Feeling angry, being visible

I want to talk about two things in this blog: BAME inequalities and leadership visibility. Also, just to add that my guest blogs haven’t gone for good, as I know they’ve been popular. I just don’t want to bombard you with too much this time round and focus on these two issues.

Black Lives Matter

Let me start by saying that I appreciate I can’t talk about racism from the perspective of someone who has experienced it directly, or had to live with the subtle and insidious effects of indirect discrimination and institutional bias. But I have seen it, and the impact it has on people, and I believe that this is a moment in our history when everyone should reflect on what is happening, what has happened in the past and what contribution we should all be making in the future.

Discrimination adversely affects our colleagues, patients and, at its worst, kills as we have seen in recent events. It is a tragedy that we haven’t been able to do more to redress this unacceptable balance.

Those of us not from a BAME background need to make it clear that this is hugely important to us, that we want to listen to and really understand people’s experiences and perspectives. It requires us to explore our own role and behaviours in history, both personally and as a nation. It’s time to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. We need to remember that it's a privilege to learn about racism instead of experiencing it your whole life.

We have a personal responsibility to know how BAME colleagues feel and the impact of anything we may be doing. We all have unconscious biases. They are learned stereotypes that are automatic, unintentional and ingrained within our beliefs, and have the ability to affect our behaviour.

I recently re-watched ‘Black Lives Matter - 50 years on’ from the truly appalling 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech made by Enoch Powell in which they showed the speech to people from a range of BAME communities who then talked about what it’s like for them to live in modern-day Britain.  It highlighted how some things have changed for the better, but clearly nowhere near enough.

We need to understand the covert racism, not just the overt racism, which can be more damaging given that it’s often unchecked, undetected and so insidious that it presents itself as normalised, everyday behaviour. Only when we know our triggers can we check ourselves.

Professor Michael West talks about the two aspects of compassionate leadership. The first is feeling empathy and stepping into someone else’s shoes to appreciate their positon. But the second, and more important, is taking meaningful action. Empathy on its own is not enough to change things.

The protests have brought into stark focus the fact that there is a huge amount of empathy and I have taken some small comfort from the fact that people at the protests have been from many different racial backgrounds. But, although we have talked about inequality for a long time in the NHS and public sector as a whole, there has clearly been too little action.

Many white people are letting fear of getting it wrong get in the way of working for change. It’s time to get over this and do something.

As recent events following the death of George Floyd have unfolded, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I should and shouldn’t say and I’m actually feeling pretty angry about some things. 

I’m angry with people using inflammatory language to describe peaceful protesters. I’m angry with commentators defending statues of slave traders.

I’ve actually been really wound up about the statues. Honouring is very different from remembering, so the history argument doesn’t wash with me, it just highlights our imperial blind spot.  These statues normalise the past. They make injustices easier to defend and harder to see.

Take Cecil Rhodes for example. Yes, he was a noted philanthropist and his Rhodes scholarships have done a lot of good, but he stole land, massacred tens of thousands of black Africans, imposed a regime of unspeakable labour exploitation in the diamond mines and devised proto-apartheid policies. This balance definitely doesn’t warrant being immortalised in bronze. Our statues are symbols of our values and what we hold important, so I strongly believe it’s time for us to talk about who we want to represent our country and make a statement by taking down those that no longer reflect our values.

Despite our diverse population, we had to wait until 2016 for the first statue of a named black woman, Mary Seacole. These acts of symbolism are important. It should be a democratic decision, but removing a statue is not erasing history. It’s about placing them in a museum where we can still learn about them, just not glorify them.

But enough about my statue rage. This global demonstration can't be a fad. There must be momentum once the news cycle ends.

I get that the deep, multi-layered nature of systemic racism means there is not an overnight fix. But, if the NHS is part of the problem, then it is part of the solution. As an organisation there are things we have to do.

We’re planning to have a board session with our BAME staff network, as well as our other networks, so we can look at all the positive additional actions we can put in place.  We want our staff networks to hold us to account. We want them to be stubborn and unapologetically shine a light on issues, but most of all we need to turn warm words into actions. 

Visible leadership

I’ve seen some awe-inspiring examples of leadership across our organisation over the last few months.  I’ve never been more impressed or felt more proud. It’s also made me think all the more about the visibility and presence of our leaders.

And as we expect the ‘living with covid’ phase to last for a significant period of time, we need to really think about what visible leadership means in the context of covid.

We’re currently doing an ‘appreciative enquiry’ across our organisation to understand how the pandemic has affected teams, and one of the themes that has emerged is about exec directors not being as physically present as people would have liked.

To be honest, we’ve found it difficult to find the right balance between keeping people safe, adhering to government and infection prevention guidance, not using up PPE resources especially when they were scarce, not turning up in clinical services when you were really busy, and leading by example for the 1000+ colleagues having to work from home.

We therefore tried to be visible and make contact through other ways, for example phone calls, personal emails, zoom chats, videos. But I fully appreciate if we didn’t get this balance right, and that many of you would have valued seeing more of us during this difficult time. Your feedback is important and we take your observations completely on board.

Henry, our medical director, is now working a couple of days a week in Stockport and some of the execs have started to visit various clinical teams - we’ll try to do more of this going forward. With around 200 different locations, it was a challenge before covid, so I’m really interested in what feels right from your point of view.

I’d like to find a way of hearing your views and opinions on this matter so will be asking the question in various different forums and channels. We want exec director visits to be informal but meaningful, helpful but not stressful. Definitely not Royal Visit style as I know some have described it in the past!

So thank you for sharing your reflections through the appreciative enquiry. Your observations have been fully heard and taken on board, and we will work through how we can be more physically visible over the coming months. It's important we demonstrate how much we stand alongside you.

Best wishes

Claire

You can follow me on social media @ClaireMolloy2