Leaders Academy: Empowering our leaders

After numerous months of learning, 92 leaders across HSS recently came together for two special events to celebrate their graduation of HSS’ inaugural Leadership Academy.

The HSS Leadership Academy is an initiative developed by our Organisational Development (OD) team for leaders in response to feedback given by our employees in the system wide Your Voice in Health surveys.

It is also an important part of the commitment we made in our Strategic Plan 2022-24 to empower our people and grow a strong organisational culture. The Academy has been designed to invest in our leaders, further build their leadership capability and improve the overall employee experience at HSS, both for them and their direct reports.

HSS’ Chief Executive Robert Toms and Carolyn Peel attended the events as guest speakers and inspired the group with personal stories about their management and career journeys. They both also shared some of their lessons learned and seasoned leadership advice.

The course was exceedingly well received by the cohorts who went through, and the next round of the Academy is eagerly anticipated.

Brett Charlesworth, who graduated with the first cohort on August 15 gave some feedback on his learning and development journey through the Academy.

“I haven’t ever come across training like this in other organisations I have worked for,” said Brett.

“In previous positions, I have undertaken various unstructured learning opportunities and learning while on the job.

“At HSS, the Academy is structured so that the content in each module is recapped in the next, so the important messages are reinforced. 

“I also found that because the modules were all endorsed by HSS, there was consistency in the content through a centralised theme.

“The best part about Leadership Academy for me was how the participants from various areas of HSS brought the course contents to life. While the course contents themselves were useful, it was the robust discussions we had within our cohort that really helped consolidate my understanding of the information.

“It was interesting to see how leaders from different business units across HSS have approached managing people and performance, leading hybrid work teams and leading change especially given how busy everyone has been in recent times. Having this exposure to different perspectives also challenged my own way of thinking and ultimately helped me to grow as a leader.”

Brett says he particularly learned a lot from the session on MyPerformance [our performance and development program at HSS] conversations.

“I have already incorporated aspects of that learning into BAU. For example, I share my own MyPerformance objectives with my team members and explain how these ‘cascade’ down to form their own objectives. This provides context as to how their day-to-day responsibilities contribute to the greater success of HSS as an organisation. 

“Although the HSS leaders in our cohort were from different business areas and specialised in different subject matter, I felt a strong sense of solidarity knowing that we were all fairly aligned in our approach to leadership and the associated challenges that come with that responsibility,” he added.

Check out what some of the other graduates had to say about the course in this insightful video.