Day 87: Recognising Achievements

Today I’ve been thinking about how we reward and recognise people.  Partly, as I am hosting our local rugby club’s annual end of season awards for the Minis and Juniors this weekend! 

But mainly because we are approaching our annual Inspired By Possibility Awards.  This is an annual event where we take time to reward and recognise those colleagues and people we support for outstanding achievements over the past year.

I look forward to our event next month where to celebrate all that is good about the people who work with and for Turning Point to make people’ lives better.

Day 86: On Your Feet Britain!

It’s On Your Feet Britain Day!  My daily routine involves sitting at a desk or sitting in meetings.  Since Covid I have spent even less time moving as meetings have gone online.

Being active is essential for both physical and mental health – it also enables me to eat what I want!

I use my smartwatch to remind me to hourly to stand and take a screen break.  I don’t manage this every hour of the day, but when I do it helps me to pause, reset and gets the blood flowing in my lower body. Sometimes I even get outside!

Day 85: Exploitation of Powers

Today we discussed an external body who are, at best, being over-zealous with their position of authority demanding we do something we may not want to do, nor are required to.

I’m being deliberately vague about the details.  This showed me how compassionate we are to our staff who are directly affected.  The conversation centred of how we protect staff to ensure that they are supported.

We have diverted the external party a single point of contact to a more senior role to completely shield more junior staff from the impact of this, which is the right thing to do.

Day 84: Ongoing Performance Review

It’s the time of year when we do our annual ongoing performance reviews with colleagues.  This takes the form of looking back at the previous 12 months and how things have gone compared to the objectives set a year ago.

This is a positive process intended to be an opportunity to celebrate successes as well as understand and learn from the things that didn’t go to plan.  People at Turning Point have achieved a huge amount in the past 12 months, including continuing to deal with the Covid pandemic and providing services to an increasing number of people across England.

Day 83: Collective Responsibility

 An issue we discussed today raised the topic of ‘collective responsibility’.  It’s a challenging risk we face that is not resolvable by one person, team, or service.

To manage this effectively will take a broader effort by teams from across the organisation, working together to the same aim.  This will require all involved to collectively acknowledge not only the individual role they have to play, but the part of the whole they represent. 

This is not easy for all and no-one should be criticised for having difficulty with this concept.  We will work collaboratively supporting each other along the way.

Day 82: How are things for you?

Today at Operating Board we heard from one of our service users in supported accommodation.  He joined via video link with his support worker, and we heard about his life and what he got up to daily. 

He expressed happiness with his lot but lamented the passing of his parents, speaking fondly of the time he spent living with them.  As an Operating Board we explored with him what we could do to make his life more enjoyable to support his independence.

It’s a privilege to hear directly from the people we support to root us back in our purpose.

Day 81: Celebrating Diversity In Life and Football!

It’s International Day of Pink, raising awareness of all forms of discrimination.  I stand with the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and all other marginalised groups in seeking to eliminate prejudice and bias. 

The people surrounding are as wonderful as they are because of their diversity of personality, thought, values, opinion, and attitude.  This is often driven by their culture, background, upbringing, and life experiences. 

Diversity comes in many forms as does discrimination.  But so does awareness and empathy.  Here’s a great example of a Bundesliga Referee allowing a short break at 65-minutes into a match for a Muslim player to break fast.

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 79: Negotiation Skills

 Any good leader will have well-practised negotiation skills.  It is vital in any negotiation to understand the situation from the other party’s perspective.  You need to be able to appreciate what is driving them, what they want and what they may be willing to concede.

To succeed in negotiating, put yourself in the other person’s shoes.  How would they feel about an offer or request you have just made?  How are they likely to respond to this and is what you are asking for reasonable?

Also recognise when what you are expecting is unreasonable and not aligned to their values.

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 77: Thinking Clearly

How do you ensure you are able to think clearly?  How do you make space and time for thought?

Writing this blog certainly helps give me some space and time for reflection and thought, but I also spend time outside every day, whatever the weather, just to think.

I meditate to help to clear my mind; I do this twice every day for just five minutes.  This really helps me in preparing for and closing down each day.  I use a simple breathing technique, supported by an app on my watch, slowly breathing just twice a minute for five minutes.

Day 76: Where Are You Starting From?

To “walk a mile in someone else's shoes before judging them” means you must understand their experiences, challenges, thought processes, etc.

It is all too easy to judge others for where they are right now and it is human nature to compare ones-self with others.  However, it is vital that we consider where people have started from in their journey, whatever this may be.

This could be about how someone appears and the actions they take, or don’t take.  Don’t be quick to judge others for where they are now; try to engage and understand where they have come from.

Day 75: Working With Stakeholders

How do you work with stakeholders?  Do you consider which to invest time and energy into?

Good conversation today about our Stakeholder Strategy and the key relationships we have with outside bodies.

This will help us to properly identify how we direct scarce resources to support the most important relationships in terms of power, influence, and interest.  We can also ensure the connections we make/have with these individuals/organisations result in meaningful engagement for both us and them. 

We need to make those with the highest interest in what we do feel valued and those with the greatest power/influence feel heard.

Day 74: Sharing Learning

It is said that “knowledge is power!”, yet it is so much more powerful when shared rather than kept hold of.  Had a good discussion today about research and learning on mental health, employment, wellbeing and how we can better support people.

Listening to an expert on what has been learnt about the connection between mental wellbeing and employment was brilliant.  We can blend our mental wellbeing and employment support services to deliver amazing outcomes for people; however, the funding for the two elements comes from different places.  We will have to work with commissioners to be innovative in this.

Day 73: Setting Goals

The first day of a new month, and time for reflecting on the previous four month’s in this role.  It has been a great experience; I’m working with amazing people and know there are many more inspirational colleagues whom I’ve yet to meet.

Looking forward into the coming months there’s work to be done on developing our Quality Ambition.  Leading this with colleagues and the people we support it will support of our five-year strategy; and focus on improvement with regulatory compliance as the foundation we build on.

Next week I agree my personal objectives and will blog about these.