When you bring out their best you’ll bring out your own best by default: best + best leads to bigger best and exponential success for the whole team.
My career started in an acute psychiatric ward, the kind where other hospitals sent their most unwell, difficult and violent patients. It’s an ICU for psychiatry and here we looked after people who’s mental health took them to suicide and homicide, mostly homicidal behaviours.
You can imagine then how important it was to look out for each other – colleagues. Collegial care was something un-named but a very real responsibility for us all. We were expected to always – always – be aware of where and how are colleagues were, every moment of the day. Nurses do get t seriously assaulted in every area of practice. Highest on the list is ED & ICU, then comes general ward areas, followed by mental health and then aged care. Mostly assaults are mild-moderate, but some are serious. Sometimes life changingly serious.
I know of nurses who’ve been assaulted to the point of paraplegia, been raped at work, been thrown against a wall resulting in a broken back and that’s just the physical damage.
To look out for each other is a primary professional skill. These nurses were not part of teams skilled in violence prevention. Think about it – were you trained in silence prevention at uni? No, of course not. None of us were.
In order to look out for colleagues you can’t merely be aware of their physical safety, although that’s super important inside pandemic times. And you can’t just look out for their emotional wellbeing – also super important in pandemic times. You also have to look out for their professional learning, their access to opportunity, their professional growth and capacity for contribution. A great colleague is one who’s skills constantly grow, get recognised for their abilities and are challenged just enough to stay at the edge of their mojo – that’s a great colleague who naturally inspires everyone else to be great too meaning the whole team is great, including you. It’s the secret to every brilliant, successful, results driven and high performing team in every field the world over.
It might be a cliche, but the whole is always more than the sum of it’s parts so if you’re not bringing out the best in all your colleagues, can you be at your best? Too often I see people miserable because of the people around them, miserable because of what’s gone wrong with their team. Miserable because someone stole their ideas. Miserable because what they said was ignored then taken up later by the loudest voice who’s accepted idea turned out to be rubbish and that person ‘introduced’ your idea. There’s a whole bunch of themes on this.
The problem is two-fold. Firstly, you haven’t made yourself known for what you know, and secondly, you haven’t got a team that actually works as a team.
To get known for what you know, you have to write what you know, speak what you know and keep on learning. Do courses that stretch you, read stuff that excites you, think, think, think and speak it, write it, present what you know to the world. Knowledge is an ever-after pursuit, what you think is amazing will become ordinary in a while so keep sharing in order to grow the learning for your own career.
To create a team that actually works as a team, start with looking out for your colleagues. That means speaking to their strengths, bringing out their intelligent self, their capable self, their inspired self. You can’t do that when you’re in judgement, have low lying anger, or condescension going on. This is where teams break, so fix those things by attending to your own mental fitness. Get rid of the anger, break down the judgement and proactively destroy the condescension. These bits are wholly your own responsibility – and a professional imperative. Another professional imperative is not just to look out for your colleagues but to choose to get along with them as well.
The real question is, do you want to be part of a truly great team? Do you have that kind of courage? And are you willing to do what it takes to get there?
When physical safety is important, when emotional safety is important, when performance is also important your role includes ensuring those in your team are going well, and to enhance them. That means enhance them professionally and personally.
What you get is not some fluffy sense of altruism but instead you grow yourself professionally by becoming a proper enabler, a real leader. Respect collegial care – it affects bottom lines, the social economy is something valued by every one of us – and that impacts how we each show up in the world.
That’s mental fitness by, and for, thinkers, carers and realists.
