ABU DHABI
Dismantling Silos Across a High-Stakes
Healthcare Leadership Team
Leadership Edge, for people leaders.
By Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health.
Pre and post assessment on every module.
Where Healthcare Leadership Complexity Meets the Need for a Shared Mindset
Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, one of the region’s most complex healthcare institutions, was navigating a challenge common to large, multi-unit organisations: directors operating in high-stakes environments were developing competing priorities, communication barriers, and the kind of siloed decision-making that limits collective performance.
Leaders across different units were working with different mindsets, different communication styles, and limited shared language. Cultural and operational boundaries were creating friction that slowed execution and reduced the organisation’s ability to solve enterprise-wide challenges together.
The opportunity was to build a shared leadership foundation: psychological safety, adaptive communication, and the “WE” mindset that turns a group of capable individual leaders into an aligned leadership team.
Leadership Psychology & Experiential Simulation, Combined
Emile Woolf Middle East designed and delivered the Director Leadership Edge Programme, integrating leadership psychology with the high-pressure Forio Everest Simulation to produce a genuine shift in how Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi’s directors thought and worked together.
Everest Experiential Simulation
A high-pressure leadership lab using the Forio Everest Simulation to test decision-making and team effectiveness under real constraints. Participants experienced the consequences of siloed thinking in a safe environment before taking the lessons back to the business.
Masterclass and Leadership Psychology
Full-day sessions dismantling “us versus them” thinking through shared purpose and adaptive communication. Built around the specific dynamics of cross-functional healthcare leadership.
Psychological Safety and Trust Lab
Deep-dive debriefs on unconscious biases and RAS filters, with practical tools for fostering inclusive, speaking-up cultures across units.
Applied Collaboration Challenge
Teach-back exercises analysing real organisational breakdowns to ensure immediate transfer of learning to the workplace.
Prepare, Simulate & Apply
Preparation and Foundations
Pre-work reflection on current cross-boundary challenges, followed by core Masterclass delivery across three cohorts. Leaders arrive with their real challenges already surfaced.
Experiential Leadership Lab
The Everest Simulation, paired with psychological safety and bias reduction exercises. Decision-making tested under pressure before any framework is introduced.
Application and Commitment
Collaboration dynamics teach-back challenges, culminating in personal and team-based action plans for the workplace. The programme closes with commitments, not just reflection.
The Impact: Silos Replaced by Shared Ways of Working
Clinical leaders left with practical agreements for working across units.
- Agreed behaviours: each team agreed three behaviours for working across units.
- Real issues, real plans: leaders brought a live cross-unit silo issue and left with a plan to fix it.
- Safer to speak up: psychological safety significantly strengthened across leadership teams.