Introducing the Leadership in Enabling Occupation (LEO) model

Occupational therapy is a broad profession yet access to services remains restricted and uneven across Canada. Access to the potential breadth of occupational therapy is severely restrained by complex supply, retention, and funding challenges. To improve access to occupational therapy, widespread leadership is needed by all practitioners.

This brief report introduces the Leadership in Enabling Occupation (LEO) Model, which displays the inter-relationship of four elements of everyday leadership as described in "Positioning Occupational Therapy for Leadership," Section IV, of Enabling Occupation II: Advancing a Vision of Health, Well-being and Justice through Occupation (Townsend & Polatajko, 2007).

All occupational therapists have the power to develop leadership capacity within and beyond designated leadership positions.

LEO is a leadership tool to extend all occupational therapists' strategic use of scholarship, new accountability approaches, existing and new funding, and workforce planning to improve access to occupational therapy.