I was going to call this “Frequently Asked Questions” but that seemed a bit over the top. Maybe one day people will frequently ask me something but not quite there yet….
When I sent out my original messages asking people to be on my list, I must have mentioned working with teams “post Covid” and one person wanted to query this because, from her point of view, it feels very much “in the thick of it, a long way from the finish, Covid”. And I 100% agree with her. Covid hasn’t gone and we will need to learn to live with it for a lot longer yet*. When I talk about “post Covid”, there’s a little bit of me that is tongue in cheek, just like we are in “post austerity”. It’s “post” only in the minds of the politicians on the TV, people’s daily lives suggest that both Covid and austerity are very much “now”. But mostly, I talk about post Covid because that’s the pressure I feel from senior leaders in the public sector, that we’ve done our Covid response, it’s time to move onto our Covid recovery phase.
Someone also asked what was the point of my list. The point is mostly to guilt me into writing some words every week. I’ve promised these people that I will email them every week and I’d like to be a person that keeps my promises. Which I realise isn’t the best way to sell my list to anyone new!! What I hope you get from being on the list is that you get weekly thoughts on how we might work with and in teams in a kinder, gentler way. I work with teams in health and social care on improvement projects. I want to be helpful and useful, I don’t want to be a stressor to people working at the frontline of this pandemic. I am doing some rapid learning on how I might do this and I’d love to share what I’m learning with you. Most of the people on this list are also in the public sector so if anything I write prompts your own thoughts, I would love for this to be a dialogue, but there’s no expectation that you must contribute in any way.
I also want to make clear that whilst I am learning about how to work with trauma, what I mean is how to work with teams with trauma in the room and without causing further harm. I’m not a psych or mental health professional. I’m not looking to learn how to heal trauma, I’m looking to be helpful whilst I do my work with teams.
*When I say “learn to live with Covid”, I’m talking about widespread mask wearing, effective test, trace and isolate protocols, and improved ventilation in public buildings. I’m not talking about the kind of “live with Covid” favoured by right wing newspaper columnists, which mostly seems to involve sacrificing the elderly and disabled people.
