Step into Leadership

Leading and managing across boundaries

Middle managers in social services work across professional and organisational boundaries. They recognise that collaborative gain is possible when people work together to achieve better outcomes for people using services and for unpaid/informal carers. They know that effective partnership working needs trust, respect and interdependence. Valuing different perspectives and working constructively with competing priorities requires skill, commitment and perseverance.

Middle managers therefore need to be able to:

• identify and make good use of opportunities for collaboration and cooperation across organisational and professional boundaries, both internal and external, as well as with people who use services, families and carers
• communicate clearly and effectively across boundaries including actively listening to, seeking understanding and taking account of, differing perspectives
• build and maintain trust with colleagues in their own and other, agencies
• explore challenging issues and express constructive dissent when required, even if this feels risky and there is pressure to conform
• foster a culture of openness, collaboration and cooperation in the design, planning and delivery of services
• lead and manage collaborative work with networks, communities, other professionals and organisations, engaging partners and other stakeholders in shared decision-making
• ensure that partnership working and integrated services stay clearly focused on outcomes for people who use services, families and carers.

If you can demonstrate what you have learned from this area of the framework and how you have put your learning into practice, you will be able to earn an Open Badge. Find out more here.

Leading and managing across boundaries resources

• Leading for outcomes – integrated working (May 2013) This guide is part of IRISS Leading for Outcomes series and focuses on working across agency and professional boundaries. It includes practical exercises and training activities which can be used to introduce an outcomes-focused approach to integrated working.
• Delivering Integrated Care and Support (full report) (Petch, 2013) This report updates the 2011 document and is a review of research on the factors that underpin best health and social care integrated practice.
• IRISS Insight (No 24) Delivering Integrated Care and Support (February 2014) provides a summary of the full report.
• Social Care Institute of Excellence resources on integration: SCIE has a range of resources on integrated working including videos, reports and an online tool which presents the factors most associated with successful integrated working. Although the legal and policy context is different in England much of the material is applicable in the Scottish context also.
  
  The available resources include a research briefing on the factors that promote and hinder joint and integrated working between health and social care services. This can be accessed here.
  
  You need to register for a free SCIE account to download the report.
• IRISS Insights (No 17) Culture Change in the Public Sector (October 2012): This summary guide deals with definitions, types, enablers and challenges of organisational culture change in the public sector. It includes a linked animation on the topic – Culture Change: what is it all about?