Tweets of the Week, 15 March 2021

The Horizons team features many influential Twitter users. This curates a wealth of insights, knowledge, and information about transformation in health and care from other thought leaders across the world. (Tip: to read an article or watch a video mentioned in a tweet, click on the blue text. To view the original tweet, click on the image).

International Women's Day

Last week Horizons supported the #EverydayCourage International Women's Day celebration. It was an amazing event with more than 60 unconference sessions designed by our NHS people. Some tweets from the day have been compiled into this Moment.

During the day, many women and allies made commitments for achieving gender equality in health and care - you can read them in this Moment.

The day started with a tweet chat - read what IWD means to the participants; what participants are most hopeful about for the future; commitments to support women in health and care and gender equality.

“#COVID19 cast a harsh light on health & wider inequalities that persist in our communities. It’s had a disproportionate effect on ethnic minority communities, the most deprived, people with learning disabilities, those with severe mental illness & inclusion” 

Thank you Bola Owolabi for sharing your story in this blogpost #EverydayCourage 

Lovely shout out from our Chief People Officer for the production and tech of the #IWD2021 #EverydayCourage event.

Even though the International Women's Day #EverydayCourage event has finished, you can still sign up for #CourageousCoffee. Over the next 3 months you'll be randomly connected with 3 other women in health & care for a virtual cup of coffee to talk/learn/share. Join here.

#OurNHSPeople

Last week's Wellbeing Community Event focused on recovering our people to recover our services. If you missed the session, you can watch the recording here:

If someone is having a difficulty don't just send them home. Professor Neil Greenberg asked us in this week’s wellbeing event to think broader, to offer support in the workplace, temporarily reduce duties, #wellbeing conversation to solve problems early, avoid a crisis And to remember that not all issues are #mentalhealth many are mentoring.

Wellbeing

Lots of us are appreciating the graphics that Sonya Wallbank has been posting on reducing team burnout. Here's her latest on repair vs. rupture. Both processes are normal but at high pressure times like these -when we are less resilient, focus on repair to protect us from burnout.

A global study of 26,000 people on engagement & resilience at work during 2020 found only 14% of workers were fully engaged & 15% highly resilient. The two most powerful drivers of both engagement & resilience? 1) Trust; 2) Sense of belonging. Find out more here.We should all be starting our virtual team meetings with a check in. Check ins play a key role in building connection & good spirit - so important for teams in these challenging times. Here's the chihuahua check-in.

Why does spending the day on MS Teams or Zoom exhaust our minds & bodies? The first peer-reviewed article on Zoom (or Teams) fatigue from a psychological perspective. It includes a link to early work on a video conferencing fatigue scale.

We can laugh at this cartoon by @_workchronicles but it's a little too close to home in lots of work environments. A positive direction is that virtual working is moving us towards "asynchronous work" giving us more flexibility to focus on tasks to be done, not hours to be worked.

Five things that people who are especially productive working from home do: 1) Set the stage for work; 2) Get rid of low-value activities; 3) Add whitespace (breaks); 4) Keep emails to intervals; 5) Have a clocking-out ritual.

Helen shared this graphic that reminds her of 2 factors. 1) In research, people say their best days at work are when they are able to move forward & feel progress (@TeresaAmabile). 2) When making change, even the smallest change is powerful; it shifts us from idea to concrete action.

What is toxic positivity? It’s a focus on “good vibes only”, reminding other people “have it worse”. It’s unhelpful because it shuts down conversation & the opportunity for someone to open up, get support. More helpful things to say on right-hand column.

Social Influence

Unfortunately, Helen's twitter account was hacked last week. One of the main things Helen shared as learning is the importance of extra security. If you haven't done so already, Helen recommends strongly that you activate two-factor authentication on your Twitter account. It only takes a few minutes. The hacker deleted Helen's old handle, you can currently find her @HelenBevanTweet.

Spread and Scale

When enabling the adoption and spread of innovation 1. Is your situation simple / complicated / complex? 2. If complex, wise words here for the approach to take. More on working with complexity

Change & Improvement 

What's happened to us during the pandemic according to cultural anthropologists? We've had a LIMINAL experience: a prolonged separation from normal being/doing that changes us in lasting ways. How do we make the most of it for the future?

Changing the structure does not reinvent an organisation. Even activities like "You said/we did" listening exercises are too often based on the parent-child leadership paradigm we are stuck in. If we really want change, shift the power balance.

When we take action for improvement in health & care (or other context), where should our focus be? Are we fixing problems or are we shifting mindsets to see the bigger picture of the system & the potential for radically better outcomes? Read more here.

Even in a deeply unequal world, we can all build our agency: the power & capability to act to get a result we want. This article is about individual agency (a good thing) AND we can build collective agency through shared purpose with others.

All your 'must read' QI articles kindly compiled in one place by Jess Pawly & Andrea Gibbons - see below for more info!

And finally...

Amazing graphic by @LizandMollie - here are 45 cartoons together in one article, framed as " life and work struggles".