“Everyone in this room, whether you believe it or not, is a leader and therefore a role model,” Neeraj Bhasin (Huddersfield, UK) told the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland’s (VSGBI) 2023 annual scientific meeting (VSASM; 22–24 November, Dublin, Ireland).
Bhasin was speaking during the President’s Symposium—an annual, topical session curated by the VSGBI president at the time. In 2023, it was the turn of now immediate past president Rachel Bell, consultant vascular surgeon at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, to set the agenda. Bell had selected the topic of leadership, with several speakers taking to the podium to share their insights on how good leadership is crucial for the betterment of patients and providers alike. Compassionate leadership was a theme common to multiple talks.
One of these talks was Bhasin’s, the title of which was ‘Step over the line’. “The easiest way to create change is by being involved,” the consultant vascular surgeon and deputy medical director at Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust and chair of The Circulation Foundation began. He told the audience that, if they wanted to see change, they needed to “make it happen, take ownership”—an attitude he not only encourages others to adopt, but one he shared was key to his applying for an associate medical director job early on in his career and has been instrumental in his role as a leader to date.
Bhasin then involved the assembled delegates, asking “provocatively” via audience interaction software ‘Do you hold a leadership position?’. While admitting that the question was “slightly vague,” the presenter went on to comment that the 34% of people who answered ‘No’ “are wrong”. He explained: “Everyone holds a leadership role—whether you are leading a ward round, whether you are doing a theatre brief, whether you are teaching—everyone in this room will be perceived as a leader and therefore, you’re a role model.”
Capturing the audience’s curiosity with this message, Bhasin opined that leaders have a responsibility to be compassionate, which he defined as “making sure people feel seen, included, valued, safe and feel belonging, they feel part of your team”.
Invisible line
This is where Bhasin brought in the meaning of his talk’s title: ‘Step over the line’. It’s all about an “invisible line” between individuals taking that responsibility to be involved in change or improvement activity, he explained, with many individuals using phrases such as ‘They need to’ when referring to an unspecified group of leaders or managers in the organisation, instead of ‘We need to’. “What’s stopping you, what’s stopping me?” he asked, from stepping over this line. “You’ve got to take on the responsibility for doing that,” he advised the audience.
“I’m challenging people that after this session you step over the line,” Bhasin posited at the Dublin meeting.
Before delving into the specifics of compassionate leadership, Bhasin explained why he thinks clinicians should be in formal leadership roles. “Clearly, there are lots of benefits to [an] organisation, but most importantly to our patients,” he said.
Bhasin expressed an acceptance that, while a formal leadership role is “not for everyone,” a dedicated clinical leadership role brings various benefits to the individual who takes it on. He listed a few such pros: “It allows you to set the agenda, take ownership and create the change that you want to see.” Here Bhasin shared some anecdotal benefits from his own experience, noting that a formal leadership role brought him “great variety” in his working life. “It keeps everything really fresh,” he noted.
Taking on a formal leadership role, according to Bhasin, takes a clinician into their ‘stretch zone’. He elaborated: “You feel challenged, you build up a huge network, real job satisfaction and achievement, and you build lots of new skills, knowledge and opportunities.”
The presenter noted that clinical leadership is a “really privileged position,” but wanted to bring the talk back to his main point, that clinical leadership and being a role model “is for everyone and comes at all levels”.
This led to Bhasin looking more closely at compassionate leadership and the importance of “bringing your whole self to work” as a central component of this, which, to him, means “no one should be reserved in who they are when they’re part of a team or at work. No one should be trying to fit into a mould.”
Bhasin then outlined why it is important to be compassionate. “Because bad things are happening,” he said, including “some truly horrible and completely unacceptable things,” before sharing a series of slides showing headlines detailing bullying, undermining and harassment in vascular surgery and the surgical world more widely.
Balancing act
The presenter stressed the importance of balancing compassion with pragmatism and the demands of day-to-day life in the vascular unit when it comes to leadership.
“You’ve got to be conscious of others, you’ve got to genuinely listen and create personal connections, step into someone else’s shoes and be inquisitive,” he said, while also emphasising that “we have a service to deliver and we have patients to care for” at the same time.
Finally, Bhasin touched on the importance of acknowledging and managing the power dynamic between a leader and other members of the team. “There are a lot of us here who have positional power,” he said, adding that “some of us know that, some use that and some of us will have that positional power imposed on us by others.”
The presenter stressed that a fundamental change in mindset is necessary when it comes to addressing the power dynamic between leader and team. “You absolutely need to have the courage to move away from that traditional, hierarchical leadership approach towards a compassionate leadership approach,” the presenter urged. On this note, he underlined the importance of being “open and vulnerable” as a compassionate leader, referring here to an instance when he was both—to a recorded talk he has pinned to his X (formerly Twitter) profile (@8NBX) about growing up as a British Asian. “You’ve got to be open and vulnerable as a compassionate leader because if you are, people will appreciate that you’re being honest, people will see you as being approachable and relatable and they will open up to you.”
Concluding his talk, Bhasin reiterated his point that everyone is a leader and therefore a role model, encouraging audience members to embrace the challenge of stepping over the line and being a leader by being part of their team.
“Be a compassionate leader, become a compassionate leader, and if you consider yourself to be a compassionate leader, learn more, refine that, stretch yourself,” he said during his closing remarks. “Be thoughtful, be inquisitive, create belonging for your team and create safety for your team, and then you will be able to take pride and energy from caring for and inspiring others.”
