The scenarios below have been developed to test your responses to challenges as a leader. Assess the following scenarios and assess how you would face the challenge if it was happening to you. What leadership skills and qualities would help you? There are also some suggested answers to help you think about some alternate methods that you may not have considered already.

Scenario A

After years of research and clinical trials, a drug has finally been approved for your condition and is now going through NICE’s Health Technology Assessment in the hopes of having the drug reimbursed in the UK. Your patient group has been giving evidence and has finally received an outcome. NICE will reimburse the drug, but only for a very small subset of patients. How do you deal with this decision and communicate back to your rare disease community?

Scenario B

Your patient group has three full-time staff members. Out of the blue, one of your long-serving staff members resigns, which will impact future projects and staff-morale. How do you deal with this situation, in particular encouraging and empowering your remaining team members?

Scenario C

You have been approached by a Tobacco company, offering you a transformative amount of funding for your organisation. How would you approach this interaction and the ethical considerations around accepting this funding?

Scenario D

One of your staff members has been acting strangely for the past two weeks. Whilst usually quite a bubbly, polite and positive person, they have recently been quite withdrawn, quiet and, at times, irritable with other staff members. This escalates during a team meeting when they have an outburst directed at another employee. What do you do?

Scenario E

You have been assessing your organisation’s yearly targets and discover you have not hit your fundraising target. You need to address this with your trustees, how do you go about doing so?

Scenario F

You have completed a project that didn’t go quite to plan due to some problems in communication between different stakeholders, meaning some key tasks didn’t get completed. A company who helped fund the project is not happy with the result and wants to meet with you, how do you handle this situation?