Our latest Pop Up event featured Gemma Lloyd, a nurse, Palliative Care specialist and now also a coach. She told us about the history of palliative care and about the different types of support on offer, how she and colleagues work with patients and their families, the types of support that different people want and how they support themselves well too as professionals.
It was a fascinating conversation which attracted really fascinating questions, comments and observations from those attending, linking rituals, the importance of time & listening to a person who is undergoing palliative care with endings that happen in organisational life.
Our colleague Angus Watson reflected on what he heard:
“The first immediate reflection I made while listening to the webinar was Gemma’s description of hospices as ‘cheerful places’ despite the tragic situation that the patients are in. This reminded me of an interview I recently did as part of GameShift’s change research where the interviewee stated that although their organisation was doing very successfully, the pressure to maintain that momentum and success was causing an unhappy workplace. They then went on to mention that they had worked at other organisations where the atmosphere was significantly more cheerful and happy despite the less successful business position. I thought this tied in with the hospice example as an interesting example that morale, whether it be of an individual or a team, does not necessarily go up and down in direct correlation with the ‘success’ of the situation.
A second reflection was the idea of goal setting and having positive ‘so what can we do’ thinking, instead of getting caught up in the impossibility of a method as opposed to a goal. Gemma told the story of how she had a patient who wanted to fly to an event in Europe but was unable to go due to medical reasons, and how this was causing them distress. She then went on to say that, by communicating with the patient, they established that his need was just to be at the event, and so they started to look at ways to get him there and he ended up driving rather than flying. I thought it was a good example of making sure that goals are envisioned as ‘method independent’ and that organisations do not become tied to the method needed to complete them.
I also found it very interesting how Gemma enlightened us that palliative care doesn’t necessarily mean ‘end of life care’, but that instead it means almost ‘holistic’ care. This all-encompassing approach to the health of individuals in extremely difficult scenarios was in my opinion the most interesting and transferable part of the talk and I’m sure this part could be expanded upon but – to keep it brief – I thought that it provided a nice analogy of how an organisation in a difficult position might require a similar ‘360’ approach to ‘organisational care’ – how every part of the organisational system from the obvious (overt systems and structures, procedures etc) to the less obvious (mycorrhizal network ideas, staff atmosphere, intangible systems and structures) could be nurtured in order to restore a dying organisation.
Inspired by the recent change research we’ve done, I found myself remembering a common theme across the interviews in which the change agents interviewed all agreed that it was impossible to be a leader using only hierarchical power, and that a good leader must be able to engage ‘holistically’ with both the formal and informal power structures within an organisation, and the individuals within those structures, using a multitude of different forms of power.
Finally I liked the idea about ‘giving endings the respect they deserve’. I particularly enjoyed this thought as I think in our fast-moving society it can be easy to simply ‘skip over’ endings and immediately start looking at ‘what’s next’, leading to an incomplete sense of closure or even grief. We give beginnings and middles great respect, and I like the idea that endings should be treated with the same respect, even if they are not necessarily the ending that we would have originally desired.”
The recording from the Pop Up is below.
Our next pop up, Taking Time to Think will be at 0830 on September 19th. GameShift ally Mark Cole will explore how people in the workplace – especially those who seek to manage and lead – could approach their practice differently, by allowing themselves to think more about the work that they are asked to do. You can see more about it and sign up here.