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Leadership decisions occur frequently throughout the day, yet as clinicians, who balance multiple roles and responsibilities, the authors seldom label them explicitly. This translates to missed opportunities to foster the requisite skill sets junior trainees to require in their current and future contexts. While there is clear evidence for a purposeful leadership curriculum, developing, implementing and assessing these competencies remains challenging. The purpose of this paper is to provide educators with a curricular approach to incorporate leadership opportunities in their own teaching and supervisory practices.

A dyadic “teaching and assessment” strategy may overcome leadership curricular challenges. The authors propose a new framework that breaks down leadership opportunities into their requisite learning settings. Like fine wine and cheese, these learning experiences are paired with assessment strategies to provide further formative and summative feedback, all in the context of educational theories and frameworks.

In this paper, the authors recommend six unique learning environments for educators to consider, captured in the abbreviation ABC’S3 for administrative, bedside, classroom, simulation, self-awareness and summarization, all of which lend themselves to leadership development opportunities for resident physicians. The authors provide tested examples and pair these teaching options with a variety of assessment strategies to choose from.

Three practical implications are put forth in this paper, namely, leadership competencies are needed for everyone, not just for those with leadership titles or positions; multiple learning settings (and all aspects of work) can be harnessed to provide diverse leadership opportunities; and advancement beyond Miller’s knows is needed to create opportunities to hone practical leadership competencies in the shows how and does levels.

This paper uniquely pairs learning opportunities with assessment strategies across diverse practical settings and environments. These techniques and opportunities will serve to stimulate ideas and kick-start dialogue about incorporating a practical leadership curriculum within clinical training programs.

This first phase of a three-phase action research project aims to define leadership practices that should be used during and after the pandemic to re-imagine and rebuild the health and social care system. Specifically, the objectives were to determine what effective leadership practices Canadian health leaders have used through the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, to explore how these differ from pre-crisis practices; and to identify what leadership practices might be leveraged to create the desired health and care systems of the future.

The authors used an action research methodology. In the first phase, reported here, the authors conducted one-on-one, virtual interviews with 18 health leaders from across Canada and across leadership roles. Data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology.

Five key practices emerged from the data, within the core dimension of disrupting entrenched structures and leadership practices. These were, namely, responding to more complex emotions in self and others. Future practice identified to create more psychologically supportive workplaces. Agile and adaptive leadership. Future practice should allow leaders to move systemic change forward more quickly. Integrating diverse perspectives, within and across organizations, leveling hierarchies through bringing together a variety of perspectives in the decision-making process and engaging people more broadly in the co-creation of strategies. Applying existing leadership capabilities and experience. Future practice should develop and expand mentorship to support early career leadership. Communication was increased to build credibility and trust in response to changing and often contradictory emerging evidence and messaging. Future practice should increase communication.

The project was limited to health leaders in Canada and did not represent all provinces/territories. Participants were recruited through the leadership networks, while diverse, were not demographically representative. All interviews were conducted in English; in the second phase of the study, the authors will recruit a larger and more diverse sample and conduct interviews in both English and French. As the interviews took place during the early stages of the pandemic, it may be that health leaders’ views of what may be required to re-define future health systems may change as the crisis shifts over time.

The sponsoring organization of this research – the Canadian Health Leadership Network and each of its individual member partners – will mobilize knowledge from this research, and subsequent phases, to inform processes for leadership development and, succession planning across, the Canadian health system, particularly those attributes unique to a context of crisis management but also necessary in post-crisis recovery.

This research has shown that there is an immediate need to develop innovative and influential leadership action – commensurate with its findings – to supporting the evolution of the Canadian health system, the emotional well-being of the health-care workforce, the mental health of the population and challenges inherent in structural inequities across health and health care that discriminate against certain populations.

An interdisciplinary group of health researchers and decision-makers from across Canada who came together rapidly to examine leadership practices during COVID-19’s first wave using action research study design.

This paper aims to describe the evolution of Sanokondu, highlighting the rationale, achievements and lessons learnt from this initiative. Sanokondu is a multinational community of practice dedicated to fostering health-care leadership education worldwide. This platform for health-care leadership education was conceived in 2014 at the first Toronto International Summit on Leadership Education for Physicians (TISLEP) and evolved into a formal network of collaborators in 2016.

This paper is a case study of a multinational collaboration of health-care leaders, educators, learners and other stakeholders. It describes Sanokondu’s development and contribution to global health-care leadership education. One of the major strategies has been establishing partnerships with other educational organizations involved in clinical leadership and health systems improvement.

A major flagship of Sanokondu has been its annual TISLEP meetings, which brings various health-care leaders, educators, learners and patients together. The meetings provide opportunities for dialog and knowledge exchange on leadership education. The work of Sanokondu has resulted in an open access knowledge bank for health-care leadership education, which in addition to the individual expertise of its members, is readily available for consultation. Sanokondu continues to contribute to scholarship in health-care leadership through ongoing research, education and dissemination in the scholarly literature.

Sanokondu embodies the achievements of a multinational collaboration of health-care stakeholders invested in leadership education. The interactions culminating from this platform have resulted in new insights, innovative ideas and best practices on health-care leadership education.

Doctors play a central role in leading improvements to healthcare systems. Leadership knowledge and skills are not inherent, however, and need to be learned. General frameworks for medical leadership guide curriculum development in this area. Explicit discipline-linked competency sets and programmes provide context for learning and likely enhance specialty trainees’ capability for leadership at all levels. The aim of this review was to summarise the scholarly literature available around medical specialty-specific competency-based curricula for leadership in the post-graduate training space.

A systematic literature search method was applied using the Medline, EMBASE and ERIC (education) online databases. Documents were reviewed for a complete match to the research question. Partial matches to the study topic were noted for comparison.

In this study, 39 articles were retrieved in full text for detailed examination, of which 32 did not comply with the full inclusion criteria. Seven articles defining discipline-linked competencies/curricula specific to medical leadership training were identified. These related to the areas of emergency medicine, general practice, maternal and child health, obstetrics and gynaecology, pathology, radiology and radiation oncology. Leadership interventions were critiqued in relation to key features of their design, development and content, with reference to modern leadership concepts.

There is limited discipline-specific guidance for the learning and teaching of leadership within medical specialty training programmes. The competency sets identified through this review may aid the development of learning interventions and tools for other medical disciplines.

The findings of this study provide a baseline for the further development, implementation and evaluation work required to embed leadership learning across all medical specialty training programmes.

The purpose of this paper was to determine the complementarity between the Canadian Medical Education Directions for Specialists (CanMEDS) physician competency and LEADS leadership capability frameworks from three perspectives: epistemological, philosophical and pragmatic. Based on those findings, the authors propose how the frameworks collectively layout pathways of lifelong learning for physician leadership.

Using a qualitative approach combining critical discourse analysis with a modified Delphi, the authors examined “How complementary the CanMEDS and LEADS frameworks are in guiding physician leadership development and practice” with the following sub-questions: What are the similarities and differences between CanMEDS and LEADS from: An epistemological and philosophical perspective? The perspective of guiding physician leadership training and practice? How can CanMEDS and LEADS guide physician leadership development from medical school to retirement?

Similarities and differences exist between the two frameworks from philosophical and epistemological perspectives with significant complementarity. Both frameworks are founded on a caring ethos and value physician leadership – CanMEDS (for physicians) and LEADS (physicians as one of many professions) define leadership similarly. The frameworks share beliefs in the function of leadership, embrace a belief in distributed leadership, and although having some philosophical differences, have a shared purpose (preparing for changing health systems). Practically, the frameworks are mutually supportive, addressing leadership action in different contexts and where there is overlap, complement one another in intent and purpose.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to map the CanMEDS (physician competency) and LEADS (leadership capabilities) frameworks. By determining the complementarity between the two, synergies can be used to influence physician leadership capacity needed for today and the future.

This paper aims to highlight the importance of leadership development for all physicians within a competency-based medical education (CBME) framework. It describes the importance of timely international collaboration as a key strategy in promoting physician leadership development.

The paper explores published and Grey literature around physician leadership development and proposes that international collaboration will meet the expanding call for development of leadership competencies in postgraduate medical learners. Two grounding frameworks were used: complexity science supports adding physician leadership training to the current momentum of CBME adoption, and relational cultural theory supports the engagement of diverse stakeholders in multiple jurisdictions around the world to ensure inclusivity in leadership education development.

An international collaborative identified key insights regarding the need to frame physician leadership education within a competency-based model.

International collaboration can be a vehicle for developing a globally relevant, generalizable physician leadership curriculum. This model can be expanded to encourage innovation, scholarship and program evaluation.

A competency-based leadership development curriculum is being designed by an international collaborative. The curriculum is based on established leadership and education frameworks. The international collaboration model provides opportunities for ongoing sharing, networking and diversification.

Physicians are often ill-equipped for the leadership activities their work demands. In part, this is due to a gap in traditional medical education. An emergent international network is developing a globally relevant leadership curriculum for postgraduate medical education. The purpose of this article is to share key learnings from this process to date.

The Toronto International Summit on Leadership Education for Physicians (TISLEP) was hosted by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine and Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Of 64 attendees from eight countries, 34 joined working groups to develop leadership competencies. The CanMEDS Competency Framework, stage of learner development and venue of learning formed the scaffold for the work. Emotional intelligence was selected as the topic to test the feasibility of fruitful international collaboration; results were presented at TISLEP 2015.

Dedicated international stakeholders engaged actively and constructively through defined working groups to develop a globally relevant, competency-based curriculum for physician leadership education. Eleven principles are recommended for consideration in physician leadership curriculum development. Defining common language and taxonomy is essential for a harmonized product. The importance of establishing an international network to support implementation, evaluation, sustainability and dissemination of the work was underscored.

International stakeholders are collaborating successfully on a graduated, competency-based leadership curriculum for postgraduate medical learners. The final product will be available for adaptation to local needs. An international physician leadership education network is being developed to support and expand the work underway.