A former RAF Wing Commander and commercial airline pilot has been brought in to put future care home leaders through their paces.
Lincolnshire-based Home From Home Care has enlisted the services of Captain and retired Wing Co Ryan Mannering to provide inspirational management and leadership training for its up-and-coming staff.
Wing Co Mannering flew fast jets including Tornado GR4 bombers and Eurofighter Typhoons in various roles across the globe during his 22 year career in the RAF.
He is now a commercial airline pilot, instructor and examiner, flying Boeing 737 Next Generation aircraft around the world.
Working with Home From Home Care he will offer the same sort of bespoke training used by the RAF and commercial airlines.
The programme aims to help ambitious colleagues move up the ranks quickly, gaining leadership skills and applying critical thinking and problem solving skills to their work in the care sector.
The programme is being specially designed for Home From Home Care, which runs 11 care homes and specialist integration facilities for adults with learning disabilities, autism and other complex needs in Greater Lincolnshire.
Wing Co Mannering said: “Managers at Home From Home Care must have an instinctive understanding of technology, a forward thinking ability to embrace innovation as well as a powerful sense of empathy and a desire to help others.
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“The RAF has a very well established and developed leadership management training programme that fosters individuals through life and work. It means that if you are suitable and willing, you get promoted and you are afforded more responsibility with more leadership and management tasks.
“I’m combining this with the very different command and control aspects of leadership that are required as commander of an airliner and applying it to the unique organisation and structure of Home From Home Care.
“Underpinning all of this is a recognition of the similarities between aviation and healthcare.
“Over the last 20 years, medicine has recognised this, understanding that humans are fallible and we all make mistakes, so procedures and checklists are in place to overcome this.
“Medicine has also embraced what’s called ‘just culture’ where we recognise mistakes and try to understand them and learn from them to make a system or an individual perform better.
“Home From Home Care is unlike any other care provider in the country; it’s an organisation that’s confident in the use of innovative technologies and it uses these to empower colleagues to deliver exceptional care for the individuals they support.
“I’m tailoring this training programme to the needs of the great people who work here, supporting people from entry level to very top.
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“In a lot of ways, I’m putting older heads on young shoulders, giving them the tools and experience to become exceptional leaders.”
A small cohort from Home From Home Care recently joined him in resilience and teamwork exercises at Go Ape, and he is now developing a syllabus for the team.
Home From Home Care director Hugo de Savary said: “As far as leadership experience goes, it doesn’t get much more impressive than Ryan’s.
“From commanding pilots and ground crews in war zones to training and evaluating the pilots of commercial airliners, Ryan’s management skills are phenomenal and I’m very excited for him to share these with the Home From Home Care team.
“Fast jets and airliners might seem a long way from care, but we’re very different to any other care home operator, so this is exactly the kind of progressive, modern and dynamic leadership training our future managers need.
“The management practices of the RAF have been successfully adopted by other medical institutions like hospitals with great success, so we’re really excited to see the impact this training programme will have.”