Inspiring Leadership in Ourselves and Others - Appreciative Inquiry

Background:

It is critically important for the profession of physiotherapy to create a pool of physiotherapists with core leadership competencies. The Leadership Division would like to discuss and apply the fields of emerging cognitive leadership theories to assist aspiring physiotherapists in developing key leadership skills and in moving into leadership roles.

The CPA Leadership Division has designed a Framework for Professional Development of Leadership Competencies within the Physiotherapy Profession. The Educational Program/Curriculum, targeted at practicing physiotherapists, will assist aspiring PTs to move into leadership positions while developing key leadership skills and help current leaders develop further skills to meet their leadership challenges. Although many other leadership- training programs exist, none of them focus comprehensively on PTs working in the health care systems.

The vision of the Leadership Division is to build a curriculum of core competencies in professional self-awareness, modeling leadership behaviours, and acknowledging qualities in others within the profession, and the health care system through networking, communication, education, and research. This innovative curricular program based on current evidence, literature, and best practices in leadership was shared at Congress 2012 to a large audience.

The Leadership Division of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association would now like to share the current state of leadership theories and highlight emerging cognitive constructs for leadership. Transformational Leadership will be discussed in detail and participants will be encouraged to reflect and apply these skills to a practice case and their personal situations.

Overview:

Private practice clinicians are increasingly required to act as leaders in their business of health care, while opportunities for physiotherapists to take on leadership roles in publicly funded institutions are diminishing. To address the increasing need for leaders from within the physiotherapy profession, the Leadership Division has created an innovative Leadership Education series that will assist aspiring physiotherapists and current physiotherapy leaders to develop their leadership competencies and address the leadership challenges they face.

In each session of this series, participants will first learn about the current state of one leadership theory or emerging cognitive construct for leadership. Discussion will then focus on a real physiotherapy leadership case scenario and examples of how the principles can be applied to participants’ own practice and settings. An interactive group discussion will follow, where participants will be encouraged to develop and share their insights into their own capacity to be a leader.

This session will focus on Appreciative Inquiry, which involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity for positive potential. Participants will explore the difference in outcomes that can be anticipated between taking a problem-solving approach to issues resolution and taking an appreciative questioning approach, and will be introduced to the techniques.

Audience:

This session will be of interest to a broad range of physiotherapy professionals including clinicians, managers, professional leaders, educators, and researchers interested in developing or further developing leadership skills and the application of those skills to all areas of the health care system.

Objectives:

Upon completion of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Discuss the current fields of leadership competencies for the profession of physiotherapy;

2. Identify the principles of Appreciative Inquiry and how self-awareness can assist aspiring physiotherapists to move into leadership positions;

3. Provide examples of how this Appreciative Inquiry may be applied to their own practice and organizational setting.

The Presenters

Kris Head, B.ScPT, M.Sc, MBA

Kris Head is a Physiotherapist and Leadership Division executive with the CPA. He is the Director of Operations for the Prairie Region within Centric Health. Over his Physiotherapy career, he has been involved with managing clinicians and administrators as well as mentoring other managers and leaders through their development.Kris holds several degrees including undergraduate degrees in Kinesiology and Physiotherapy as well as two Master's Degrees in Physiology and Business Administration.

Swapnil Rege, MScPT, MBA (c)

Swapnil Rege graduated from the University of Toronto with an Honours Bachelors of Science in 2005 and received his Master’s degree of Physiotherapy from McMaster University in 2007. He currently works as a clinic director and physiotherapist at LifeMark Physiotherapy in Brampton, Ontario. In addition to being the Education Coordinator of the Leadership Division, he is also the Chair of the Oncology Division. Having previously worked in New Brunswick, Swapnil was also the newsletter editor and Public Relations and Communications Chair with the New Brunswick Physiotherapy Association. In 2009, he was awarded the Young Leadership Award for outstanding leadership and dedication in the physiotherapy field. Swapnil is currently completing his MBA at Schulich Business School with a focus on Health Industry Management.