The Band 8a Leadership Lead provides senior operational and professional leadership to ensure high-quality, timely, and sustainable service delivery, with a focus on leadership capability, workforce wellbeing, performance assurance, and alignment to NHSE Leadership & Management Framework. The role strengthens leadership capacity and capability across teams, supports effective demand and risk management, and provides clear oversight to mitigate workforce pressures, reduce burnout and turnover, and maintain compliance with Well-Led expectations and quality governance frameworks.
Main duties of the job
Provide senior leadership and operational oversight to support high-quality, timely, and safe service delivery. Strengthen leadership capacity across services, ensuring clear accountability, effective decision-making, and consistent leadership practice. Monitor service performance, workforce pressures, and quality indicators, ensuring emerging risks are identified, mitigated, and escalated appropriately. Support workforce wellbeing, retention, and sustainability by addressing system pressures that contribute to burnout, turnover, and reduced morale. Lead and contribute to governance, assurance, and quality improvement processes, ensuring alignment with Well-Led requirements and NHSE Standards. Work collaboratively with clinical, operational, and corporate colleagues to align leadership activity with service demand, improvement priorities, and strategic objectives. Support implementation of improvement actions arising from performance data, staff feedback, and external assurance (e.g. NHSE, CQC). Provide professional leadership, coaching, and guidance to leaders and managers to build capability and resilience across the system.
About us
Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust is committed to providing high-quality mental health, learning disability, and specialist services, underpinned by compassionate, inclusive, and values-led leadership. Working for Sussex Partnership means being part of an organisation that prioritises quality of care, staff wellbeing, continuous improvement, and collaborative working across services and systems to improve outcomes for the communities it serves.
Job responsibilities
As an advocate for effective people change, you will work alongside the Deputy Director of Culture & OD in the development and delivery of a Trust-wide Organisational & Leadership Development programme, applying your significant expertise to roll out a programme that delivers sustainable change.
This cross-cutting programme will engage our senior leaders to improve organisational effectiveness and organisational health by aligning the way we work to our values and behaviours.
The team will support the Trusts most strategically important programmes, designing, delivering, and evaluating interventions to improve team effectiveness and performance in addition to developing and supporting the organisational strategy through organisational design.
This includes structure as well as governance both internally and externally working in collaboration with partners across the health, care and wider systems.
The OD Delivery Lead will deliver a programme of leadership development across the Trust, in support of the Trusts ambitions to be a high performing organisation, using the OD Strategy as a framework to embed a strong culture of positive, compassionate leadership behaviours.
To ensure that the Trust continues to grow high performing staff you will work closely with the Deputy Director of OD & Talent Management to develop and embed the talent and succession programme at all levels and across all staff groups.
Identifying new career pathways and associated programmes of development for staff. Alongside the Associate Director of OD & Talent Management, you will help to develop and lead a high performing expert, enthusiastic, proactive team.
As a key member of the directorate, you will be a supportive and active team player who advocates for the directorate across the Trust and role model inspirational leadership behaviours.
Main Duties
Organisational Development
Responsible for the development and delivery of powerful organisation-wide change programmes based on an expert and skilful diagnostic underpinned by theory and experience, in an inclusive way which builds client understanding and capability. Provides expert guidance on the development of Trust-wide leadership development and talent management strategies, implementation, and engagement plans. Supports the development of a high performing team to create and deliver a coherent, high quality and efficient OD work plan that supports the Trust in meeting its strategy and delivers a sustainable and embedded Trust wide OD programme. Designs and deliver world‑class, cutting‑edge OD interventions which have significant impact on departments and teams e.g. utilises a wide range of skills, tools and interventions such as coaching, mirroring and challenging, creating safe confidential spaces, team assessments, individual psychometric assessments to effect change. Works in partnership with national OD organisations, NHS and Non‑NHS to develop knowledge through research and evaluation. Contributes to the creation of an internal OD consultancy service to the Trusts senior management and build senior leadership capability across the Trust. To have lead responsibility, alongside other senior colleagues on the Culture & OD team for one or two strategic development areas, in addition to core OD work eg. VPR, Sexual Safety, Staff Experience, as dictated by both trust & national priorities. Influences senior management particularly during complex change, encouraging a relational and people‑orientated approach. Provide leading edge thinking, advice and challenge to senior stakeholders on organisation development issues pertaining to major change programmes. Be informed by key theories; action research, systems
Diversity, Equality & Inclusion
Embed, and visibly role model through personal action and communication, the Trusts commitment to embracing diversity and promoting equity and inclusion at all levels for all staff, patients and visitors.
Leadership & Talent Management
Utilises specialist knowledge to actively contribute to leadership and talent management within the Trust, ensuring development of talent and succession pipelines for all leadership roles. Supports the development and implementation of the Trust approach to talent management. Ensuring there is a robust approach to succession planning and talent management for key roles and broadly across the organisation. Leads on the design, implementation and continuous review of the leadership development offer across the Trust ensuring our programmes build capabilities and capacity of leaders, including clinical leaders, at all levels across the Trust to accelerate cultural and service transformation. Build strong relationships with the national bodies such as the NHS Leadership Academy, NHSE/I and HPMA plus local partners through the Sussex IC S. Take a lead in the leadership development aspects of restructuring, reorganisation and other programmes of change and reconfiguration within the Trust. This will require the need to assess and make recommendations on highly complex issues or where conflicts occur and to communicate highly sensitive and/or complex information to staff across all levels of the organisation. Designing, planning and delivering bespoke development activity for senior leaders within the organisation, up to and including board level.
Communication and Engagement
To present, receive and process highly complex, sensitive information in relation to the planning, delivery and evaluation of OD across the organisation. This will involve presenting complex information to large groups, running specialist courses to senior leaders, presenting to Exec. and Board in relation to strategic OD issues. Works collaboratively to develop a Trust‑wide engagement plan, which is informed by the national staff survey, local surveys, exit and joiner intelligence to ensure the best possible staff experience at SPFT. Ensures wide engagement with the plan to ensure ownership and delivery across the Trust. Leads the articulation of the engagement priorities that inform a sustainable programme of change.
Responsibility for Financial & Physical Resources
Responsible for the identification and delivery of cost improvement programmes. Contributes to the development of business cases or bids for investment in new programmes of work. Budget management for staffing cost in own area, including financial allocation for specific projects, including equipment and staffing costs.
Workforce Strategy
Identifies areas in the development of the Trusts Workforce Strategy to ensure it aligns with and makes a significant contribution to the strategic aims of the Trust. Contributes to the development of the Trust‑wide OD Strategy as a sub section of the Workforce Strategy, working with key stakeholders to ensure it aligns with the Trusts core objectives. Proactively contributes to the development of operational workforce plans ensuring they are consistent with corporate workforce and OD priorities and that there is alignment between workforce and the business objectives.
Responsibility for Information Resources
Creates complex reports for People and Culture Committee (and Exec and Board committees, as appropriate) such as evaluation, proposals, business cases in relation to OD programme delivery and strategy development.
Management responsibility
Maintain own Personal Development Plan and encourage others to ensure an up‑to‑date knowledge base of OD approaches.
Physical effort
The post holder will be required to spend considerable amounts of time in an office environment and will be required to visit staff throughout the organisation.
Mental and emotional effort
High levels of concentration required for the development & delivery of work programmes on a frequent basis. Will be exposed to frequent complex emotional demands through engagement with staff at all levels across the organisation, some of which will be in relation to challenging and highly sensitive areas of work with staff. The post holder will be expected to deputise for the Deputy Director of OD & Leadership Development in internal and external meetings.
Person Specification
Education/ Qualifications
* First degree or equivalent level of education / proven experience in the field of OD or related discipline
* Highly developed specialist knowledge, through experience or professional qualification, of Organisational Development, Leadership Development or Talent Management
* Member of CIPD or equivalent
Knowledge/ Experience
* An in‑depth understanding of the background and aims of the NHS national people plan
* Experience of working as an internal consultant within an organisation
* Extensive experience of working with leaders to improve staff experience
* Extensive experience of communicating in relation to highly complex subject matter with Board or Executive level colleagues within an organisation and across a network
* Experience of leading and managing highly complex projects and delivering identified benefits.
* Track record of delivering high quality results at pace
* Experience of developing and implementing large scale organisational development interventions.
* Ability to develop and deliver change management
* Part of a high performing workforce or OD function which has enabled business transformation
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Deputy Director Culture, Leadership & OD
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