Well what a week that has been, in fact the past two weeks have been pretty full on. At moments I have felt a little overwhelmed, when I have contemplated the amount of work I have got to do, but when I have zoomed in what needs to be done and just got cracking it has been thoroughly enjoyable.
This week started off quietly, I had set aside Monday initially for admin. An opportunity to catch up on some paperwork and start planning for events I have planned in the next few months. One event in particular at the end of the month has been playing on my mind, a team coaching coaching event exploring and understanding the system in which a particular service lives. The aim of the event is to identify and articulate the relationships the service has and doesn’t have with other parts of the system, and assess which relationships, need strengthening, building or downgrading, to ensure the service operates effectively within the system. There is a lot of moving parts with this event, and quite a bit of preparation is needed, hence why it has been praying on my mind. So I spent the first part of the Monday morning revisiting my plans, and starting some of the prep work. When preparing for a group coaching session it is important not to fall into the trap of over engineering it and at the same time ensuring you have prepared the participants and created enough structure to ensure the session flows.
My colleagues were in the office which always creates a wonderful creative atmosphere, where we share ideas and offer each other different perspectives. In the afternoon I had a meeting about some potential work coming up in November. This is why I mentioned feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of work that we have coming our way over the next few months. Monday was a day for a helicopter view, to ensure I was clear about what I still need to plan for and make sure I was fully prepared for the work I had to do this week. However when I was up there looking down it was a little daunting, so I did not stay up there too long before I came down and started preparing for the delivery work I had in my diary for the rest of the week.
On Tuesday I met with my colleague to run through the clinical supervision training we had planned for Thursday and Friday this week. It has been quite a few months since we have delivered this training so we just needed to make sure we were ok with the running order and who was doing what. In the afternoon I was delivering a webinar for one of our inhouse leadership programmes on Team Effectiveness. I love the subject but after a few years of delivering training via webcam I can honestly say it is not my favourite medium to deliver training, I much prefer in person training. The incidental side conversations where a lot of the learning happens does not happen naturally online. Saying that we had some useful conversations and the session went very well.
Wednesday was spent with a team of senior nurses providing specific leadership development designed for how they work and lead together as a team. The focus of todays session was how to use a coaching approach to leadership, conducting challenging conversations and the use of feedback in the moment to support team members performance and development. It was a wonderful session to be part of with everyone in the room actively taking part creating really rich conversations. I was buzzing at the end of the day. The feedback I got from those in the room was that they all were going to take away something from the day that they were going to start using at work.
Thursday was day 1 of our 3 day clinical supervision training. My colleague who co-facilitates with me and manages the training was unfortunately ill, so myself and another colleague who was coming along to observe as part of her role as Professional Nurse Advocate co-ordinator ran the day. We train Nurses and AHPs how to conduct clinical supervision on a one to one basis. We have an ever growing network of clinical supervisors from a variety of healthcare professions. Our Nursing and Midwifery colleagues also have the opportunity to complete PNA (Professional Nurse Advocate) or PMA (Professional Midwife Advocate) certificate. We had 8 candidates this time (we keep it to a maximum of 12 per cohort to maximise the learning). We had a Midwife, 4 Nurses, an ACP (Advanced Clinical Practitioner), a Radiotherapist and a Physiotherapist. The group gelled really quickly and the day went really well.
Friday was day 2 of clinical supervision training, it was a pleasure being in the room with these wonderful health professionals. The day just flew by and I was truly blown away by their skill and willingness to be vulnerable and learn.
When I got home on Friday evening I was exhausted. It has been such a full on week, but one of those weeks where I feel I have got so much done and made a difference. Weeks like this remind me why I love my job so much, and why I love coaching so much. They make up for those frustrating moments where it feels like nothing is going right.
Connected Coaching 