Partnership is the new leadership

Over the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to experience that.

First, colleagues from Sahlgrenska University Hospital and the Sahlgrenska Academy travelled to Singapore. This week, colleagues from NHG Health in Singapore visited us in Gothenburg. Two visits, but increasingly one shared journey.

Different perspectives, shared challenges

Sweden and Singapore are different in many ways. But we share an ambition to transform healthcare in a world of ageing populations, workforce challenges and rapid technological change.

In Singapore, I was inspired by the pace of innovation, from smart wards and advanced digitalisation to new approaches to prevention, precision health and workforce development. We also face many of the same challenges, yet sometimes approach them very differently.

And that is precisely why we need each other. I believe the real value of international collaboration is not showing each other what we already do well. It is being open about what we have not yet solved, asking difficult questions and learning together.

From signatures to action

During our visit, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NHG Health. Agreements like this can easily become signatures on a piece of paper. Our ambition is different: to become co-learning health systems and turn the partnership into action.

We already see this happening through the Global Health Innovation Network, GHIN, where Sahlgrenska University Hospital, National University Health System in Singapore, AstraZeneca, Ericsson and Business Sweden are working together to accelerate healthcare innovation.

Transformation happens on the dance floor

When our Singaporean colleagues visited Gothenburg, I shared a simple story. We had introduced a new digital measurement tool in one of our wards. The technology worked. But the Wi-Fi did not, and information still had to be handed in on paper every morning. It was a small example of a much bigger lesson: transformation only works when the whole system works. We can get one part exactly right and still miss the connections that determine whether change creates value in practice. And these are exactly the kinds of practical challenges we can learn from, and solve better, when we are willing to share them openly with each other.

For me, it captures something essential about transformation. Change does not happen in PowerPoint. It happens on the ward, in the clinic and in the everyday lives of patients and healthcare professionals.

As leaders, we therefore need to step down from the balcony and onto the dance floor. To listen, learn and see whether change actually works where it matters.

Leading with kindness

Leadership also means choosing the generous interpretation. Assuming good intent. Staying curious before judging. Kindness is not about lowering expectations or avoiding difficult conversations. It is about creating the trust that allows us to have them.

At Sahlgrenska University Hospital, this connects closely to our leadership principles: putting those we are here for first, seeing the whole before the parts, leading by example and drawing on the competence of our colleagues. Kindness is not the opposite of courage in leadership. It is often what makes courage possible.

Trust is part of our infrastructure

And perhaps that is also true of partnerships. They are built through openness, curiosity and trust. By sharing successes, certainly, but also failures. By allowing ourselves to be challenged. And by recognising that none of us has all the answers. The more uncertain the world becomes, the more convinced I am that trust is part of our infrastructure for the future. That is why I keep coming back to one phrase: Partnership is the new leadership.

The distance between Singapore and Gothenburg is still 10,000 kilometres. But after these weeks, it feels considerably shorter. And that gives me hope for what we can build together.

// Boubou Hallberg, CEO, Sahlgrenska University Hospital