Day 100: My Leadership Story

It is apt that on Day 100 of my 100-day Blog I am away from work on a leadership course.  I am at Windsor Castle with Windsor Leadership on their Experienced Strategic Leaders Programme.  This is only possible because of funding through my scholarship from the Florence Nightingale Foundation and Turning Point honouring the time away from work for this.

Almost six months into my new role so this is perfect timing to take time out to reflect, think about what I have learnt, the successes of the past half a year, and what my plans and objectives are for the future.

My personal mission has always been to make other people’s lives better.  Professionally I work towards improving people’s outcomes and experience at a population level.  I have been challenged so far in the leadership course to make this much more personal to the people I want to make a difference for.

A theme that has come out has been the need for leaders to connect themselves and people around them with the “why”, but also that the “who” is important.  For me this means showing my passion for the people I want to make things better for.

We have explored the seminal events and points in our lives that have shaped the leadership behaviours we exhibit today, including childhood experiences, which directly affect our current personality types and preferences.  This is extremely helpful in being more self aware of the context in which we behave and how we operate as leaders.  It also allows some insight into how and why others behave and their leadership styles.

We each had to bring a real-life strategic leadership challenge to work through with other senior leaders in a safe space.  The approach used was extremely powerful and allows exposure of vulnerability whilst maintaining psychological safety.  A ‘coaching’ style feedback approach is used to tease out and probe beneath the real issue beneath the presenting challenge.  This is not role-play so none of the embarrassment of trying to ‘act’ or ‘perform’ as with other leadership training I have been on.

This has been extremely useful so far and we’ve only had the first 24 hours of the initial 2 ½ days.  There is a follow-up day in November, six months time, to check-in as to how our leadership journey is progressing and whether we are being successful in meeting our challenges.

(PS I know I’ve gone over the 100-word limit, but this is day 100 and this has been an exceptional day!)

Day 92: Distributed Leadership and Earned Autonomy

We had a great strategic discussion today about how we empower decision-making at the right levels so at Board level we can avoid micromanaging people.  This comes by having good relationships throughout the workforce to ensure trust and psychological safety.

People won’t make all the right decisions all the time, but that’s OK.  We trust our people, who have the right values, to make decisions for the right reasons and this will result in more successful outcomes than failures.

The failures are good for us all too, just as long as we set the right conditions to learn from them.

Day 80: People

Reaching more people, improve outcomes and reduce inequalities takes exceptional people working together.  I had a great conversation today with colleagues from our People Team about how we progress a People Strategy.  This includes focussing on recruitment, retention, leadership, and personal, professional, and organisational development.

For me, the most important element of this is leadership, at all levels.  The NHS ran a Leadership At The Point Of Care programme a few years ago.  I liked the concept behind this, which embedded leadership skills in front-line staff, recognising their leadership role with the people we support and within their own teams.

Day 78: Specialists Are Leaders Too!

 Are you in a role where you are a specialist and/or expert? Then you are in a leadership position.  This applies equally to nurses, social workers, doctors, pharmacists, people working in finance, HR, and other specialisms within health and social care.

When you are a person that others look to for advice, expertise, and support, they also look to you for leadership.  Nationally, as a health and social care system we under-invest in leadership development of people in specialist roles.  This results in poor leadership, which leads to bad culture, poorer outcomes and experiences for those who use our services.

Day 58: International Women’s Day #BreakTheBias

#BreakTheBias isn’t anti-men, it’s pro-women, just like #BlackLivesMatter isn’t anti-white.  With male privilege comes the responsibility to actively advocate for women.

I count myself extremely lucky to have had so many wonderful women make such an impact on my life.  These include my inspirational mother, sister, and fiancée.  

Professionally in my entire career I have only had a male line manager two years (both of whom were also good influences if you’re reading this Matt and Colin!).  I have learnt hugely from the compassion, calmness, direction, and way in which my female role models have shaped me as a person

Day 45: Female Role Models

Over the past few days I’ve had some conversations with people about the importance of positive female role models.  Having a career in nursing has blessed me with quite a few female role models who have had a massive influence on me.

I am fortunate in this current role that there are amazing women who model behaviours and values that I share and aspire to.  Some are in senior roles, whilst others aren’t but still have a big influence on me and how I think.  I need to make more effort to tell them how important they are without patronising.

Day 35: Yes, and…

When people share ideas do you think of reasons why they shouldn’t happen, or problems that may occur? 

How do you feel when you share ideas and obstacles are immediately put in your way?

“Yes, and” is powerful and opens rather than closing conversations.

Leaders don’t say “no, but have you thought of…”.

    they say: “Yes, and if we do that it will help us to…”;

    they say “Yes, and if we do X as well, we’ll make things even better”; and

    they say “Yes, I understand where you’re coming from and we can do that, but not right now”.

Day 34: Authenticity and Integrity

To lead well, act with authenticity and integrity.  Humans are clever and will spot a fraud quickly; it’s hard keeping the mask on for prolonged periods; be yourself.

To act with integrity means using emotional intelligence to tune into your and others’ emotions.  Make the right agreements to serve you, them, and your organisation best.  Take responsibility for your own experiences and inspire others to do the same.

You control your actions, but you can’t control the outcomes.  Communicate well; listen actively speaking with authority about what you know but understand that others will have their version of the truth.

Day 20: Authentic Leadership and Your Inner Voice

We all have an ego and an inner voice.  Great leaders know when and how to listen to it.  This Blog by Alex Lickerman from Psychology Today talks about inner voice and intuition; how it can inform better decision-making.

Today I read about Trevor Noah and his perspective on Authentic Leadership.  I reflected on the parts about listening (and not listening) to other people's feedback.  We're all affected by what we perceive others think about us.  These are just one person's opinion and we’d be foolish to think everyone likes us - do you like everyone?

Be authentic, be you!

Day 16: It Takes A Village To Raise A Child

Recent experience of a missing child (not my own) showed me how quickly, and unquestioningly, communities will altruistically support each other.

Can you replicate this community feel in organisations or teams?  We don’t want our teams constantly in crisis; We’ve learnt through Covid that people will go above and beyond, but crises are exhausting and while some thrive on them, others don’t.

Know each other on a more personal level to feel belonging to the community of your team.  I loved our recent MS Teams Board Christmas ‘Gathering’; even just an hour of sharing our festive traditions was really engaging.

Day 98: The Magic Number?

De La Soul’s 1990 hit, says the magic number is ‘Three’.  At the Commissioning Nurse Leaders meeting today, our first task was, in groups, to identify three important issues that we’re challenged by to inform the day’s agenda.  Once conversation started flowing we found it hard to keep it down to just three!

All groups then shared their priorities, which essentially fell into or represented three elements: Leadership, Relationships & Accountability.  So my ‘take-home message’ from the day was to continue to develop relationships, the importance of real leadership and have to clear lines of accountability.  There’s no ‘magic’ solution.