“The work with Talik is a critical part of our Health and Well-being Programme, helping our teams reflect on the impact of the past few years and create a positive focus for the future. The combination of compassionate inquiry and light touch intervention with a strong focus on outcome is so valuable in creating safe generative space for our people.”
Head of Workforce, Major London NHS Hospital Trust
A combination of culture and leadership development, our work with this iconic hospital supported compassionate recovery and reconnection in the aftermath of the sometimes-devastating experiences for healthcare professionals through Covid. As across the NHS, the effects of taking personal risks and the toll of providing healthcare over extended periods in extremely constrained circumstances had pervasive and persistent consequences, including for organisational culture. Relationships between functions and clinical units, managers and their teams, senior leaders and those ‘on the ground’, even between those who chose to be vaccinated or not, suffered significantly. The experience of moral injury and moral distress was very real and present.
Being realistic about what can be achieved through an engagement intervention, we embarked on a process of Appreciative and Action Inquiry across the hospital and over a period of months ran multiple inquiry workshops for teams from clinical, corporate, functional, and administrative units. Some face to face and some virtual, the sessions were flexed to meet the rotas of staff and their particular concerns.
Core to the process was holding space for teams and leaders to reconnect to their own sense of agency, finding in their shared stories examples of their own unexpected capacities and growth in adversity, as well as looking towards adjustments they could now make together to create the best possible collaborative working environment. Additional coaching and support to team and functional leaders helped to ensure the intended adjustments were achieved.
It was crucial we did not appear to be glossing over or depreciating people’s experience in any way. This is a common criticism of Appreciative approaches – that they deny painful realities. But conducted thoughtfully, strengths-based compassion-oriented questions connect us to our own resources and agency. We avoided talking up ‘resilience’ (allowing that it can be interpreted as an injunction to ‘be strong whatever happens’), whilst inviting stories of ‘what got us through the most difficult times’.
It is still early days, but team leaders and staff have learnt a new way of engaging with each other, asking good coaching questions and looking for opportunities to collaborate differently,
