I started this week with a meeting with my mentor, David Melbourne the acting chief executive at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. On the NHS graduate scheme we are encouraged to meet with the chief executive of our own trust, as well as finding a mentor externally. Before John Adler left SWBH, I had some great meetings with him hearing about the start of his career on the graduate programme, and the challenges he faces as a chief executive, as well as getting advice on my first placement and career suggestions for the future. I know it is an opportunity that not many people get and it is definitely one of the best things about the scheme.
According to the Leadership Academy, the purpose of mentoring is to provide guidance and support in the overall direction of a trainee’s career, and to help a trainee to improve their performance and develop their leadership skills… not a small task then!
This week I asked David to go through ‘coaching’ with me. I would like to be able to give feedback to colleagues in a conversation where they feel supported and gain an insight into how they would like to improve their performance in the future.
It is very tempting to either ignore the situation, or just say “this is what you did wrong, don’t do it next time”. Actually, this is how the GROW method of coaching came about. A tennis instructor realised that he could tell the tennis players what they were doing incorrectly, but this did not bring about lasting change, as people only follow instructions for so long (or not at all!). The tennis coach decided to start asking the players questions so the players could discover for themselves what was going wrong.
In my mentoring sessions, we used examples of conversations at work and used role play to go through some of the open questions I could use in the future. It was much harder than I expected to keep asking questions rather than jumping in with my own opinion- definitely something I need to work on! You can read more about the GROW method of coaching here.
Another thing I enjoy about mentoring is spending time in a different hospital. Birmingham Children’s Hospital has a very strong brand which is essential for the huge amount of fundraising the BCH charity does. The hospital values are also clearly displayed everywhere in the hospital in an eye-catching way. We can learn so much from visiting other hospitals and working together and I hope that the increasing amount of competition in the NHS doesn’t discourage this in the future
First Published 21/01/2013 on the SWBH website
According to the Leadership Academy, the purpose of mentoring is to provide guidance and support in the overall direction of a trainee’s career, and to help a trainee to improve their performance and develop their leadership skills… not a small task then!
This week I asked David to go through ‘coaching’ with me. I would like to be able to give feedback to colleagues in a conversation where they feel supported and gain an insight into how they would like to improve their performance in the future.
It is very tempting to either ignore the situation, or just say “this is what you did wrong, don’t do it next time”. Actually, this is how the GROW method of coaching came about. A tennis instructor realised that he could tell the tennis players what they were doing incorrectly, but this did not bring about lasting change, as people only follow instructions for so long (or not at all!). The tennis coach decided to start asking the players questions so the players could discover for themselves what was going wrong.
In my mentoring sessions, we used examples of conversations at work and used role play to go through some of the open questions I could use in the future. It was much harder than I expected to keep asking questions rather than jumping in with my own opinion- definitely something I need to work on! You can read more about the GROW method of coaching here.
Another thing I enjoy about mentoring is spending time in a different hospital. Birmingham Children’s Hospital has a very strong brand which is essential for the huge amount of fundraising the BCH charity does. The hospital values are also clearly displayed everywhere in the hospital in an eye-catching way. We can learn so much from visiting other hospitals and working together and I hope that the increasing amount of competition in the NHS doesn’t discourage this in the future
First Published 21/01/2013 on the SWBH website
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