Good evening
Hope your all well. I’m good. Had a fairly peaceful weekend.
On Wednesday I attended an event recommended by work the Inclusion Carousel at St James. This was a day long conference designed to highlight inclusion and make people aware of bullying in the workplace.
As many of you know I’m a keen advocate of Equality and Diversity in the workplace. In fact I am in a staff network group for those on the spectrum and have recently taken steps to become more involved with organising this. Earlier last year I received an email about this event.So I was really excited to go and see all I could. I tried to behave appropriately and gather as much info as I could
Of course me being me I:
1: couldn’t find the door as I’d never been to St James. My uncle
a lifelong Newcastle fan would be ashamed
2: spilt my drink after sitting down
Luckily my clumsy quota was then met and the day went well.
Note if you wish to share any data or see posts about this event #inclusioncarousel
Here were a few notes I took throughout the day
The opening talk brought to our attention a few surprising figures:
In the NHS: BMI staff rarely progress over a band 6
The north region is made up off 79% white staff
19% BMI staff overall in the workforce
77% of workers are women
30% of women are chief executives
They then talked about outside the NHS:
Outside the NHS out of a 100 business’s
Only 6 were found to have a BMI chair
Only 29 of the other chairs are women
Ok I think we can all agree this is shocking. It’s easy to think how better things are clearly we have a long way to go.
There was a great talk from the Leadership Academy around Inclusion. Obviously I didn’t get it word for but they have produced some literature which can be found online Title: “Inclusion The DNA for Leadership and change” It covers: Identity,lived experience,emotions,complexity, power, sense making,ethics, collaborative inquiries.
Some more figures were brought to light:
84% of BAME staff said there were clear differences in what was said and what was done
51% of staff feel they cannot be their full self at work
They recommend the following video for further study
Ted Talk Kimberley Crenshaw Intersectionality
https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?language=en
Next followed a rather Intriguing talk
“How do you know if you’re the bully?”
Now it’s easy to say no of course not. I would not say I am a bully, but what do we mean by bullying?
It was mentioned that many people don’t realise they’re bullying at all. For example see below text from (slightly abbreviated)
What is behind the behaviour of the bully?
People tell a story to themselves
You need too:
Change the story
Change the behaviour
Don’t challenge the person challenge the behaviour
In other words try to change the person’s mindset
It’s good advice. I am quite often to passive I don’t like to make a fuss. The trouble is where do you draw the line? When do you stop looking at your feet and think no. No this behaviour is not right.
Its hard to say.
Here are some useful tools that were recommended
ACAS definition of bullying can be found here
https://www.acas.org.uk/if-youre-treated-unfairly-at-work/being-bullied
Chris Argyris Ladder of Inference describes the progressive process of making observations and forming ideas
https://thesystemsthinker.com/the-ladder-of-inference/
All of this talk made me think of something. It’s massively different to workplace bullying but the memory viewed through older eyes made me feel unsettled.
When I was younger I was often shy. With people I liked however I could be overfamiliar hugging friends, trying to over share with teachers at school. It was hard for me to understand boundaries. There was this one boy who rode the same bus as me. A few years younger. He had curly hair and freckles and glasses. I would often tousle his hair. I knew he didn’t like it. Somehow I thought I was being matey. Even though I hated people teasing me. Looking back was I being a bully? I actually liked the kid. I thought it was a funny thing. After all my dad held me down as a kid and tickled me sometimes.It was the same right? Wrong. I didn’t mean it like that but I bet that’s how the poor kid felt. If your reading this I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any harm but that’s no excuse.
Even now I sometimes have moments when I talk to much or banter in appropriately. Nothing major occasions where I forgot social etiquette. Still it affects how others see you
This talk made me think. Bullying is not always obvious. That I knew but it’s odd to think maybe it’s not even meant. Maybe at times we could all take a bit more care. A good talk
In the afternoon I went to two workshops
LGBT Inclusion workshop by North East ambulance services
Achievement of this group :
During their Induction they now play a big part in the day
Last year an they held events called Lunch and Learn where they met with various LGBTstaff to discuss their life and work
They gave their phone operators training in the use of gender neutral terms
There is a National Ambulance LGBT network this is across all trusts and meets throughout the year
Events for the diary they mentioned
LGBT history month 2020
As many of you will know this is in February the theme this year is 12 figures.
Trans day of visibility this is a yearly day on March 31st
One final thing. We were each given a bit of string on a table were 9 card with words. For every thing you could do you had to add a bead. This really highlighted some of the things we take for granted. See attached pictures. I’ll confess I was only able to find one phrase that I could not see myself doing. This exercise puts things in perspective. How many things do I worry about that are trivial and ultimately meaningless? Obviously I do have my own issues but it’s important to remember that I’m not the only one in the world. We should always try to be considerate. I know how difficult life can be.
The 2nd workshop I attended was “Unconscious Bios dive into your mind”
The Host of this workshop was by a representative of South Tees Hospital Foundation Trust
Aim of this talk: Explore the impact of unconscious bias on our day to day behaviour and decision making
Develop insight into your own unconscious bias.
Points raised
Our brains are hard wired to box people into categories eg
Threat——Non threat. Basic instincts evolution from when we were more basic
We may not do it consciously but we look at: Posture, gender, age, accents, intellect
And we make a decision about someone
Note: you can take a test online to asses yourself. Search
Unconscious Bios Harvard University your profile.
An example was given to explain this
The Inclusion scale shows the general response we tend to have to people at first knowingly or not:
Admiration
Acceptance
Neutral
Evasion
Hostility
Obviously this can change we were showing 6 photos and asked for our initial instinct. We then discussed why we felt this way and what our thought processes was.
It was really good but hard to explain. To be honest I think many people were surprised by their own reactions
I’ve had this both ways. I’ve seen people I thought looked dodgy and stayed clear. I’ve also been misjudged myself. Many times. Often it’s due to my face looking spaced out or expressionless in public. I can’t see my face obviously but have been told. One rage inducing person in a nightclub said I’d looked miserable all night. So yeah it’s easier to judge other and be judged than we all like to admit.If anyone is interested the host Helen is willing to do this talk at for any interested organisations: Helen.day9@nhs.net
After the last workshop we returned to the main room where we were treated to a performance by a band. Aukestra is a band made up of those on the autistic spectrum.
Jak Dixon the man in charge was someone who I’d actually met as he used to work at ESPA a college for those on the spectrum that I went to years ago. I did not recognise him at first but thought he looked familiar. He was a lovely man he runs this group voluntarily and they were really good. If your interested search them on Facebook.
Right that’s it. Hope you enjoyed this post.
