Novel approach to teaching empathic leadership using heuristics
INTRODUCTION: National Health Service (NHS) failures at Mid-Staffordshire, Shrewsbury and Telford, and East Kent reached the same conclusion: leaders who fail to listen and understand put patients at risk. The NHS response has been to promote compassionate leadership. Yet, compassion often entails emotional merging, which can blur boundaries and lead to fatigue. By contrast, empathic leadership and curiosity-driven perspective-taking, rather than emotional merging, offers a promising new way forward. Yet no practical method exists to teach empathic leadership. To fill this gap, we aimed to develop heuristics ('rules of thumb') for empathic leadership and create a course to teach them. METHODS: 21 healthcare leaders attended a structured workshop. Using established heuristic development and curriculum design methods, participants generated, refined and prioritised heuristics for empathic leadership, then co-designed a training course to teach them. RESULTS: The group produced 35 heuristics and prioritised 12, including 'Listen first, speak last', 'Say sorry', and 'Walk the shop floor'. A one-day interprofessional empathic leadership course was then co-designed, featuring experiential learning, role play and implementation planning. CONCLUSION: We identified and prioritized heuristics for empathic leadership and produced a course to teach them. The short course may support healthcare leaders to strengthen empathic leadership in practice.
Authors
- James Mountford (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7077-4317)
- Richard Holland (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4663-6923)
- Nakul Patel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7608-4074)
- Rich Withnall
- Jeremy Howick (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0280-7206)
- Kerry Hood (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0666-8127)
- Jodi Halpern (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2145-4744)
- Austin O’Carroll (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3936-5042)
- Carolyn May (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8263-1679)
- Cleo Laura White
- J. C. Manning
- Lucy Duncombe
- Gregory Maniatopoulos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9602-3885)
- Amber Bennett‐Weston (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5981-9393)
- Albert G. Mulley
- Danielle Burnett
- Ashok Handa
- Bent Flyvbjerg
- Celia Ingham Clark
- Daniel McDonald-Smith
- Sean Henegan
- Ivan Browne
- Harry Dudson
- Mayur Lakhani
- Aswin Sayiram
- Sarah Styles
Institutions
- Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (US)
- Apollo Hospitals (IN)
- Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (GB)
- University of Leicester (GB)
- University of Exeter (GB)
- London School of Business and Management (GB)
- RCVS Knowledge (GB)
- University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (GB)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Cal Humanities (US)
- Faculty (United Kingdom) (GB)
- AT&T (United Kingdom) (GB)
- Family Carers Ireland (IE)
- Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (GB)
- NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre (GB)
- De Montfort University (GB)
- Cardiff University (GB)
- IT University of Copenhagen (DK)
Publication Details
- Journal
- BMJ Leader
- Published
- 2026-04-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1136/leader-2025-001448
- Primary Topic
- Empathy and Medical Education
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Stoneygate Trust