Kristyn Haywood is the founder of HealthKind and a senior leadership educator, executive coach and workplace culture specialist with more than two decades of experience developing leaders. She has worked with hundreds of leaders across healthcare, delivering leadership development, executive coaching and culture programs for hospitals, health services and healthcare organisations. With a Master of Business by thesis in Leadership, a Master of Research in Business and more than a dozen coaching qualifications, she is known in the industry as a transformational coach.
Kristyn has championed human-centred leadership across multiple industries, but it was in 2018, when Director of Nursing and Midwifery Teresa Benetos invited her to deliver a leadership and coaching program to Nursing Unit Managers at Fairfield Hospital, that Kristyn began focusing her work increasingly on healthcare leadership. She formed an immediate and profound connection with healthcare leaders, describing it as "falling in love with an industry where the workers care for society’s most vulnerable."
Since then, Kristyn has collaborated with hundreds of healthcare professionals at every level, from executives to frontline team leaders. From 2020 to 2023, she served as the Leadership Educator and Executive Coach for the Sydney Adventist Hospital. Her work has included executive and senior leadership teams across NSW Health to enhance workplace culture. Kristyn’s unique blend of experience, compassion, and clarity equips her to navigate the complexities and emotional intensity of healthcare leadership, committed to assisting leaders with integrity, clarity, and care.
Whether she enters a strained leadership group or a team in turmoil, Kristyn swiftly diagnoses the underlying issues, often revealing unconscious bias, miscommunication, and judgement that impede collaboration. Her approach skillfully balances truth-telling with compassion, guiding clients to truly listen, reflect, and take practical, values-aligned action.
Kristyn's research examines ethical leadership, gendered evaluation and how leadership competence and authority are recognised in organisations. Her Master of Research at Macquarie Business School brings an evidence-based dimension to HealthKind's leadership education and advisory work.
Every day, healthcare professionals encounter raw emotions: grief, fear, frustration, and joy. Whether they are comforting a family in crisis or celebrating a new life, these dedicated individuals are present when emotions are running high.
Healthcare leaders aren’t just managing workflows; they are also providing a supportive space for those who care for our most vulnerable members of society. Healthcare professionals must collaborate across various disciplines and cultures while navigating challenging personalities, and that’s not always an easy task. This is where we come in.
HealthKind offers coaching programs designed to help leaders navigate the emotional and relational aspects of healthcare. Our leadership education focuses on culture-building centered around Integrity, Clarity, and Care.
At HealthKind, our four pillars serve as the foundation for building lasting relationships and delivering transformative outcomes for healthcare professionals. They are:
Expertise: Built on extensive healthcare leadership education, coaching and organisational development experience.
Integrity: We uphold values-driven, ethical leadership practices that resonate with our commitment to healthcare.
Impact: Our focus is on measurable improvements in team performance and patient outcomes, ensuring that our efforts translate into real-world benefits.
Courage: We speak the truth with compassion, engaging in honest and respectful dialogue with our clients, even when the insights may be challenging to hear. This partnership drives meaningful, lasting change through leadership education.
Kristyn brings clarity and compassion to the most complex people challenges in Healthcare. I was fortunate enough to attend a six-month Leadership program with 8 days of training and 8 hours of coaching. I gained more confidence to Lead in the way that aligned with my values
- Julia Das, Chief Pharmacist