Short and sweet….
By: Julie Byrne
Tags: Christmas, Santa, Weeknotes, Team

Week notes — 30th Nov — 4th December

Short and sweet from me this time, I promised to try and do two week notes a month and I am trying to stick to it!

In the last week this is what I have been proud of/achieved…..

I plucked up the courage to apply to become a Leadership Coach in Parliament. I do a lot of mentoring already and have started to bring coaching into the mix when having mentoring conversations. It will challenge me, because I will be in a coaching relationship with my peers or people more senior than me. I do hope I get a chance to do it, if not this time maybe in the future!

I mentioned Culture Club in my last week notes as something I was looking forward to. A group of colleagues met and we discussed “Sitting in Limbo” which is available on BBC iPlayer. Wikipedia describes it as a factual TV drama about the Windrush scandal. The story focuses on the real-life experiences of a Jamaican-born British man, Anthony Bryan, one of the victims of the UK Home Office hostile environment policy on immigration. To say it is harrowing is an understatement and brings to light how policies and process can often overlook the impact on a person, their life and their wellbeing. It was great to chat through how we felt after watching it with others and I look forward to the next meet up. Thanks @Laura Bennett for organising.

I presented to our Senior Team this week on our team health survey scores. It was an engaging conversation and I feel like we are getting somewhere with acting on the results. We are not just doing another survey we are discussing the results and making plans on how to make working for Team PDS even better and we are talking about it with everyone in Team PDS

I did stuff to help my wellbeing like laughter yoga! Check out John Hipkiss if you want to try it out for yourself. If you have a cringe gene like me, it is tough to do but you do feel GREAT afterwards. It’s all about the breathing. Laughter yoga exists as a thing…. who knew? I also did some Pilates and tried to get out into the fresh air most days even if it was walking to the top of my road and back again.

Take a deep breath in and then laugh out loud

Thanks to a Loraine Midda, I found a setting in outlook calendar that makes your 30 min meetings 25 minutes and your hour-long meetings 50 mins, to help give you and people attending a break between meetings. Combatting meeting fatigue one five to ten minute step at a time!

Things that could have gone better/reflections

I need to not go to meetings that don’t have a clear agenda as they are often turning out to be a waste of my time.

Remember that you can’t please everyone, somebody somewhere won’t be happy with the topic, the format, the time of day…..there will always be something and that is OK. Feedback is good, roll with the punches.

People can still read your body language on video calls. Thanks to everyone who checked in with me to see if I was ok, I must have looked forlorn and miserable that day!

What am I looking forward to…?

Celebrating Christmas virtually, it isn’t the same as in person, but we are still celebrating, and my colleagues have come up with some fun and interesting ways to party albeit online.

Planning an away morning with my new team, where we are going to spend some time figuring stuff out like how we want to work together, what our vision/mission is as a team, what skills we need and planning some priorities for the next 6 months.

Running around my local park dressed as Santa with my nieces and stepdaughter to raise money for our local hospice! If you want to sponsor me click here Shameless plug but it is all for a good cause.

Last year — when we were allowed to be with people!

Some other stuff

I am currently reading A Champion Cyclist Against the Nazi’s about Gino Bartelli, a champion cyclist that helped save 800 Jews during the second world war.

Check out Dan Barrett’s blog posts on “Friday Dan Barrett’s” made my Monday!