Meet me on the corner and come face2face with a new reality

Now I have to say its been a long time since a pretty young lady has given me her phone number and asked me to call her. Last Thursday, that’s what happened. Perhaps, rather impetuously, I did ring her. We talked, I liked her, and we arranged to meet. Later, I confessed all to my very understanding wife J. We are now sleeping in separate bedrooms. More of which later.

Last week, I joined my colleagues for a face2face Board Development day. We were fortunate to be able to hold it in some wonderful conference rooms run by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, one of our Integrated Care Service partners. 

Although there was some serious learning going on, there was also an element of fun to be had as well. The session was facilitated by two colleagues from Lumina Learning. If you haven’t heard of them, have a look here. They take a very interesting approach to helping you understand more about who you might be, and who you are in the relation to those you work with. There was a bit of homework to do in preparation for the sessions. This consisted of answering a brief, but detailed questionnaire. The result was a personal ‘portrait’ which used both words and colours to capture your approach and responses to life, work, relationships, stress and so on.

It was interesting to have this opportunity to gain an insight into one’s persona. I thought my portrait was fairly accurate. My underlying persona was Big Picture Thinking, and my combined persona located me in the Inspiration Driven area. When other members of the Board were asked for their opinions as to whether it did represent me, there was agreement that it did, and people were able to provide examples of why they thought that. If it was interesting to gain a glimpse of who we might be, that interest was ratcheted up when as a group we looked at each other in relation to each other. 

I was surprised that through happenstance, our Board was a balanced group of folk who were: People Focused, Outcome Driven, Extraverted, Discipline Driven, Inspiration Driven and Big Picture Thinkers. These descriptors won’t mean much to readers of this blog who have not been a party to one of the Lumina Spark workshops. However, what it provided the Board and me with was a solid foundation upon which to develop more effective relationships, find better ways to communicate and gain an appreciation of how other colleagues might view the world. These are aspects of effective teamworking that have been more difficult to achieve in virtual settings such as MS Teams, Zoom and so on.

These digital platforms were really helpful, essential even, during those early days of the pandemic. It’s difficult to see how NHS organisations could have managed without having recourse to such technological support. However, whilst these channels might be great for many transactional discussions and conversations, they are not very helpful for more transformative approaches that you would hope to have in team development and team building conversations. Indeed, when I joined the Trust, in May of this year, I was keen to establish face2face Board meetings as soon as possible. Experience has shown me that such interpersonal interactions are enhanced by being present in a physical sense, as well as being mentally present. So, since July we have held all our Board meetings in this way. We are fortunate to have a large flat lecture theatre on the main hospital site, which makes social distancing possible and folk have got used to wearing masks for long periods of time.

However, I know from many discussions last week with NHS Chairs from across the UK, that we are possibly in the minority in so doing. Many NHS Trusts simply don’t have space large enough to allow for social distancing, and/or to hire such accommodation would be prohibitively expensive. Even where Trusts have the room, many others simply do not want to meet in the same space due to infection prevention and control (IPC) reasons. Other's were fearful of sending the ‘wrong’ message to colleagues, patients and visitors. I don’t see it that way. We keep a watchful eye on community infection rates. Research from earlier in the year noted that households are one of the most common areas for Covid-19 transmissions, and so we are mindful that we all take regular Lateral Flow Tests (LFT) before coming on site. We also carefully watch hospital admissions of Covid-positive patients and the take up of vaccinations by colleagues and our communities. All our Board members are double or even triple-jabbed and are practised in the art of safe IPC measures. I have always maintained that should any member of the Board want to join the meeting virtually, for whatever reason, then we would make sure that happened. Members of the public, press and so on, do this is any event.

As we learn to adjust to the pandemic becoming endemic, I don’t think there are many right or wrong answers to dealing with these new situations. Events last week, illustrated to me how easy it is to become complacent. Last week, my lovely wife, who has been struggling for a while now with a cold, tested positive for Covid. All this time of being super careful, and 20 months in she gets it. I did a LFT test, which was negative. These tests are said to be 99% accurate. However, even though I was completely symptom free, as I have a very busy week next week of face2face meetings, I went and booked myself a PCR test, which is said to be more definitive and reliable.

So last Thursday, I found myself in a Tesco car park, face2face with the £37 billion Test and Trace system. As I drew up to the mobile testing centre, a pretty young lady held up a sign which said please ring this number. I did and we had a lovely chat, as she explained what was going to happen and asked me to meet her around the corner and we would start the test. I took the test and amazingly the result came back the following morning. I was negative. Everyone, the virus hasn’t gone away; get your jabs, and remember, distance, fresh air, and wearing a mask when needed are still as important as ever.