Published in Kingstown College Coaching Magazine 2020/2021
from the beginning our staff, like the rest of the world, were plunged into a “VUCA” situation
Rose Curtis, a Clinical Nurse Manager in Occupational Health and Wellbeing, has provided invaluable support to colleagues and peers throughout the past year. Here she reflects on the significance of using coaching tools in supporting coaching conversations.
Everyone had a unique experience of life in 2020, living their personal and sometimes professional Covid-19 pandemic story, and I am honoured to share mine with you.
As a healthcare professional who worked part-time until March of this year, I had what I felt was a perfect balance of working four days a week in a hospital in an Occupational Health and Wellbeing setting and one day a week starting a coaching business and training for the London marathon on the side. The ultimate five-year plan was to reduce my occupational health hours and grow my coaching hours in the area of coaching middle management in healthcare. Covid-19, however, had other plans.
By the middle of March, my part-time hours had to be increased to full-time and beyond to try and address the volume of support over 500 staff require to unite and form a human shield to prevent the infiltration of Covid-19 to our vulnerable patient cohort. As I write this, seven months into the battle, not one patient has so far contracted Covid-19 in the hospital which is testament to the incredible daily efforts and sacrifices our staff make to protect them.
using my coaching skills and knowledge during this journey was invaluable, and my toolkit was packed beautifully by Kingstown College
From the beginning our staff, like the rest of the world, were plunged into a “VUCA” situation where life became “Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous.” Their “essential worker” status meant they had to face the outside world on a daily basis leaving what many felt was the relative safety of their homes to provide care to their patients in a less than safe environment.
Mental chaos and dissonance ensued, torn between wanting to support their patients but also protect them by keeping away from them, while at the same time protecting their loved ones, as many quickly became sole earners in the home.
In the early weeks safety was the number one priority for patients and staff. As you will recall there were weeks of national guidance re-iterating that masks were not required for all healthcare workers given the scientific information available at that time and the scarcity of PPE nationally. In my role as occupational health and wellbeing advisor, I very quickly saw this cause, fear, anxiety and stress among staff and conflict between staff and management. Staff felt unsafe and felt they were putting their patients at risk, while management felt they had to follow national guidance and use the limited supply of PPE available for high-risk situations.
The hospital management team went into over-drive doing everything in their power to get the desired level of PPE to keep patients and staff protected and supported. Covid-19 meetings were convened daily to ensure we were supporting staff as much as possible. Using my coaching skills and knowledge during this journey was invaluable, and my toolkit was packed beautifully by Kingstown College.
Coaching Style Conversations
A coaching culture has been encouraged and embedded in my organisation and thus bringing a coaching style to meetings and interventions had a calming and reassuring effect on many staff.
My favourite tool for a coaching style conversation with anyone in those early months was “CIA.” So many staff were overwhelmed by their feeling of powerlessness and or extreme anxiety about falling ill themselves or passing the virus onto others and many struggled to continue working normally. CIA worked really well in these situations as it focused people on what they had control of in that time, what they may be able to influence and what was absolutely outside their control and had to be accepted, at least in the short term.
While there were many offers from external sources for formal coaching for staff in those early months, staff felt they did not have the physical or mental capacity to engage in same. Many did however reach out to me for two or three informal sessions where CIA became a corner stone or mantra for them to be able to find a way to navigate through this storm, the likes of which has not been seen in our collective lifetime.
The CIA coaching model enabled staff to clarify their thoughts and empowered them to choose where best to concentrate their time and resources. Owning their power and not giving control to Covid-19 to immobilise them using this tool was also very powerful.
This simple framework worked very well for many staff on a one-to-one level and it also worked in group settings.
Staff support groups were facilitated twice daily in the early months of the pandemic, and questions around CIA were used to open up discussions and conversations. The commonality of the many things that suddenly had to be accepted such as mask wearing and PPE quickly became apparent. In fact it became the common theme amongst all the support meetings. The need for staff to wear masks all the time when treating patients to feel safe is at the basis of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Until their safety needs were met, they were not interested in addressing any other concerns they had around Covid-19. It was an enormous relief, therefore, when national guidance changed in April to allow healthcare workers wear masks when providing care for all patients.
Middle management also benefited from coaching conversations and I found “SPOT” coaching useful. During the early stages being at work felt quite frenetic and time was a very valuable commodity that very few of us had. Being able to schedule twenty minutes with a manager and quickly work through the model was particularly useful;
“S” “set the goal”
“P” plan the sequence of events
“O” look at their palette of “Options” and finally
“T” take action, identify the action that will first be taken and when.
Managers found it clarifying and empowering as well as being solution focused. The approach is an efficient and effective way to move along a situation for someone who may otherwise procrastinate due to lack of clarity. I found the SPOT model invaluable when demands were very high and time very short.
The SPOT model was also useful for those of us in organisations who use a coaching style but are not exclusively in a coaching role. I do a “SPOT” check on myself each day as I drive to work, which now begins with swabbing symptomatic staff each morning for Covid-19. I set my goal, plan the day as best I can, considering my palette of options to assist my arrival at destination “success” and finally prioritise which action I am going to start with. It takes a few moments but is invaluable in clarifying the situation and setting the intentions for the day.
bringing a coaching style to meetings and interventions had a calming and reassuring effect on many staff
As an aside to the whole Covid-19 world, it is worth mentioning that our organisation moved from an archaic 1917, not fit for purpose, hospital to a magnificent state-of-the-art building in June of this year also. This was to be a project of enormous magnitude pre Covid-19, let alone during Covid-19 times. It was the culmination of nine years work and required staff to dig really deep to figure out new ways of working in our beautiful new hospital.
In my role, having a finely tuned situational awareness was invaluable during this time. Staff were trying to juggle so many things at home and abroad, personally and professionally and everyone’s resilience and mental health and wellbeing waxed and waned at differing times. Being mindful of each other’s (as well as our own) vulnerabilities became key. I found “switching perspectives” useful for staff to better appreciate and better understand what might have been going on for peers, colleagues and managers during this time as conflicts inevitably bubbled up during this period of such uncertainty and change.
group of Red chair in white wall interior with blue wood flooring.
The last seven months have been challenging in ways I would never previously have considered. I am extremely grateful for the support, training and education I received and continue to receive from the team at Kingstown College in Personal, Leadership and Executive coaching which I believe has helped many healthcare workers survive and in many cases thrive during this pandemic. I am privileged to be part of the front line Covid-19 battle.
By Rose Curtis
Rose Curtis is a Clinical Nurse Manager in Occupational Health and Wellbeing. She has worked at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dublin for over 20 years supporting and promoting staff wellbeing from recruitment to retirement. She is passionate about coaching, staff engagement, open communication and continuous self-development. She lives with her husband and twenty-four year old twins and is, as she says herself “living the dream.”
