Oxford Academic Health Service Network

Ashley Aitken

Oxford Academic Health Service Network

Ashley Aitken attended our CMI Level 5 - Leadership and Management Programme to develop his leadership skills. Ashley identified that there are various personalities within his team and this can sometimes be difficult for him to manage, so he is looking to up skill his leadership knowledge and build new ideas for helping him effectively lead his team.

Read his management training case study below.

The Oxford Academic Health Science Network (AHSN) was set up in 2013 by NHS England. The purpose of the Oxford AHSN is to act as an innovation arm of the NHS. Specifically we get innovation into clinical practices to improve patient safety, outcomes and experiences, and to generate economic growth.

We achieve this through effective collaboration between the NHS, industries and universities. We cover three million people living in the areas of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes and Oxfordshire.

Our main challenge is around our growing team and being able to sufficiently support the director, in terms of leadership and management. I have been selected to be part of the leadership team and this is my personal challenge, as I have never been in a line manager’s role before.

We have a lot of different personalities and skill sets in the team and organisation as a whole, so trying to manage all these personalities can sometimes present a challenge.

I was very keen to attend the CMI Level 5 Leadership and Management programme to help me rise to the challenges mentioned above, as well as learn the skills to help me in the future with more project management tasks and managing the procedures and processes involved.

After finishing the three days training, I felt more confident and reassured as a leader. I’ve never been in a manager’s position so performing as a line manager is new to me, yet whilst on the course I realised that I knew more about leadership and management than I first thought, and more importantly I realised that I was spending far too much time doing activities that could have been delegated.

I found our tutor, David, to be very welcoming and friendly. He was really in tune with the class and I was impressed by the way he accommodated the differing requirements in the room. I felt like I walked away from each day with valuable lessons learned.

David has ignited a desire in me to learn more about coaching and mentoring, with the aim of doing more of that within my own team. I have recommended this course to one of my colleagues (and my husband!) and I’m already badgering my manager to let me do the level 7 course ASAP.

Since attending the course I feel like I’m in a stronger position to make day-to-day decisions and I’m very mindful of and actively implementing the six ego states that I learnt on the programme. The main aim of implementing this is so I can lead more effectively by acknowledging the negative ego states of others without being drawn in.

I have to say that teaching my colleagues about the six ego states has helped our team massively. I now find my team catching themselves when they’re entering a negative state and they then take the necessary steps to modify this. The six ego states model has been incredibly beneficial to our working environment and as a result, my team can now identify negativity triggers within their role and resolve their issues quickly, with very little input from me.

In addition to this, Eisenhower’s principles for delegation have been extremely useful to me and I have already started to implement them with my team.