Compassionate Leadership lessons from the Wimbledon Major Incident (July 2023)
Photo Image BBC News
Last week I have had the privilege of working with St Georges Senior Clinical Leaders, many of whom had been involved in leading during the major incident following the tragic accident at the primary school in Wimbledon.
Following the accident on the 6th July when a Landrover lost control crashing into the end of year class party in the school garden, 35 police vehicles attended the scene with other members of the emergency services. A total of 16 people were treated at the scene and 10, including a seven-month old girl, were taken to St Georges Hospital. Tragically, two of the young students have died from their injuries. (BBC News)
Many of the Nurse Matrons had led the Critical Incident Response, a procedure which is practiced regularly with a range of possible scenarios, and as a result staff are able to move to a high quality, automatic response, where training and muscle memory and adrenaline takes over. After the professionalism and care is provided, there is always a human reaction.
Space between Stimulus and Response
As part of the Leadership programme that we have delivering the senior clinical leaders have been encouraged to notice their emotions and to give themselves permission to be intentional about the space between stimuli and response, and use this space to notice, connect to and then chose their emotions.
Emotional Literacy and Agility
Understanding and recognising their own emotions has helped with both emotional literacy - being able to accurately connect and describe feelings and emotions – sadness, fear, grief, empathy - and then to practice emotional agility, to actively and intentionally chose the emotion and state of mind that they want operate from.
The leaders dealing with the terrible situations they faced in the Critical Incident, all reported being more aware of their own emotions, whilst responding and then being able to be more effective in connecting and supporting with their team members. It didn’t make it any easier, but they were more aware of how they were feeling, and able to notice and ‘check in’ with others.
Taking a moment
In addition, leaders all reported the importance of ‘taking a moment’ after the incident was stood down, to breathe and to again notice their emotional state. They reflected in how helpful this had been processing events and being able to move forward. The importance of giving time and space for reflection and acceptance is critical to enable us to process emotions and help meaning making, particularly after difficult experiences.
After Action Reviews
With any major incident or traumatic event it is good practice to hold an after-action review, to allow processing and sharing of perspectives and to promote learning and improvement. These processes are not only critical for operational learning (Hot Review) as well as at the recognition of emotional start and healing (Cold Review) and as part of a continuous learning and improvement culture.
The After Action Review format covers 5 questions:
1) what was supposed to happen
2) what was the reality
3) what went well
4) what did not go well
5) what should be changed for next time
These reviews need to involve the people directly involved in the incident response and management. Thinking more widely about all the people who are involved is also important, including site managers, porters, and teams that are enabling the responding services. Their experiences and emotions may often be unseen and recognised.
Staff Support
Skilled Staff Support and leaders, providing a safe psychological space to share and provide practical support, are essential as part of the support network, and creating emotional intelligent and emotional agile teams and organisations.
Compassionate Leadership
Leaders’ response is vital and provides an opportunity to practice and demonstrate Compassionate Leadership. Michael West and Rachna Chowla (2017) identify the 4 elements of a compassionate response:
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/what-is-compassionate-leadership
Image courtesy of www.Kingsfund.org.uk What is Compassionate Leadership
1. Attending: paying attention to the other, noticing their suffering
2. Understanding: making an appraisal to understand the cause of their suffering
3. Empathising: having an empathetic response, a felt reaction with the others’ distress
4. Helping: talking intelligent (thoughtful and supportive) action to help relieve the others suffering
Learning from Covid
There are key lessons that we learnt through the Covid pandemic around Staff Support after difficult incidents, particularly in the NHS, that are helpful to remember, routinely not just following a major incident or challenging situation.
West and Bailey (2021) reflect on the learning from Covid and how Compassionate Leadership and taking time to review and practice the 4 Elements (above) makes a big difference to staff productivity and wellbeing.
“Time is very pressured, but staff need to meet with their fellow team members regularly to review, to share learning, to develop innovative responses to the crisis and to simply recover together. Time spent in meeting like this is associated with a 35 per cent improvement in productivity and innovation and similarly large increases in wellbeing. Building short team reviews (even of just a few minutes) into daily work will establish a rhythm to facilitate greater learning and support to all staff. ”
Large event or cumulative build up?
We also reflected, that sometimes it may not be one obvious ‘incident’ that people can point to, but a series of smaller difficult situations, traumas – with a small “t” that accumulate and build, and if these are not recognised and can create emotional distress and potential burnout.
Being compassionate with self and then being able to come from a place of compassion as leaders had not only helped these leaders individually and also their teams, caring for patients and families.
5 Leadership Questions
As a group we identified these 5 leadership questions:
1. What do you need to do as a leader to create space between stimuli and response?
2. How can you develop emotional literacy and emotional agility?
3. What do you need to do as a leader to create space between stimuli and response for your team?
4. How can you support your team to develop emotional literacy and emotional agility?
5. How can you develop your compassionate leadership to support learning and improvement with of operational and emotional responses within your team and organisation?
#EmotionalAgilty #EmotionalIntelligence #SeniorLeaders #Intentional #Createchoices #ReflectivePractice #Stimulus-Space-Response #StGeorges Leadership #TraumaInformed #CompassionateLeadership #Compassion #Improvement #LearningTogether
