Tag: Resilience

Build Your Team Capability – Team Resilience at Work…

Posted on by Maire McGrath

 ‘Feedback is the breakfast of champions.’

– Ken Blanchard

What exactly do we mean by a team’s capability?

A team cannot be truly effective if doesn’t cultivate feedback loops and access to different support networks outside the team to extend their existing capability.  Both shape the capability dimension of team resilience.  This is an aspect of team resilience we all know but how well do we collectively do it in our own teams?

 

What practical ways can you build your team’s capability?

 

  • 1. Ask for and act on team feedback

Without some way of finding out how your team is operating and against everchanging environmenal factors, your team runs the risk of becoming out of touch.

Identify first your team’s key stakeholders.  Team clients are evidently stakeholders but who else does your team connect with who are key  in delivering your work?  In addition to the customers they directly serve, teams may have a wide variety of  relationships both within and outside the organisation inclusive of other teams/departments, suppliers, sectoral and other stakeholders.

Think also about what  you currently have in place to gather intelligence from key stakeholders.  What do you not know but would like to know in stakeholder feedback about the team’s performance?

There may also be other ways of assessing team performance within their market or sector using quantitative data or other relevant benchmarks for your team’s sector.

Seeking feedback is one thing but also consider how you work in your team to respond and act on it for it to be meaningful and helpful to both the team and their stakeholders.

  • 2. Build team capability through networks

In demanding financial times where the recruitment of additional team members is not always possible to meet the team’s needs, the team may need to lever additional guidance, support or resources from other networks and relationships.  Support networks and relationships can have a variety of purposes for the team.  Sample networks a team could connect to include:

–  Professional bodies relevant to the team’s roles and work.

– Partnerships or networks relevant to your area of work or your sector.

– Communities of  practice which are sources of professional or technical advice.

– Networking initiatives or industry events  for teams / professionals working in your field.

  • 3. Develop team member access to support and advice

Having a number of ways for you team to build their capability is vital to building team resilience in this area.   Even the best team leader cannot be be all things to all people and the sole source of support for the team .

Discuss and raise awareness within the team of different sources of support available to team members from both inside and outside the team.  This could include identifying such things as mentoring, training, coaching, debriefing support, technical and industry advice to support their access to wider networks.

  • 4. Take responsibility for building your own professional networks

Take time out in your team to discuss what knowledge, skill and support the team requires and work then on developing useful relationships with other individuals or organisations.

Sometimes, making small connections with different networks or sources of support can make a big difference for the team.  For example, when I worked as a CEO, informal coffee meetings with a fellow CEO I had met through a leadership network for our sector  was an invaluable connection offering ongoing knowledge and mutual support.

If leading a team, know where you can go to personally connect for support and encourage teams members to explore and build their support networks.

 

To learn more to help your team…

For additional information on how team resilience workshops, team resilience assessment and team coaching could work for your team, click here.

Source: Leading for Resilience Workbook, Kathryn McEwen, Working with Resilience

A Powerful Team Resilience Framework to Help Any Team

Posted on by Maire McGrath

Anyone who has led a team will recognise these ‘ 3 am and still awake’ signs:
• Mulling over that team problem
• Rewinding conversations with the team
• Phrasing emails you will compose on waking

This list could go on! What these signs are telling you is that you are most definitely under team strain. Hard-working team leaders can find it hard to recognise their own limits. They listen, absorb and try to resolve so many issues with so many.

These signs however are also warning signs that there could be a better way for everyone. Rather than a team leader simply gets better at navigating more, what if the team could?

What exactly is team resilience?

Team resilience – like individual resilience – is a layered and nuanced concept. The three key themes of resilience are:
i. Mastering stress
ii. Adapting to change
iii. Being pro-active

Our resilience can be challenged in many different ways. People and teams will also respond very differently to the same challenge. One of the best definitions of team resilience is:

‘‘The capacity of a group of employees to collectively manage the everyday pressures of work and remain healthy, adapt to change and be pro-active in positioning for future challenges.’ – Working with Resilience

A powerful framework to guide you and your team

We can delve even further below these key themes to explore the seven areas they cover which shape our team resilience at work (R@W); a teaser of the R@W 7 above!  In each of our next seven blog posts this month, we will unpack for you a vital factor of team resilience.

We want to spotlight what you and your team are already doing well for team resilience. We want also to offer you insights, tips and small steps to boost your team.  Later this week, we zone in on our first team resilience factor, the robust team!  Find out more from our next blog post on team resilience.

For more information on how we help overwhelmed teams build resilience, click here

Source: Leading for Resilience Workbook, Kathryn McEwen, Working with Resilience

 

 

 

10 Resilience Tips for Tough Times

Posted on by site_admin

COVID 19 for all of us is the ultimate unknown and with rapid and constant change, we can easily feel overwhelmed. Not only professionally from coaching but personally, I have always had an avid interest in resilience and how people weather through seriously rough times.

Here are 10 practical tips, some of which I hope will help you to stay resilient in what are surreal times:

  • Focusing on what can control, not what you can’t
    ​Our resilience is most impacted when we feel that we have no control. When we experience crisis without an internal focus on what we can do or how we can adapt, we start to falter and doubt our capacity to cope.
    ​
    Look at your own immediate world, what practical things can you do to get some sense of control? In COVID 19 times this could be as simple as preparing good food, cleaning routines and re-organising work and life logistics as much as you can.When self-isolating under lockdown, set yourself a ‘project’ to do. Doing something pro-active, no matter how small, helps you regain some sense of control to build resilience.
  • Reframing and creating some meaning
    Reframing is key to resilience and it’s simply linked to that quote ‘If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.’We already hear many people highlighting, even in this crisis, the opportunities for all of us to see/do something meaningful. This includes families spending time together at home, innovating new flexible ways of working or studying and a chance for all of us to pull together and support each other in our communities.

    Reframing can be powerful to view things through a different lens and act with a changed purpose.

  • Helping others
    ​In times of serious adversity, turning our attention to what we can do to contribute or helping someone else can also give us a feeling of purpose and meaning which improves resilience.We can do so many things for other people in these times.There are charities, local foodbanks or online community forums such as www.nextdoor.co.uk which you can link with to help neighbours and people in your community.
  • Taking a news break
    Be mindful of the amount of time you spend reading about, listening to, watching the news or browsing social media relating to COVID 19. Yes, it is absolutely vital to keep updated with public health information.However, if you are always immersed in it you run the risk of constantly thinking about it and very quickly becoming overwhelmed.Strike a balance and vary your attention to have a focus on other things and what you can do for yourself and others.
  • Keeping social connection
    Our lives have, for the time being, changed dramatically with social distancing, self-isolation and lockdown but this does not mean that we break social connection. We have so many ways we can still connect.Keep communicating whether it’s by phone, Skype or Zoom apps. Organise to have a group call with friends / family. If you know someone on their own, reach out and phone, email or message them. Another good way to feel more connected, especially if you are on your own, is tuning into local radio.

    A fantastic example here in NI is the U105 Lunchtime Bistro Show with Carolyn Stewart which is going the extra mile to reach out and connect us across the airwaves. We need each other’s company, however it comes, now more than ever.

  • Acknowledging your emotions
    We can reframe and be pro-active but to be aware of and acknowledge our natural emotions is also important. As well as talking with friends or family, there is another very effective way of processing how you feel with just simple pen and paper. Writing about how you feel by journaling can really help.Some of us may not want to confide in people close to us that we are feeling anxious as we want to appear strong or reassuring. However, we all need to process how we are and putting our feelings privately on the page can give us that emotional release valve.
  • Remembering your own strengths
    ​During big events, we can feel small and vulnerable. However, even in the toughest of times people can always amaze themselves. If you doubt your capacity to cope, just remember, reflect and note a really difficult time you had before and how you got through it.All us have skills, knowledge and qualities which we can dig into to keep ourselves going, remind yourself of yours.
  • Self-care and well-being
    We know and all need to strictly follow the public health messages. For resilience and well-being you also need to keep doing things you enjoy. For a lot of us, some of those things (e.g. such as going to the gym, bar or concerts) are not possible but there can be other ways to relax.It doesn’t matter what, whether it’s a long, hot bath, crafts, mindfulness, gaming, playing an instrument, writing, whatever it is, build it in. Doing small enjoyable things which distract you, reduces stress and boosts resilience.
  • Trying to be a ‘realistic optimist’
    People who are realistic optimists believe that even in the worst of times they can still do something to shape the outcome. They see the challenges but think about steps to deal with it.For example, I have my own business and like so many other self-employed people and businesses, we are on the ropes. However, even taking that first step to find out what is available to help your company or to just financially survive right now is starting to prepare.Being overly optimistic (i.e. sticking your head totally in the sand with ‘it will all be grand’ thinking) lessens resilience as when things do hit, you haven’t pre-empted anything to deal with it.
  • Raising your spirits with…
    Music, arts, culture, spirituality, inspiring stories or even remembering your granny’s wisest sayings can lift your mood. Watch your favourite film, listen to your most loved comedian, check out a TED talk or play those songs which always make you feel better.Wisdom, humour and some sense of light relief can truly help us through the darkest of times.If we forget what we value, love and makes us smile, we forget ourselves and what keeps us resilient.

​“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

Written by Maire Grattan, Director, FutureSpark Coaching

Cutting through the mystique of leadership

Posted on by Maire McGrath

Renee Quinn knows a lot about leadership. As Business Manager for Northern Ireland’s public sector Chief Executives’ Forum and overseeing the Women and Leadership programme, Renee sparks some refreshing ideas about where great leadership really lies…

What has been your own personal experience of seeing inspiring leadership in action?
A leader who I met quite recently, talked about improving the standard of quality control within his organisation and how his leadership skill drove that change, but what was most obvious to me was that he handled it in a compassionate, evidence-based and empathetic approach. He won over hearts and minds by approaching change on a small scale, which built trust, then he widened the scope, and over time systems started to change. Now, that particular organisation is an exemplar within the UK for quality control. I don’t think the term quality control does it justice, because what it actually comes down to was the vision that inspired that change and the leadership style used to achieve it.

The leader, in this particular case, transferred leadership to team members. He didn’t keep it within his own confines. He put himself into that vulnerable position and empowered his staff. You can tell the difference when you go to a meeting with any of his staff. They all display individual leadership; they absolutely live and breathe the strategy and the corporate values. Every decision they take will come back to that. They are very confident in their conversation about what will fit with their strategic aims and they are empowered to take decisions, which is fabulous, because they will come to a meeting trusted to be able to make that decision, so it doesn’t have to go back up the hierarchy again.

Obviously, this leader has said, ‘Listen, we’ve employed you to do this job; I’m going to trust you to do it to the best of your ability….now just get on and do it’. It’s the autonomy to act ethically within the corporate structure and his transference of power to front line staff that was very visible to me. It really did change the culture of that organisation in a relatively short space of time. So, I would say that he was a shining light and an exemplar of inspirational leadership in action. To me the key learning that I took from that experience was the trust and autonomy he bestowed on his staff and his demonstration of compassion when things didn’t go as planned, you knew he had their back. To me that empathetic leadership style gets the best from colleagues.

With your work supporting leadership development, which types of skills or leadership approaches need developed most?

Authentic leadership: I think there is a façade and a mystique around what leadership is. It’s not helpful when people see it as some mystic, god-like influence that they can’t grasp or aspire to achieve, when in fact it’s about recognising the leadership qualities in all of us.

I firmly believe there is a leader within every single one of us just waiting to be discovered and that’s where there is a responsibility with current leaders to spot those ‘glowing’ individuals and nurture them towards leadership positions.

Leadership is just not one thing and as a society, we need to recognise that leadership is not all about whether you are ‘Personality A’ type person or ‘Type B’, its more nuanced. I would like to see a conversation around leadership that values the more difficult parts of leadership skills, those softer skills, which is a misnomer in itself, because they are the hardest to achieve and they are not in the least bit easy to master. Rather than the dominant, autocratic style, which is still so widely evident, it’s around Emotional Intelligence and servant leadership. It’s about having empathy, showing vulnerability, being authentic and warm and not forgetting to have fun.

Some of my most productive work has been with teams where we’ve had a blast working under pressure, so fun is an all-important leadership ingredient as well. People come to work for eight hours a day and they want to enjoy what they do. If it feels like a grind, people become stressed and won’t enjoy the experience and they won’t give you the outcome your organisation desires and so not to have an eye on those skills, in my view, is folly.

I think that there needs to be a loosening of those 1950’s Taylorism leadership styles of command and control. That style does not work for the generation of workers that we have now or indeed the generation coming next. It might have worked in the industrial age but we now have knowledge workers who demand more from their work; as many treat work as an extension of their social networks. If you could unlock more emotionally intelligent traits it would go some way to address the mental health crisis that is sitting beneath the radar.

Allowing people to embrace their own projects and giving people the freedom to do so is very important. Those organisations which allow their employees to try new things and fail without consequences, I believe, are the most successful.

Creating the type of culture that allow employees to be creative in finding solutions is vital. It shouldn’t be about an organisation driving hard on innovation, I believe a leaders role within an organisation is to provide the optimum environment for employees to flourish, to allow employees to genuinely feel empowered to try something and fail and having the passion to give it a go without fear of repercussions.

It’s back again to structures: the rules and regulations of how things are done in an organisation. There needs to be more openness and honesty about the need for some rules. We need to have a conversation about what the rules and regulations are supposed to achieve and do they work for the majority of staff? There needs to be more honesty about the structural set-up of an organisation.

A great example of a leader turning an organisation on its head is Ricardo Semler from the Brazilian firm, SEMCO. He empowered employees to decide amongst themselves about how they worked, their time and environment were all decided by the staff. Staff were able to make informed decisions about their work because they were expertly trained in understanding the budgets and financial statements, so they could see the effect of their work on the bottom line and their job security.

I believe there also needs to be more bravery around challenging the status quo and asking those hard questions; such as why is it done this way? Could we do it better? Is it demotivating staff? Is it actually improving productivity or making a difference? Does it really matter where someone works or what times they work? The focus should be on the output and that’s what we should measure, otherwise you get presenteeism setting in.

Having worked across all sectors, what could each sector learn from each other in terms of leading effectively?

Having worked in each of the sectors and as a small region, I have found that’s there is such passion within each sector, enthusiasm and goodwill and I believe we are not harnessing that and pulling our intelligence together to make this a better region. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to develop a cross sectoral leadership programme with CO3. I recognised that the siloed approach to work needs to be debunked and I wanted leaders to walk a mile in the other sector’s shoes to be able to understand the commonalities that exist. I think you need to be able to get under the skin to understand what makes a CEO in the third sector tick compared to a CEO in the private and public sector. From my experience, what you’ll find is they are all coming from similar places of wanting to do the best for their organisations. So why don’t we therefore focus more on breaking down those barriers that hinder this process? In my opinion, it just requires a will to want to do so and to possibly relinquish some control. I think if we can get over that, there could be great things which could happen for the region and our citizens.

It’s also about leaders being curious, taking time to lift their head from the day-to-day grind, looking around them to see who they could collaborate with to help for the betterment of their organisation or society and this is where I think the draft Programme for Government has really helped to spark that conversation. The Programme for Government has given us the framework to work towards, so now the challenge is how do we do this? And who do we need to work with to make great things, that matter, happen?

Leaders need to recognise that power doesn’t just rest with them. They have to be curiously vulnerable to a certain extent and relinquish that power to achieve greatness. It’s a little bit about putting yourself into a more vulnerable position and acknowledging that you don’t know it all.

There’s also the possibility that you might lose power. You may not have the budget to do this type of work but as I see it, when you understand people’s values and they want to make it better, that’s as good a starting place as you’re going to get.

I believe values are what drive you to do a good job. If your job aligns closely with your values, it doesn’t seem as if you are going to work and that’s where passion is derived. If you truly and passionately believe something, you can convince people from a place of passion and that actually hooks people in.

What would be the most exciting or innovative step we could take to shape our local leadership for the future?

I would like to see leaders taking their sons or daughters to work for the day showing them what they really do, and how they are making a difference to their children’s future, or else what is the point of work? I would like to see them opening up their office environment to kids from underprivileged areas and for leaders to go out to schools and talk to children about self-esteem, resilience, believing, failing and talking about their leadership journey. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if leaders could go out and talk to children about what they think leadership is, what it looks like, and inspire each child to recognise that they have leadership abilities within themselves; daring them to dream ! This also helps to break down this concept of leadership being some ethereal skill that is unachievable for most.

I think this myth-busting is important because a lot of our society looks upon leaders as an elite that cannot be challenged and a leader is someone who just wields power. This is so vitally important, particularly, for our younger female generation who don’t see themselves as leaders and don’t recognise themselves as someone who could lead an organisation.

There is a well-used phrase: “You cannot be, what you cannot see” and it’s certainly one that has resonated with me. My personal goal is to change that concept for my children. I have endeavoured to make changes within my own work, by making gender equality a personal priority and have created several strands of new work to help address this trend.

I am currently very passionate about delivering the first pan-island conference on ‘Budgetary Impact Analysis: A Catalyst for Economic Growth’, which is really about making financial decisions based on what the evidence tells us; so I am excited to bring over leading experts so that we can learn from them over the year. Also over the year I have organised several round table discussions with senior female leaders to discuss how we can make more progress on women’s positions within Northern Ireland’s leadership levels and am currently very excited about the launch of a new, year long, Women’s leadership programme. I hope these initiatives go some way to addressing an increasing area of concern and I’m hopeful that my small part will assist in that improvement.

Another area which adds to shaping our future and which leaders can impact is when organisations are commissioning services, creating policy or in control of a budget, you need to go out and meet with those who are going to be affected by your decisions and have a discussion on the issue.

Getting out of the office and speaking to service users, say, in a mental health charity who are going to be affected by a certain approach is critical. That does not mean that you are going to shy away from taking those hard, budgetary decisions, but you have to leave your office and walk a mile in their shoes. If you can convince service users of your well-reasoned argument, you will have a group of people supporting your changes.

People don’t like things being done on them, they like to feel a genuine part of the decision-making process, which develops the trust that is required to make effective change stick and generally garners greater buy in. You need to convince society that it is the right approach. It’s back to your values again. If your values align to what you are trying to achieve your passion will shine and you can create that persuasive argument more readily. Your litmus test for that is going out to the people who are going to be affected and explain your rationale with passion and integrity. That type of honesty shines through and once you win people around, they can be your champions. It’s again about transferring that leadership to people within communities to transfer and actively champion that message more widely.

What leadership legacy would you like to leave behind?

I would like to be considered as an empathetic and understanding colleague who has the well-being of colleagues at heart. I would like to be seen as a compassionate team player and someone who is energetic in delivering on things that matter. I thrive on being curious and listening to others; I don’t have an ego about knowing everything. In fact, I am quite happy to admit that I know very little about some subjects; but I am always eager to learn and listen to those that do know and I enjoy listening to diverse opinions, which, I think helps me form better opinions and decisions.

Where my strength comes from is by listening to other people, learning about them and what they can bring to the table. I am there to get people around the table and connect them; I get a real buzz from collaborative work. Any of my previous colleagues would say that when I get involved in a project, I really give everything and get very passionate about it. That overspills then to connections with other people.

It’s also about not knowing everything, that cliché that ‘every day is a school day’ gets me up in the morning.

I think about what today is going to bring and what am I going to learn: what little gem or nugget can I learn from my next encounter and put into my treasure box? Ultimately I would like my legacy to have made a difference in some small way to make society and my children’s lives better. I don’t know what that is yet, but I’m eager to keep discovering and trying.

Leading your life, what sparks a sense of real personal fulfilment for you?

My family is my first true love. I have my husband, my two girls and my mother. My mother has always been a strong and supportive woman who really helped me to see from a young age, the art of the possible. She taught me to see the future as something better than what she had come through in Northern Ireland during the 1960s and 70s.

She painted a picture for me very early in life, that education was the pathway to success and diversity of thought was something to be embraced and to take pride in; she firmly believed that was the road to greater and better things.

She was my first encounter with a true leader and I think that’s an important point for parents to realise; that caregivers in those crucial early years have a strong influence on their children. The poem praising motherhood, “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Rules the World!” by William Wallace expresses this sentiment more eloquently, than I could ever do and is so appropriate for caregivers today.

With my family then, and especially with my two young girls, I am trying to recreate that for them. To always strive for better, to be curious, to not be afraid and to reach out for better things. The spark for me, is whenever my kids turn around and they inspire me with their work and the things they think, they are at the stage where they are forming their own little opinions about what they think. So it’s inspiring me, as I am now learning from them.

My husband is very supportive in everything that I do. When I went back to university and studied for my MBA, I had baby at 18 months and another one at three-years old, studying would just not have been possible without the support of my husband and my mother. So, they have always had my back and facilitated my escapades. So they would also be my spark, as I explore more ambitious adventures.

What also drives me is to try and make society and life easier for my children in the future. I want to try to improve things for the next generation coming through. So, I really put my heart and soul into breaking those barriers which exist for my kids and to try to make it, well not necessarily easier for them, but to make society kinder. That’s what I would aspire to change, to try to make society kinder for my two children.

How do you think coaching could assist in leadership development or living your life authentically?

Coaching to me is the person who has your back. Coaching helps you to find that little piece of quietness amidst the storm of work life, helping you to take stock and to lift your head above the trenches and stand still in the moment; they help you to recalibrate back to your values.

The coach is the person who helps you keep the equilibrium in your life, to bring you back when you are losing your head in a project or work environment.

They are a sounding board to actually bring you back to ‘why are you doing this?’ and bring you back to your values. They are integral to any great leadership journey.

Look at any sports athlete; they are surrounded by nutritionists, doctors, coaches and psychologists. Equally we have leaders in our region who really are athletes within their sector. We don’t, however, give them the same latitude to make mistakes and improve. We seem to think that once you are in a leadership position, you have all the answers and therefore why do you need to be surrounded by the right people. In our current culture it is seen as a sign of weakness to have a coach, whereas in top performing countries, it is an anathema to not have a coach.

This is back again to myth-busting about leadership. We seem to think that they should know it all or that they shouldn’t need any extra input. But if you look around at athletes or Olympians, there is acknowledgement that they need to be surrounded by good people. This helps keep your leader and your athlete healthy and well.

To my mind, our leaders are corporate athletes and they need to be surrounded by experts to help them and keep them performing at tiptop levels. It a lonely place, they can’t do it all and there needs to be an acknowledgement of that.

It’s about society recognising that leaders can be fallible. It’s also about leaders acknowledging and being vulnerable and seeing that they need to be surrounded by the right people to help in their quest. It’s about having a coach who challenges you, stretches your abilities and helps you to unpick the issues and repackage it and to go forward with energy.

One of the big things a coach can give you is energy, to know that you are on the right path and to continue doing what you are doing and to be your champion!

Author: Maire McGrath, Director, FutureSpark Coaching

What makes for great Board leadership?

Posted on by Maire McGrath

Eileen Mullan is founder of Strictly Boardroom a website that profiles boardroom vacancies across the public and third sectors.

As a Governance Practitioner Eileen supports boards and CEOs to maximise their boardroom effectiveness. Eileen is an advocate for the value diversity on Boards brings to decision making and believes fully in enabling and empowering others to take on board roles across the public and third sectors. She has nurtured and supported aspiring Non-Executive Directors, and Trustees , where they are now centrally involved in decision making across Northern Ireland. In doing this many boards have gained the valuable skills, knowledge and qualities required around their board table to make a difference.

Eileen’s current Non-Executive Director roles are: Chair of Age NI, Member of Northern Ireland Committee for the Big Lottery Fund, Health and Care Professions Council and Southern Health and Social Care Trust. She holds an MSc in Management and Corporate Governance and an IoD Diploma in Company Direction.

A champion for boardroom diversity, a believer in anything is possible, civilly partnered to Fidelma and a servant to four rescue dogs, Jake, Woody, JJ and Jess.

What for you builds positive leadership?

For me leadership is based on honesty, trust and respect. So, I have to see it, I have to feel it, I have to evidence it. When I don’t capture all of those in an individual, then I don’t recognise leadership.

We can have leaders that are not heads of parties, organisations, chief executives or managers. We have leaders everyday who get on with it and do their work, but they do it and inspire others and don’t even realise that they are doing it. Those are the ones which interest me most, the ones that don’t say to themselves ‘I am a leader’ but that it’s quite obvious that they are.

On ‘irresistible leadership’

Recently I came across the concept of ‘irresistible leadership’. It’s when a leader gets people – their hearts, minds, hands – behind a cause to give their absolute best. When have you experienced or seen irresistible leadership?

In the simplest format and I’ll expand upon what I mean by that. There was a situation a few years back where a government minister made a decision to close NHS residential homes for older people. There was one older lady who went on the radio and told her story. I think here name was Betty. She told her story in such a powerful way that it was a very simple story; that this was her home. This was her home, this was her stuff, nowhere else is her home. She put the call out the minister that if he wanted to close the home, he could come and talk to her. By that phone call and that conversation what she did was that she got a forcefield of people behind her. That meant that the minister had no choice, no choice but to change his course of action. That’s a very simple thing. For me what that lady did was put her heart out there. She told exactly how she felt as a result of someone making a decision about her, without involving her in it at a very simple level.

At another level, you have your organisations and causes that tug at people’s hearts, whether that be cancer, whether it be children or animals etc. Then you see those individuals who have had an experience of some kind. They have been able to enrol and engage a wide range of people to bring about change. They might have done it on the basis ‘I’m not too sure what the path is’ but they’re clear on what the change needs to be. You see how they have been able to slowly build this mountain of people behind them to say ‘You know what, we need to bring about change’ and they’ve done it.

On the other side of this you have what I would refer to as bad leadership based on manipulation and coercion. If you have a cause for example that I am interested in, I should be a willing participant which means that it’s my decision to join it. The leader’s role is to enable me to do this and identify where I can play my part. You allow me that space to enable it to happen but you don’t say ‘You’re coming and this is what you are doing.’

It is something in the language of leadership that is not spoken about very often. It can be exactly like that…

That’s a space I find incredibly uncomfortable and I will avoid it all costs. That brings me back to the trust, the respect and the honesty. Because if I am in a room and I’m fighting for a cause and if I am not greeted with honesty, trust and respect, I know there’s no point. Time to leave. I have to then think who do I need to talk to next because it’s quite obvious that people I’m trying to engage don’t want to be engaged. Their engagement will be at their own level of benefit.

I sometimes get frustrated at politics here, so much seems to be about horse trading and saying what others do badly instead of what they do well. I do appreciate that Parties represent a constituency of the 1.8million people in Northern Ireland – that voters have expectations of those they elect.

Negotiating is an aspect of being in government in determining priorities but I don’t see enough leadership that is about the greater good of the whole population. I don’t see leadership based on trust, respect and honesty – maybe that’s just politics but politicians are called leaders, so I would like to see more of those qualities in the way they govern.

Personally, what have been your best times and most challenging times in leadership?

That’s honestly a difficult one to answer because you know, I would see leadership from how others would view it. How others might view my leadership might not be how I view it. Yes, I am told for example that I am an exceptionally good Chair. I am told that what I was able to do was pull a group of people together to be clear on what their role was and to deliver on fully for an organisation. I was able to do that without having to drag anybody, they were all very willing participants. I was clear on this is what we were there to do. Now, all I felt that I did was go in and did a bit of re-organisation but that was good leadership.

Yes, but that’s not how I viewed it. Now, I walk into meetings, whether that be a public level or a third sector level and put positions on the table and be very clear, articulate and negotiate to a point, that’s viewed as leadership. I view that as a conversation to get an outcome. That conversation is about how I can ensure that people are hearing the message that I am giving and the message needs to be clear. I suppose this goes back to when you asked me about this interview and you pitched it on the basis of me as leader and I took at breath at that as I wouldn’t envisage myself as a leader. But I get it as there are things that I do, and I may do them in a very soft, not-in your face way, but there are many things that I do which is leadership.

The TEDx Talk for example, that was about me being able to speak for 14 minutes without a piece of paper. I also had to get a strong message across not just for the people in the room that night but for a wider audience. That was me putting my head above and putting myself in a space to be criticised and be challenged.

On thought leadership…

The best conversations I have had is when I start out and go ‘I’m not sure what this might look like, but here’s my idea and I think there’s a role for us all to play and I would love to hear what you think about it.’

And those are the best conversations I would have. When I walk in and say ‘Here it is!’, it doesn’t work. You know, you learn this as you go. It’s about being self-aware and I am incredibly self-aware. I analyse, analyse and analyse myself and do the critique afterwards and go, ‘what did I miss?’ which I will probably do this afternoon!

I would get asked a lot for advice. I think it’s lovely and sometimes I wonder, why on earth are they asking me? Now in one regard, I say it as it is and I’m very direct and direct in a nice way. To think that people would want to pick up the phone and say ‘Listen Eileen, I need your advice…’ is an incredibly humbling experience. And, you know, this is where I find leadership extremely difficult as most leaders like to showcase themselves. They love the fact that someone calls them a leader, and a ‘thought leader’ and all that stuff, they love that. What was the term you used earlier on, that new one, ‘irresistible leadership’? I am sure that they would fall over themselves at that but that’s not my style.

So, when I was talking to you earlier about the people who do it, you know I am one of those. Sometimes I put my head up, and then I get a knockback and I have to go and lick my wounds. Then I have to look at what happened, try and assess it and come up with a strategy of how I ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

Are you not?

No, not a joiner. And the reason that I’m not a joiner is that I find it’s very much about ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’. How I do business is that if my work is good and you want me, then fine but I won’t coerce you in a networking event to give me the chance do something. For me, that’s not leadership, but for loads of leaders, that’s how they interpret leadership because they are able to wheel and deal.

Leadership is about people, fundamentally about people. If you can’t motivate people, then you’re not clear on your message and it’s not going to happen.

How necessary do you think it is for a leader to nail their values to the mast and be clear about what they stand for?

It’s imperative. I wouldn’t accept it any other way. If their values are not evident, it’s just a non-starter really. I have on many occasions put my trust in people and to find out that it has been abused. And you talk about emotional intelligence and you talk about self-awareness, there’s two ways that that can go. It makes you very hard and sceptical of other people and cynical. Or, you guard yourself and you will be very clear about who you will and will not work with and just not rule everybody out.

So, I need to do a test on values before I engage in conversations. What I was finding was people wanted information, they took that information. Where I was offering the opportunity for collaborative working, they were quite willing to have that conversation on collaborative working to the point that they wanted to go it alone and take it with them. So, that hurts. You’re not meeting values with values. So, what I had to do then was to make sure that I was seeing the values really early on before I would start to engage.

Are values a litmus test for you?

Yes, it is, and if it doesn’t, or is not evident for me I would give it a bye ball. It’s not worth it for me personally: I’m not going to compromise my integrity or my self-worth for somebody who won’t reciprocate the values.

I just see too many people in leadership positions where they believe in their leadership position but they are there for the wrong reasons. It’s a bit like Boards, people go on a board just to be on a board. Or they go on a Board because it passes the time for them. Or they go on the board of an organisation because the cause interests them and they actually want to contribute. The latter one is the one you want. The other two are not. And in many Boards, there’s too much of the first one because they are on for all the wrong reasons. And when I have conversations with government about the challenges with their arm’s length bodies, it comes down to trust and respect. If you have the right people sitting around the table for right reason and there is trust and respect between a department, a minister and a Board, you wouldn’t have a problem. But sometimes what we have are egos: ‘I don’t like what he’s saying or she’s saying, so I’m going to do something about it’ and then its fighting within, about power struggles rather than delivering for the citizens.

I think we have a natural tendency here of not being able to recognise or not to understand what leadership actually is. It can be as simple as the person on the bus who tells the guy to stop doing something to the person beside them. It’s very simple, nothing fancy about it!

What insight would you give to someone who is an emerging leader just stepping into a new role which you think would be most useful for them?

Don’t be afraid. Making mistakes is OK. Making mistakes and not putting your hand up is not OK. Making mistakes is OK and then do something about it. It’s a cycle, you have to be self-aware when you are doing it. Emotional intelligence, deal with it when it goes right and wrong and then understand that it’s not just you on your own. There are other people you have to engage with and how you treat them with honesty, trust and respect will reflect on your leadership.

Leading your life, what has sparked for you the most sense of personal fulfilment?

I would say honestly since I had my kidney transplant, that it has given me a level of confidence that I did not have before. When I allowed myself to talk about it, I realised that it was OK to talk about it. Because what I was doing was triggering thoughts for other people and I realised it was one of the most powerful things I had to share. I’m not one for talking about me.

So, I suppose there are a few aspects to it. I had this new dynamism of energy as physically I was able to do more and the smog had cleared in the head as a result. So, then I was able to do more, so when the opportunity came up, I said yes. I said yes to everything. I allowed myself then to be open to opportunities, events and people that popped up. Each of those then triggered another step and another road to do something else. Every bit of that built confidence.

Would confidence have been directly related to your condition and how you were feeling before the transplant or would it have been a wider thing?

I think probably a wider thing. I can appear extremely confident: It appeared in TEDx that I wasn’t shaking in my boots but you know, you do that; you get those first few minutes and then you get it over with and then you’re on a roll. But you know from a confidence perspective, and this comes back to being on your own as self-employed, I had nobody there telling me if it was doing it right or wrong. That’s a very lonely place to be. Sometimes I just needed somebody to tell me ‘Actually Eileen, you know what, that was spot on…’ Or that I could be tweaking it differently. So, from a confidence perspective, I had to build that up myself. But, my interventions are interventions and my observations of others have enabled me to do that as well.

I heard a guy who was up here talking about 10 or 15 years ago, about those three things you know opportunities, events and people here. You know, you can stand in a bus station and not talk to anyone or you can stand at the bus station, smile and say hello. And that conversation can trigger something else. Or for those few moments at least, you have created a human interaction and that in itself has value.

There are people out there who are leaders and who have not got the ability to interact with people. They are in a position that gives them the leadership role and they will believe they are leader. Their understanding of leadership is the position. But the position alone does not reflect leadership.

People can walk over people very quickly. What was it somebody said, always be nice to people on your way up as you will meet them on your way down? There is a lot of it out there and I suppose this is why I shun joining. For me it can feel wrong because of the culture that comes with it.

When you have had a significant event in your life, it wakes you up. It doesn’t make you immortal, but what it says is that you take every day as it comes and you just make the most of it.

So, for me there’s no need for being a controlled by structures anymore and I would have been very structured. I am still structured and organised but now I enjoy more of ‘let’s just see where this goes.’

It’s goes back to what you said earlier about how you start your best conversations…

And I’ve stopped having those other conversations where I would identify ‘I have…’ I don’t have. I have got maybe an idea that I can talk to you about to see what you have and we can maybe put that together. People jockeying for position, from a leadership perspective, that’s somebody who feels the need in the room to the be ‘the one’. Then it’s very evident that trust, honesty and respect might not be there as they are coming at it from the wrong place.

How would you see coaching assisting in people in their leadership or lives?

It needs not to be too structured or formal. It could be a phone call one day and a Skype call the next week or it could be a quick text. It doesn’t have to be this thing that it looks and feels that it sounds like counselling. For me it’s always about enabling people. People already have the solutions, they just can’t see it so I help them to get rid of the fog. You’ve got to be honest, no ‘flaff, flaff, flaff’, there’s just way too much of it.

I was a mentor for Politics Plus ‘Women in Leadership’ programme. Some of the women were outstanding in what they achieved in a short window of time. They move jobs, got promoted, and changed their life. For me, all I did was that I met with them three times and we had a conversation and I turned around and said ‘What are you talking about, that’s nonsense’ or question them, ‘Is that what you want to do? What are you doing? What are you doing to get it?’

There needs to be more of programmes like this and people being able to access support based on trust, honesty and respect.

There are people out there who don’t realise that they are leading every day and who don’t realise that they’re doing outstanding work. Every day they’re doing great stuff and they don’t know it – the silent leaders.

To learn more about Eileen’s work supporting Board development and leadership, click on her website Strictly Boardroom 

Author: Maire McGrath, Director, FutureSpark Coaching

A masterclass in resilience from Clodagh – #beatinglockedin

Posted on by Maire McGrath

We hear stories where after a life-shattering event a person navigates huge obstacles with incredible resilience and a breath-taking determination to live life positively to a ‘new normal’. The remarkable recovery journey of Clodagh Dunlop supported by her partner Adrian Simpson is one such story.

In April 2015, Clodagh, a PSNI Officer from Magherafelt, at the age of 35 suffered a massive brain stem stroke which led to her experiencing locked-in syndrome for three months. As a Life and Leadership Coach with a specific focus on resilience coaching, I was truly delighted to have the opportunity to interview Clodagh and Adrian.

Two years on from her stroke, Clodagh and Adrian share their experience, insights and how they now live life as a result.

Clodagh, can you summarise the big milestones in getting to this point from the initial brain stem stroke which resulted in locked-in syndrome?

I took a what’s called a mini stroke (TIA) while I was on duty on the Wednesday night prior to Easter Monday. I went to hospital, they carried out checks but what they explained it was possibly fatigue as I was working a lot of shifts. I spent the weekend in Scotland with my partner Adrian. He was at a police rehabilitation facility as he had been in a road traffic collision and hurt his back. I spent the weekend with him. I generally didn’t feel great all weekend but nothing untoward happened all weekend.

It was Easter Monday, I felt completely fine, so fine that I decided that I would run as I love running. I got up like any other day and put on my clothes to go for a run. I was going to run to the Ponderosa which is the highest pub in Ireland and 13 miles from my house. When I looked out, the sun was shining in through the windows and I could see that the rain had left them all dirty. So, I went inside, put on my flip-flops, went outside, sang and cleaned the windows and decided that I would run 13 miles tomorrow. But, little did I know that tomorrow I would be on life support fighting for my life.

It was that evening then that I sat on the sofa and ate an Easter egg. I see my sister arrive at my house and I thought ‘This is a real pain, I’m going to have to get up off the sofa and open the door!’ As I ran to open the back door, I suddenly felt really unwell, that death was upon me. I could barely make it to the back door. As I opened the door I said to her ‘Call an ambulance please, I’m not joking, I’m not joking!’ as I collapsed to the ground. She would always say that I just sounded like a garbled mess more like ‘Ruarrgh.’ She phoned an ambulance. By the time the paramedics arrived, I was back to normal again, fit and healthy.

I went to Antrim A&E, waited there and said ‘I think I’m having a stroke.’ But again, everything about me didn’t look as if I was. As with mini strokes, when you have a TIA the psychical symptoms can disappear. By the time I presented at hospital, my speech had returned to normal, the weakness I had experienced had gone. I sat there looking fit and healthy.

As I waited, my condition started to deteriorate, then I took a massive seizure and felt as if I did die. My sister was screaming. I felt I had died only she screamed and shouted and hit my face and brought me back. I had a massive seizure. I remember the seizure completely. It’s strange, when you have a seizure you are aware of it all. I was aware of everyone in the room. I can remember the nurse, blonde hair and her fringe and her shouting at me, ‘Clodagh, what drugs are you on?’ and I wanted to shout that ‘I’m not on drugs, I’m not on drugs.’ She was saying ‘Stop that, stop that’ as I was writhing on the bed being sick. Then everything went black.

They put me in a medically induced coma. They didn’t know what was wrong with me. For the first few hours they thought maybe I had meningitis. It was several hours later when they scanned me they realised I had had a stroke. I had a weakness in my artery in my neck, in the weakness a pocket formed. In that pocket, the blood formed a clot. I had been exposed to at work and at home were little spurs of that clot dispersing to the brain, so I was having mini-strokes. In the hospital, a large blood clot dispersed into the brain stem.

As they were not sure what it was initially and were treating me for meningitis, parts of my brain were starved of oxygen. Parts of my left side of my brain started to die which is why now my right side has the weakness. I had a procedure – a relatively new procedure – a thrombectomy. Normally that procedure is carried out in a four-hour window but the procedure carried outside of the four-hour window. Undoubtedly, that procedure saved my life. It’s not carried out in many hospitals in the UK but it’s now becoming more commonplace. We want it to be more available to everyone.

When you came round, you describe Clodagh how you were totally aware. What was that like?

Absolutely. You can hear everything, see everything, feel everything. All your senses are there but you simply can’t move. I’ve always said that I was a silent observer to the world around me like no-one knew I was there but I was there. You could feel every ache, every pain, you could see all the nurses scurrying past.

When they told me that I had had the stroke, there were so many questions you want to ask. I simply however had to just lie there and listen. One of things when someone said to me ‘You’ve had a stroke’ I wanted to ask ‘Well what type of stroke have I had?’ A stroke normally affects one side but there I was completely paralysed. I remember initially feeling really angry because I thought ‘I told them, I told them I was having a stroke but nobody listened.’ So, I felt angry but I also felt a great sense of satisfaction that ‘I can’t wait to tell them that I was right.’ I am the type of person that I do like to be right! I was lying contented that I was right. Later was to prove after months lying locked in that I didn’t like being right.

I knew what I had was no ordinary stroke because when I woke up, I remember thinking, ‘What’s going on? Where am I?’ I always say it’s like being on a spaceship because ICU is all machines, all the beeps and everyone scurrying about. I heard nurses with a Belfast accent. I was in hospital, I knew I had not died, I was in intensive care. Belfast accents made me realise that I was in Belfast not Antrim. A nurse spoke to me and told me that I was in The Royal.

It was surreal just knowing you were in intensive care as I realised I must be very ill. I could feel that I was ventilated. I could feel the tubes in my mouth. But one of the first things I realised is that I could feel this tube in my mouth but my tongue is pressed on my teeth. I realised that I can’t move my tongue off my teeth. I realised that my tongue wouldn’t move at all. I remember then looking down and realising that I couldn’t move my head, but I could move my eyes. I looked down and saw lots of drips and machines hooked to me. It was then I realised how bad my condition was.

I do remember thinking that I must be quite ill but I had a real curiosity. I thought then that I must be going to live because it was realising too that my family weren’t there. Because, if I was going to die, my family would be there sitting by my bedside. I remember then thinking what time of the day is it and trying to strain to see a clock. I realised that it was early in the day and that they would not be visiting. I had to go for scans.

The first day I was in incredible pain and I remember feeling like my body had shut down. You could hear people discussing with others – as my body was in spasms – trying to work out whether I was having seizures. I remember thinking with the pain, this is so strange.

That evening my partner arrived. He asked me ‘Clodagh are you there?’ and asked me to blink once for yes. I remember looking at him and thinking, I can’t get this wrong; I need him to know that I am here. I closed my eyes, shut them really tight, counted to three, opened them and remember looking at him and seeing him really happy saying ‘I knew you were there!’ Straight away we worked out a system of blinks.

You spent three months Clodagh like this. One day, as you say, is a long time being locked-in. How did you keep yourself going?

When I got the first movement I think people misunderstand. When I broke out, there was no functional movement and I could barely make a sound. When I went to Musgrave after 6 weeks in the Royal, it took months and months for me to being able to press the nurse call button. We got a button with an audio recording that said ‘Hello it’s Clodagh here, can you help me?’ I could turn and hit that with my head. Nights were terrifying. Unlike you, if you were in hospital and you needed help, you could just hit a button. Suddenly I became aware just how vulnerable I was because I could not or press a button or shout for help.

But I would say that I was able to explore my own memories, relive my own life vividly, visit my memories from my childhood. I had travelled a lot. I was able to recall places almost more vividly than at the time I was visiting them. I could remember the smells, the sights, the sounds and would just close my eyes and lose myself.

Adrian and I had travelled down southern Africa before I had taken ill. I can remember the red sands of the Namib desert. Initially, when I had my stroke, my temperature gauge broke. They were concerned that I was going to die with heat stroke and I could hear them say that. I just took myself to remember everywhere I had been and travelled which was exceptionally hot. I would lie there and dream of the Namib desert and remember how the sands were under my feet. I’d remember I’d travelled round Ayres Rock. I have been in Cambodia teaching and remember the classroom being stifling hot. I would lie back and remember all those times where I had been places which were exceptionally hot. It was strange, I could almost remember the colours and the heat more vividly than at the time I was there. I could conjure up the sounds.

I would play my own life like movies in my head. I would spend time with what I would call my favourite memories.

How did that all help?

I had to do it. I knew myself, I would think of people and how they survive ordeals. I could not lose my mind. Also, as police officer, you are always taught about fight or flight and people’s responses either are fight or flight. I thought that, well, flight isn’t me so I am going to fight whatever this is. So, I went into my memories to keep myself sane. I had no television, I had no music so I could not pass time like you might in hospital watching television or reading a book. I had no stimuli so I knew it was up to myself to keep myself occupied so I would relive memories over and over again. It was like a rerun of my favourite movies, I would just rewind and start again from the beginning.

What did you learn about yourself as you reflected on everything in your life?

It was one thing I would say is that before I took ill, I always thought that I was never good enough at anything I did. I always wanted to be better. I had the time to look back and realise in fact I was quite brilliant. I always thought that I don’t run fast enough. As I lay there I thought, I did run fast enough. I thought I should have done better at work as I always wanted to do well. But as I came to lie there I thought, well actually, I did do a wonderful job. You have the time to reflect.

Most people don’t realise how terrific they are and appreciate all they have in their life. Suddenly I lay there and realised what a wonderful life I had had and didn’t actually appreciate it fully.

 

Adrian and Clodagh, before locked-in and after locked-in, what has changed in how you approach and see life?

Clodagh: I think that I appreciate every little thing now. As I said, there was a point where I couldn’t press a button or brush my own hair. When I had an itch on the end of my nose, I couldn’t scratch it. I appreciate every little small thing now like every day when I can get up out of bed, brush my hair, brush my teeth, make a cup of tea and just go to work.

On a Monday morning, when I drive to work, I am probably the only person in the country who drives in smiling! I am sure a lot of people think that I’m crazy because I drive in. I had to learn to drive in a different way. I hobble in and everything is a huge effort to get to work. I really appreciate that I can do it, that I could still be locked in. I feel that I have been given a second chance of life. We just now live every day to the full.

Adrian: I think before you could kind of just go with the flow in a lot of things. You could get wrapped up in your job and your life and making choices but you’re not really making choices; you’re just kind of doing the things that happen day to day. You just go along with things. You do get very burdened down and very stressed with work and life and all the rest of it. I think now, after what happened Clodagh, we do make choices now.

How conscious are you now Adrian about the choices you both make?

Adrian: We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do. We actually will make the decision, ‘No we don’t want to do that.’ Instead it’s now this is what we want to do, this works for us. We take everything now at our own pace. There’s a little bit of acceptance of Clodagh now has disabilities. After a while, you have to come to terms with that this is different. A while ago we talked about the new normal.

This is now our life. This is the way we live. It’s not that it’s different than before, it’s the way it is now. We’ve accepted that and we enjoy it. We’re making the choices now doing the things we like and about doing the things that we want to do. There were times before when you felt obligated to do a lot of things. Your job can put a lot of pressures on you and you would feel obligated to do all these things.

Personally, now, I feel less obligated to anything. I feel very much that life’s thrown this at us, we didn’t ask for it, we didn’t choose to have it. So, everything we did prior to this didn’t change anything, this happened. I think now personally, I do make very conscious decisions about what I would like to do, where I would like to go, the time I would like to spend on things. I feel better because not much has changed but that I am doing what I choose to do.

It’s a very powerful thing in itself.

Adrian: It’s kind of how you accept things.

Clodagh: For me, I feel that my biggest achievement to date has been acceptance. I have to accept that it has happened, I can’t change it. Most people with serious illness or life changing illness or bad things happen to them, one of the biggest things to conquer them is accepting that it has happened.

Adrian: We have done that now and said let’s move on from here.

A lot of people find that incredibly difficult to do.

Adrian: When these things happen and from other people that I’ve met through this, there is a mourning period. Like a death, there are stages of mourning. Everybody goes through it and if you don’t go through it, you’ll never let go. You must let go as everything that you’re doing, you’re doing differently. You do make choices to do it. It is different than it was before but you have to let go.

You mentioned this Clodagh, allowing the time to be sad on that day, the anniversary when it happened.

Clodagh: I think when bad things happen, you’re allowed to feel angry and upset but you can’t dwell on them. It’s about allowing yourself to be angry and a little bit sad on the anniversary when it happened.

Adrian: It’s part of it. It’s like the anniversary of my mother’s death. On the day of her death every year, you’ll be little bit solemn and think about her and miss her.

Clodagh: I think it’s one thing people sometimes feel bad for being upset or angry. They feel that they must always be happy and positive but no it’s fine, you’re allowed to be sad. It’s OK to be angry but then move on from that. You can be angry and be sad and then it is a question of rechannelling that energy somewhere else.

Adrian: You’ve got to move forward.

What message or insight would you most like to share with other people who are struggling to overcome a problem in their life?

Adrian: Stop looking at the top. We have a new baseline where we started from two years ago so we never looked too far into the future. We didn’t look too far into the past either as we had that baseline. So, all the positive changes that happened were coming from way down at that new baseline. We can see improvements that we made. Because we are not looking at the top of the mountain, we don’t know how far there is to go.

You can take your positive feelings by last month this was different. This month we’re maybe walking a bit better, a bit further on the beach than a couple of months back. That is a real improvement. That brings us a little bit of happiness each time.

Clodagh: I think one of the big things is don’t compare yourself to other people. Just ensure that you as a person enjoy your day. If you enjoy your day, it doesn’t matter what somebody else is doing whether they are running faster or if they have a bigger house. Just as long as you personally enjoy your day and do what makes you happy.

Adrian: You know, recovery does – everyone talks about the recovery plateau – well, I don’t know if I will get any better. Little things do change: it’s the day to day things. I will come home from work and Clodagh will say to me ‘I walked around the house brilliantly today. It was just for half an hour but there was a period when like, that was really good. I was standing at the kitchen counter and reached for an apple and put my right arm out.’ It’s all snippets and we know that there is not going to be momentous change now. Everything is very gradual. There’s little changes all the time.

Clodagh: I think one of the great things to now is that all the time you want miracles to happen. A lot of people would say to me that I am a miracle. I would say yes, that I had survived, that part is a miracle but everything else has been hard work. I have worked really hard, three to four hours a day every day.

If  both of you were to describe your view of resilience, what makes resilience?

Clodagh: Don’t expect miracles. If you want something, you have to work at it. I knew that if I was going to talk again, that wasn’t going to magically happen, you have to work at it. It was going to take hours, months and weeks.

So, like everything in life, if at first you don’t succeed, keep at it, keep trying and don’t give up.

If I want to run again, it’s knowing that it won’t happen overnight. If I keep working and working and putting the effort in, it will lead to it. The big thing is accepting that there is only so much other people can do for you. It’s a personal responsibility. I think that I have to go out to the gym and work. Adrian can help me, physicians can help me, everyone I need will help me but I have to personally want to do it myself. If I don’t get up and do it, Adrian can’t make me do it.

Adrian: You have your goals. The focus is not running. The focus is today and getting to the gym to walk along the treadmill, that is the focus. You don’t lose focus. If you think of what she’s doing today and what her goal is, it’s so far away, you just might think, why bother? That’s too far and that will never to happen. So, you don’t think like that. You think that’s the goal, not the focus. If you are walking on the treadmill at level 1 today, the focus next week is that you’ll be walking at 1.5. It’s incremental. It is that shaving the door: you don’t notice the difference taking off little bits of wood but eventually you will.

It’s the same when I work with people coaching. The goal can appear big and ‘over there’. You need to take it step by step as some days are better than other. The focus is on each step.

Clodagh: You have to not be afraid of failure, don’t be afraid of failing.

Adrian: Yes, like smashing your teeth off the floor! (laughing).

Clodagh: I smashed front tooth and have a chip in my front tooth as I have fallen many times but don’t be afraid of failing. Pick yourself up and just give it your best.

Adrian: The other thing I also have to do as a carer is that I have to let Clodagh fall. You know, it’s like a mother and toddler thing, you can see the fall coming but you think ‘I hope she doesn’t hurt herself!’ And she does fall, and you go ‘Are you alright?’ and the answer is ‘Yeah, yeah!’ And you know she’ll learn from it.

Adrian, how do you avoid the temptation in a carer role to ‘fix’ or ‘rescue’?

Adrian: You see young mothers, often called helicopter Mums hoovering around their child constantly. The child doesn’t learn anything. It’s that as a carer, you have to stand back. I know Clodagh wants to get up and run out here and to be honest, if I let her, she would try it!

We go for long walks on the beach. She’ll go a that little bit further and I ask her ‘Are you up for this today?’ Clodagh will answer ‘Yes, absolutely’. As long as we have walked on that beach, we have never reached halfway. You’ve got to keep that in your head, you’re never halfway until you turn around. So, Clodagh will walk, walk and walk and I’ll go ‘Turn around now.’ And I know that you’re nearly busted: we’re halfway and then we’ll start to walk back. Then before we hit the car Clodagh will say ‘I’m busted!’ And you think, now she’s knows her limits that she can go halfway and has a better understanding of her abilities. But if I am constantly telling her, ‘We need to turn around now’, Clodagh wouldn’t know or learn limits for herself. It’s something Clodagh sets and does herself.

Clodagh: It’s nice to push your limits. Every time you push your limits you get new limits. It’s the same with the driving. I found at the start I could only drive a short distance. I might drive to Antrim. Last weekend I drove as far to Newcastle and back again and that was three hours.

Adrian: We would go out in the car and I would take the passenger seat. When it would get to the point Clodagh would say, ‘I’m tired, I can’t do this anymore’ and I would say ‘At least you know how far you went.’ And Clodagh would know how far she could drive and her limits. I would then just drive the car back again. We have just built it up and built it up. Clodagh will now say ‘I’m just going ahead here.’ As a carer, it’s easier for me as I know that Clodagh when driving alone sees her limits. If Clodagh wants to push her limits, we’ll do it together. I say, ‘I know you can safely do this, if you want to do more, let’s do more together.’

Clodagh: That’s been a huge part of my recovery. Adrian has been really helpful as with every problem I faced, he will always find a solution. It may not be the solution you choose. Initially in Musgrave hospital, I wanted to go to the beach to see the sea. All my therapists and nurses, everybody said no. But eventually, the top consultant, said ‘Yes, if she wants to go, she can go.’ But I couldn’t at that point do car transfers. I could barely sit up in my wheelchair. Adrian said right, if he’s allowing you to go, I’ll take you.

Adrian got in my wheelchair. My legs spasmed at that time so we didn’t know how to keep them strapped down. He bought industrial Velcro. He stuck my feet to the footplate of the chair. I couldn’t drink normal fluids as I couldn’t hold them in my hand. He took a special cup and brought the fluids thickener with him in a bag. He wheeled me on to the train. We took the train from Musgrave to Portrush. Every problem has a solution. So maybe I wouldn’t have wanted my feet stuck to the wheelchair but it’s what we had to do to get there.

Adrian: We thought if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes because we wanted to go to the seaside.

Clodagh: We got to Portrush station. Adrian bought an ice-cream and held the ice-cream for me.

Adrian: We brought the nurses back sticks of rock!

Clodagh: When everybody looks at the photos of me and my first trip to the seaside, they think ‘Oh that’s lovely!’. What they don’t actually see is that I couldn’t sit up in a wheelchair. I couldn’t speak. I kept falling over in the train as I had no core control. I was incontinent, my legs kept spasming, I couldn’t drink normal fluids. I could barely hold an ice-cream cone. Adrian was my team mate. I was willing to do lots of things just to get there and so was he.

The choice was hospital or beach. I was way happier with the beach.

How did you feel afterwards? What difference did the trip make?

Clodagh: It was a wonderful part of our recovery. It’s why I didn’t remain in hospital as long as I thought. Effectively, Adrian was my teammate. Together, there was nothing we couldn’t do. Everyone says that I am very determined as a person. I am very determined. However, when you are completely paralysed and can’t talk, you can be as determined as you want to be but you’re going to need someone to help you. Adrian has been that determined person beside me always. No matter what I wanted to be, he would work a way out and find a solution. And I think that is being a policeman: knowing that you have to, you can’t run away from anything, you must find a solution. It might not be a solution that you would choose but it moves things forward.

Clodagh, you had three big goals, return to work, driving and running. Two down and one to go. What else would you see looking forward, for both of you, which gives you a sense of expectation and joy?

Clodagh: I am looking forward to next month we are going to Barcelona for our birthdays. We don’t look too far ahead but I am really looking forward to that. I am looking forward to the small things in life. I enjoy my nephews and nieces. I look forward to spending time with them.

In many ways, I think I have changed a lot as a person. Before I took ill, if I saw children running and screaming or being mischievous, I would think, ‘Could you not get them to sit down?’ Now I get real pleasure in watching kids and people busying about, talking and running and shouting.

Nobody is promised their tomorrows so do enjoy today. You don’t know what’s out and around the corner or what’s going to happen. Some things you just can’t do today, for example you might save up for a holiday. Don’t be putting everything off for years and years. If it’s something you really want to do, just make it happen.

Clodagh: I find real pleasure in other people’s happiness. When I see other people smiling and happy, that gives me real pleasure. I know that a day can bring a lot of change. Maybe tomorrow something bad will happen. So, when I see a family passing and smiling I think, ‘That’s lovely, they’re happy.’ That makes me happy.

Follow Clodagh on social media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clodaghbeatinglockedin/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clodaghbeatinglockedin/

Author: Maire McGrath, Director, FutureSpark Coaching

Call us or use our online form

+44 7704 507 485 Contact Future Spark
Resilience at Work Accredited User Association for Coaching
'