delivery.
- Improve morale and resilience.
- Embed compassionate cultures within teams and across organisations.
And that’s just the start!
A better place
You know how you want health and care services to be
A place where people and communities can consistently access excellent services delivered by happy, motivated and effective teams. A place where people no longer look exhausted, distracted; where teams, organisations and wider systems make a positive, meaningful difference.
It’s a place where:
- Staff, patients and service users are connected from the Board to the front-line.
- Innovative ideas and teamwork directly improve health and care.
- Leaders are self-aware, understand their personal impact, and have the courage to change. They ‘walk-the-walk’, modelling qualities they ask of others.
- People work in teams whose work and goals are aligned with their organisation’s wider strategy, culture and values.
The journey
So how do you navigate from where you are to where you want to be?
First and foremost, you need space, and dedicated time to think and focus. This time needs to be spent with people who share your passions and want to make progress.
Our clients tell us they get most out of development when they share time with colleagues, have great conversations and are supported to feel safe, connected and valued. Impactful and successful development needs:
- Dedicated space and time to think and connect.
- People prepared to candidly share lived experiences.
- Everyone involved to be agile and open-minded, welcoming new ideas and approaches.
- A programme that you have helped co-design to ensure relevance and buy-in.
- A critical friend to guide, facilitate and enable.
acorn
We are the catalyst.
Our team has the experience and track record to enable you to succeed. We aren’t here to sell you something you don’t need. Like an acorn, we start small – ideally with an exploratory conversation. If the chemistry is right and we both see a route to improvement, we are here to nurture your growth and success.
acorn’s offer includes:
Coaching and mentoring
Our coaches focus on releasing your potential and enabling your development as a leader. We work with individuals on a 1-2-1 basis, as well as organisations looking to commission wider coaching programmes.
People benefit from coaching for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps you want to work on a specific issue or challenge; to increase your self-confidence or work through a problem scenario or relationship. Perhaps you want to develop a career/ life plan. Coaching can be the difference that makes the difference.
The foundation of coaching is a trusted relationship between coach and coachee. Coaches earn trust through their credibility, quality and authenticity. For us, these qualities are a given. Our coaches are qualified, experienced and skilled. We support leaders of all levels across health and care to work through opportunities, issues and challenges.
Team development
Our team development support is all about creating safe spaces and facilitating inclusive, meaningful activities that connect team members to each other and their wider goals.
A group of people become a team when they become more than the sum of their parts. Surrounded by constant pressure, it’s easy to lose a shared sense of purpose. Perhaps you want help bringing a fractured team back together, perhaps you want to re-define your team’s mission and inject a sense of purpose or maybe enable a high-performing team to be even greater.
Whatever you want for your team, development is serious work and needs expert facilitation and a supportive environment. We provide bespoke development for frontline teams, clinical teams, executive teams and Boards and can put together a package tailored to your needs.
Leadership development programmes and interventions
Our leadership development programmes are developed hand-in-hand with you and delivered expertly, supportively and positively. Their impact can be transformational for leaders, teams and organisations.
Whether you are looking to improve organisational performance or culture, increase staff engagement or embed new leadership skills, leadership development is about making sure leaders are supported with the knowledge, skills and behaviours they need to motivate and guide those they lead. We believe investing in leadership development makes a difference to individuals, teams, organisations and those they serve.
We use evidence-based tools, proven approaches, and our experience of working at team, organisational and wider-system levels to design and deliver interventions that stick and make a difference. Our leadership development programmes can be scaled for single cohorts, for example a professional or clinical cohort of leaders, through to organisation-wide development programmes spanning your entire leadership community.
So, if you are a medical or clinical leader, a manager, workforce or organisational development lead, or anyone interested in coaching, team development, leadership development or Board development support, please do get in touch using the form below to tell us more about where you’re at and what you are looking for. We will help tailor the right support for you.
Our values
Our values help us create maximum positive impact. We live them in everything we do. In our work, you will find us:
Curious
No two people or situations are identical. We don’t judge or prescribe. We explore, encourage understanding and challenge ourselves and our clients to learn, innovate and grow. We passionately believe growth begins with open and inquisitive minds.
Connected
People work best when they feel they belong. Workplaces flourish when the people within them are connected, valued and respected. Ultimately, we seek, positively and inclusively, to connect people, perspectives and ideas.
Enabling
Each of us has strengths, capabilities and potential. Our role is to support our clients to realise their full potential. We help people discover what’s possible and foster safe, inclusive and stretching environments to nurture growth and improvement.
European Mentoring and Coaching Council Professional Member
Thought Leadership
This is where we post our news and thoughts around leadership, innovation and development.