I heard a story last week that made me reel.
A loyal clinician was given a token as recognition of
service over fifteen years. A group of colleagues gathered and a manager
presented a pen, in a box. The recipient opened the box, took the pen and tried to write with it, to find
it contained no ink.
“Typical!” was the response. “They give me a pen, but
there’s no ink in it. What good is a pen without any ink? Typical NHS.
Scrimping and saving, undervaluing us. I am not even worth the ink to go in my
pen.”
Within ten minutes, the gathered group had dispersed to
carry on with their work. As each of the group met another colleague they repeated
the story of the pen until the latest urban myth was established.
I say 'urban myth' because after the comment about the lack of
ink, the manager picked up the discarded pen, opened the box, lifted the false
bottom to the box and found the ink refill. Looking up to find an empty room,
it was already too late to run after everyone and shout, “There is ink! They
did give ink. We are worth the ink in the pen!”
There is so much to say about this story. The dismissive
attitude of the recognition of loyal
service. The institutional cynicism. The externalisation of motivation which
leads to transactional rather than transformational working. But it is from a
leadership perspective I wish to look at this tale more closely.
A week after I heard this story I read an article on
“hittability.” The author is a healthcare leadership expert in the USA who teaches
and writes extensively on the topic. His thesis in this article is that
hittability relates to whether we see a leadership challenge as solvable. He says
that hittability is a “function of our framing lenses – a person’s beliefs,
values and worldviews” (Souba, 2016:1) that frames the way we see a leadership
challenge and that this is in turn influenced by the way we perceive the
future. I would add to this the level of personal responsibility we feel for
such challenges, our sense of self efficacy and our desire to act to change the
future.
The first thing that Souba highlights is the difference
between technical expertise – our fund of knowledge and skills, and what I call
transformational expertise – the ability to “see” beyond the restrictions of
the challenge. Souba says that what marks out exceptional leaders is that they
“see, understand and deal with leadership challenges differently” (ibid) to most
people. They are able to separate the facts of the challenge from the various
narratives that are constructed by the stakeholders.
Souba identifies a ‘Prevailing paradigm’ which emphasises
what is known, and focuses on skills, know-how, competence and expertise and an
‘Emerging paradigm’ which emphasises what is seen. This paradigm suggests that
leadership is largely a function of the
hittability of leadership challenges and that effective leaders reframe
situations so they can see them as hittable.
If we return to the pen story, we can see that the
prevailing narrative, which was quickly adopted, was that the NHS as an
employer did not value its workers. This narrative ignores the fact that the
clinician was given a pen in the first place and focuses on the perceived lack
of ink (which was also factually wrong) to perpetuate the prevailing narrative.
That the narrative was further and immediately amplified by those who had been
in the room, and those who had been told the tale, suggests that not only was
the narrative a familiar one but also
very popular with the majority of the group who spread it. With such a strong
and pervasive narrative, one wonders how a leader can re frame this?
If we look at the prevailing paradigm, we can see that
narratives about the lack of ink and its representative lack of value of the
clinician betray an attitude of
helplessness. The recipient framed himself as worthless, and powerless in the
face of a huge, faceless power called “They.”
However the manager, who looked under the false bottom of
the pen box adopted an attitude of curiosity, assuming that there might be some
ink, not dismissing a solution out of hand before a period of investigation.
This reframed the situation, placing the employer in a more positive light and
more importantly placing herself as an active, enquiring agent.
An alternative interpretation might have been that the
recipient, on finding no ink, accepted the situation and resolved to buy some
ink on the way home, thus reframing the employer in a neutral context and
himself as a responsible agent of his own destiny.
So, in order to be able to face leadership challenges with
autonomy and self respect, we need to learn to reframe the challenges we face.
Seeing challenges as “hittable” depends
on us and our ability to reframe the lenses through which we view such
challenges.
“Great leaders don't
just listen carefully; they also recognise that their framing lenses and their
listening are inseparable…..Listening from the place of ‘this person has
something important to say’ and listening for the future she or he is committed
to constitutes a very different framing lens than listening from a place of
‘this conversation is a waste of my time’ and listening for the first chance to
end it” (Souba, 2016:2).
How often do we listen with a mindset that has already
decided there is nothing worth hearing? Who crafts our lenses? With what are
they smeared? Because we look through
our lenses rather than at them, they
are often imperceptible to us, says Souba. But what would happen if we took
some time to look at our lenses, to ask whether
they are the lenses we chose for ourselves, those we most need, for our
own benefit and that of the work we do? How often do we just accept without
scrutiny the lenses we have had thrust upon us by the prevailing culture in
which we work?
Souba suggests that by not making a conscious choice about
our lenses, we are being schooled to accept the lenses of others around us. Our
view of the future is in itself a lens which frames the present for us. But if
we could make a choice about the future, would we really choose the one we have
been enculturated into? Ask any clinician if they are happy with the current
situation and they will say no; ask what they think the future holds and they
will shudder in despair. But Souba says “having a clear picture of the future
you want to create is critical because it acts as an inspiration that alters
your ways of being and acting right now” (Ibid), which in turn brings the
desired future into the present. Committing to a positive future makes
challenges more hittable.
The act of reframing is not just about the challenges we
face, it is also about us and the people we are. This is what makes it
essential if we are to continue. Souba’s key question is twofold: how do we reframe our healthcare challenges
so they show up as hittable, and how do we reframe ourselves so we show up for ourselves as able and confident?
If we are not interested in doing it for the greater good,
we should be motivated to do it for our own good. Clinicians are asking for
resilience training, not realising that
only they hold the power to develop what they need. Giving up at the first
hurdle (“there’s no ink in my pen”) and blaming it on the organisation is self
sabotage. Saying to oneself, “I am honoured to be
recognised beyond my pay packet, and here is a token of that - a pen, in a box, with even some ink in there,” reveals a happier,
more resilient professional, who has a stake in his or her own future, and the
agency to create it.
Souba, W. Hittability:
The Leader's Edge. Academic Medicine. Nov
2016
doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000001498
