Leadership Scholarship 2012/13.

I would like to  acknowledge some of the wonderful  people who have created opportunities for me to change and start to live to my potential during the course of my Florence Nightingale Foundation Scholarship year.  I would first of like to thank Professor Elizabeth Robb and the Florence Nightingale Foundation for providing me the opportunity to unlock the doors of discovery through the award of the scholarship;  and the London Network for Nurses and Midwives for their sponsorship of the Dame Christine Beasley Leadership Scholarship 2012-13.

I am also very grateful to the organisations I have been working in during the course of my scholarship, initially Whittington Hospital NHS Trust and latterly NHS England London Region for allowing me the space and time to truly capitalise on the experiences open to me in the course of the scholarship. To Sue Machell I am very indebted for her skilled mastery in helping me reflect on the lessons and messages from the variety of  feedback and psychometric testing available to  me at the start of the scholarship.  It is thanks to Sue’s caring but challenging approach that I searched deep and undertook some experiences that were not easy, were personally challenging and at times very hard hitting but which helped me to understand myself, my responses and reactions and to listen to the messages from deep within my being to what was right for me at this point and time in my life and career.  I am also very thankful to Sue for her recommendation that I look for a coach throughout the course of the scholarship which led me to finding a real gem of a person in Mary Anne McCook who I will be forever grateful to for her caring but firm prodding and challenge during a difficult period of decision making through the course of my journey.

Nick Chapman my assigned mentor for the programme was perhaps the person who most put me on the spot to really dig deep within myself and listen to the world around me.  The result of doing this was a period of difficult trajectory from which I have emerged a stronger person and professional more open to truly reflecting and listening to my inner self and the messages from what is going on around me. I believe that as a result of meeting Nick I have learnt to separate the person from the position and situation and as a result I believe I will be hugely more resilient when dealing and surviving the tough challenges facing all of us in the NHS today.

I have met a number of  incredible people on this journey both fellow and past scholars, fellow participants on the programmes I have undertaken and fellow professionals in Australia who have all contributed to my development and growth during the past eighteen months.

An early enlightening experience on the scholarship which I believe firmly set the scene for my discovery was the Leading Change Through Renewal programme a 4 day programme, delivered by the Stanford faculty, which introduced us as a group of leaders to a different way of viewing the change process and equipped us with techniques to deliver transformational change through others. It also brought us together as a group and cemented early in the programme relationships that would continue to flourish and grow through the course of the scholarship and beyond.

The Westminster experience was another enlightening experience and I would like to offer my thanks to Baroness Cumberlege and her colleagues for creating an experience that challenged my thinking and understanding about the breadth and depth of political imperatives, behaviours and relationships.  I believe that as a result of that experience I was more able to cope with the behaviour and response of local politicians during a challenging change period in my Trust a few months later.