South East Lean Network: Leadership Skills For Engaging Staff In Quality Improvement (QI)

About the Speaker

Juanita Guidera is a Senior Manager in the Health Service Executive where she works as a Quality Improvement (QI) Facilitator focused on Staff Engagement for Quality. A key part of her role is to influence cultural change through designing, developing, and testing organisational interventions to enhance staff engagement, innovation, and action. This work focuses on supporting leaders to further develop leadership skills for engaging staff as a core competency and keystone of quality improvement. Marrying the evidence and the experience of staff within the cultural context with the use of creative facilitation techniques, it becomes possible to hear and value the staff voice as a positive and powerful force to improve quality. Of special interest is the move for leaders from a control and command leadership style and that delicate balance in delegating autonomy while maintaining overall responsibility for delivery. Juanita has worked in healthcare since 2001 and has lectured both nationally and internationally.

About the Topic

Juanita will deliver an interactive and experiential session focused on leadership skills for engaging staff in quality. Throughout the session, participants will have an opportunity to:

• explore the cultural challenges that present during this work, and
• experience techniques that are designed to change the conversation and outcome of QI.

A number of the facilitation techniques used will come from the world of “liberating structures” which complement Lean and other QI methodologies. This session will be of interest to anyone who has ever tried to convince someone to join them on an improvement journey.

Lean Practitioners Sharing Knowledge

The South East Lean Network and WIT Academy of Lean Enterprise Excellence present the Annual WIT Lean Practitioner Seminar Series, kindly supported by Enterprise Ireland and brought to you in association with Waterford Chamber Skillnet.

This is a series of free monthly network and knowledge exchange events that bring together continuous improvement practitioners in Lean enterprise, operational, and process excellence to share their expertise, knowledge, experience, and good practices.