A post about leadership...with the CoD Student Leadership Programme



Hello,

How are you? I really hope you're okay at this strange and tricky time.

I have spent some time thinking about the context of writing and uploading this post given the current unprecedented climate around Covid-19 and the effects on our healthcare system, our incredible NHS (as well as the vital shop workers, delivery and post people, education staff, emergency staff, and all our key workers) and all of the Health, Medical and Allied Health Profession students. 

 After a conversation with family working with the NHS, it seemed that any kind of positive leadership-type messages are needed right now. I had a very honest chat on twitter about how I'm feeling at the moment, and was really appreciative of the lovely people who reached out. It also reminded me how important it is to reach out and talk to people, even more so now we're staying home. If you'd like to have a read, my twitter thread is here. 

So, please stay safe and calm and look after yourselves and your loved ones (be that in person or from a distance).

And I’ll get on with the post :)


- For all the healthcare and medical students right now, whether you’re volunteering your time within the NHS, whether your worried about graduating this year, whether you couldn’t finish your placement, whether you’re in self-isolation or you’re social distancing. For every single one of you. We can get through this together. -

This is my reflection-type-post all about what I learnt from the Council of Deans 150Leaders Welcome Conference. I am hoping to write something more about the Student Leadership Programme, why you should consider applying next year, and my project, when as I can (in all the spare time I have during revision season and writing my dissertation... so let’s be honest it might be a little while for that one!).
In the meantime, you can find out more about the Student Leadership Programme in this post I wrote about being accepted into the cohort, their website, and these are links to the @150Leaders twitter and the @CouncilofDeanshealth twitter feed too.

This is more of a summary and my takeaways from what I have learnt, rather than a personal/professional reflective-cycle post. Hopefully it gives some insight into what we are lucky to work on, what we get to hear about and the kind of things being a student leader is all about. Firstly I have to add that I still don’t feel like a ‘leader’ in a any shape or form, the imposter syndrome is real, and I think we all felt this way! We were assured repeatedly by everyone that ‘we are already leaders’ so I am trying to just own it.
We were lucky to have three guest speakers come and talk to us during the conference, and I have decided to reflect on these in a colourful word-cloud-style - please enjoy!

So, firstly we had a talk from the incredible Stacy JohnsonMBE about Inclusive Leadership:


The wonderful Joanne Bosanquet MBE talked to us about her personal journey with political leadership and person-centredness:


Lastly, the amazing Adele Nightingale spoke about reliance and reflection on our leadership journeys:
In addition to the above, I want to share my main takeaways from the conference and from the incredible people I was lucky to meet:
  • We need to celebrate our differences
  • How crucial inclusion and diversity is to make the best decisions and find the best outcomes to problems           
  • The amazing-ness of reverse mentoring!
  • Reinforced how important feedback is
  • Reinforced valuable other professional’s points of view are
  • How important it is to ‘rock the boat’ and to have the hard conversations, because that’s the only way we can impact real change
  • Moving from an ally to an advocate
  • Reinforcing that it doesn’t matter what your ‘journey’ looks like, you learn as you go and learn from all the challenges, and that is what makes you - you!
  • The practicalities of 50 student leaders all in one WhatsApp chat...its exactly the chaos you imagine!
  • The importance of the aforementioned student leaders, and how welcoming and kind and accepting everyone single one of them were and continue to be: our ‘tribe’ as it was referenced to over the two days (there have been talks on team hoodies - that’s when you know it’s real!).
  • We're all leaders, and how crucial inclusive leadership is right now.
             
I also want to take this opportunity to share some resources and links that I think we all might need right now:

💛Something to make you chuckle: Innocent’s DAILY UPDATE’s www.facebook.com/innocent
💛Something to help you look after yourself from the lovely people at Beyond Coaching: https://beyond-coaching.co.uk/free-resilience-toolkit/
💛Some Happy News: www.thehappynewpaper.com and a free download happy new pack: https://www.dropbox.com/s/txqw8aahpwk66pi/Free%20(temp)%20The%20Happy%20News%20pack.pdf?dl=0
💛A way to hug loved ones from afar: www.bearhugsgifts.com (plus an opportunity to nominate an NHS worker for a hug at www.bearhugsgifts.com/nhs)
💛Nominate someone you love to receive a letter: www.onemillionlovelyletters.co.uk
💛Something to give you some headspace: www.headspace.com (with meditations available for free)
💛Something to make you smile (with added puppy cuteness): www.instagram.com/emberthecavapoo and www.instagram.com/samsonthedood

You can download the COVID Symptom Tracker if you’re in the UK to help collect data and slow the spread of the virus, free and available on Apple and Android: https://covid.joinzoe.com/


Thank you so much for reading, I really hope it was an interesting post and helpful in some way. Please take care, and stay safe.




(Updated March 2021)

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