School for Change Agents 2018 Module 3 transcript

NHS IQ Webinar (UKNHSI0103B)
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HELEN BEVAN:
Hello, let's say hello to everyone. Danielle is saying hello from snowy Edinburgh. We have got a
group, Deborah Corrigan from snowy Peterborough, welcome Deborah. Andrew is with us from
Durham, snowing for a third day and it is also snowing in Dublin with Patricia is joining us from.
John is saying hello from Alberta, telling us nothing about the weather. PJ has joined us from
Cambridge, that is great. Andy Griggs is with us from Warsaw with light snow flurries.
Let's try a few more of us, Tom is with us from Hearts Valley, welcome to Tom. Emma is with us
from and three North Yorkshire, Shannon is with us from Calgary, Canada. Lots of you signing
in now.
Shaun is here from snowy Aberdeenshire. We have got people from Toronto, Canada. Julie has
told us there is even snow in Jersey. Andy is with us from Chicago, where it is raining today.
Nicola has joined as from the fourth Gully in Scotland, and it is windy there. Welcome to all of
you.
Let's see if a few more people have joined us. We've got Kim from Derbyshire, welcomed.
We have got Lucy who says it is day three from working from home, and Jo is with us from
(unknown term) route is cold but not much snow. Michelle is with us from Worcestershire, and
says, "That is what thermals are for," that is the spirit.
Kim said that that made me feel a little bit famous, and I'm sure you are famous for what you do.
Let's put the music on for a couple more minutes and then we will get going. So welcome,
everybody.
(Music plays)
Hello, everyone, welcomed module three of school fee change agent. This afternoon we will be
talking about two topics. - Dealing to resistance of change and being resilient. We are due to
star in a couple of minutes and is really fantastic that so many of you have joined us today.
And there are comments coming in from the chat box. As an amazing that we can do this
virtually, if we could not do this. Virtually, you know, many of the places where we are at our
unlock down so we would have had to cancel it. Instead, due to the power of digital connectivity,
here we all are wrapped up in warm places and we are going to be learning together.
Really, welcome to everybody. You know, lots of comments coming into the chat box, lots of
people signing in and telling us where they are and how the weather is. Lots of people
connecting with us and having conversations with each other in the chat box, that's exactly how
we want it. We are due to start in 1 minute. We will have 1 minute of the music and then we will
start. Welcome, everybody.
(Music plays)
I think it is time to start. So can we cut the music and let's start. It is wonderful to see so many of

you joining us today for module three of the school for change agents.
We have nearly got 400 participants taking part in terms of lines and actually, there are many
more of you do that because you know, lots of people take part in groups and also, hello to the
people joining us youTube and hello to the people who are watching this and recording.
[Max.Uk.Captioner is Live]
SPEAKER:
Kate is not with us. Lee and Lynette will be looking after us on Twitter, and I will get to speak
with the ice in a minute. We are all in the Horizon team doing our roles.
So, again, one of the things that makes the sessions so special is just how much we all join in,
so we love that you are putting loads of comments and ideas and connections in the chat box,
so please carry on doing that.
If you are having a problem and you want some support, we ask you to raise your virtual hand
which is underneath the participants section, and we will come and find you.
We are running this module with the presentation happening and the chat box, but also on
Twitter, so we would love you to join in the conversation, and if you can make sure that you put
#S4CA on your tweets, and we would love you to follow the school. So, we would like to hear
you on Twitter, and because there is so many of us taking part and the chat box is so fast and
furious, if you are replying to someone in the chat box, can you use @is the name of the person
so it is better for everyone.
So, at this point, I was just going to hand over to Lee, and rather than doing a poll, we thought
we would give some feedback on what is happening in the wonderful amazing school for
change agents community, so tell us a few things that are happening.
SPEAKER:
Hello, everybody. All of you make the school what it is, so we want to take a moment to show
our appreciation for the support you show to us, and to each other. We love seeing your posts
on social media, your feedback, what resonates with you and the connections you are making
with each other all over the world.
So, thank you, Rosie, for collating this slide. We had lots of quotes to choose from, lots of things
you are looking forward to, so please keep looking on the Facebook group and on Twitter. We
love hearing from you.
HELEN BEVAN:
Thank you so much. Can we put something in the chat box about the Facebook page? If
anybody wants to sign up to the group, we would love to have you in the group.
So, let's get going on the key topics for module 3. I will do the first bit about resistance, and why
it is an important topic.

I want to talk about resistance versus reactants, because an awful lot of the time, when we think
people are being resistant to change, it isn't resistance but reactants, and of all the ideas that I
have learned about resistance to change, actually, when I learned about reactants, it was a real
breakthrough for me.
Then we have got some good tactics on how to avoid or overcome reactants, and then I will
hand over to Kathryn. Do you want to tell us the teams you will talk about on the agenda?
SPEAKER:
Good afternoon, everyone. Hello, what a pleasure to be here. I am going to talk about resilience
which is the thing that the Horizons team gets asked about most in our work.
I will talk about what it is and how we build our resilience muscles, and I will link it to some other
things that Helen has covered including love and passion, and also a new idea, grit, so stay
tuned for that.
HELEN BEVAN:
That is really cool.
So, when we talk about resistance, technically, what this means is any force that stops or slows
down movement, so here, we have resistance bands in the gym, and the fact we think of it in
this way, this is a force that is going in a positive direction, and resistance is something negative
that stops or slows it. I would question that.
So, I have some data hear from McKinsey. What this is about is, in terms of organisational
change programs, we know that many of them failed to achieve their objectives and why does
that happen? So, if you look at these different factors that are reported in this study, what it
shows us is the vast majority of reasons that are reported as to why change fails to do with
resistance in some form.
So, 39% of the time, employees are resistant to change, and interestingly, 33% of the time, it is
because management behaviour does not support change, and actually, I would say that is a
form of resistance.
So, these issues around resistance are perceived to be the most challenging issues.
The next thing I would ask, are we surprised at this? Is anyone taking part surprised that this?
This is an interesting review which Deloitte published in 2016, and discord humanising change,
developing more effective change management strategies, and this is a document that is free
and has some really interesting content, and I pulled some things out from this.
It says that most change management programs or initiatives begin with an assumption that is
fundamentally flawed, which is that we will make this change happen and all the parties involved
in the change share an overwhelmingly common interest.
The study says we underestimate power dynamics, contextual considerations - that every
context is different - and resistance to change. We considered anomalous, but they don't really

matter, and the researchers say that all organisational change means changing organisational
behaviour, notwithstanding little evidence suggesting that behaviour can be pliable or
predictable.
So, any of us, we need to think about these factors.
What I want to do next is give you the two best pieces of advice about thinking about resistance
to change. The first comes from Mark Jaban, an emergency physician in Florida, US, and also,
he has made it his life's mission to study the science behind resistance to change. What he
says here, he says this is what we shouldn't do.
So, we identify and issue, a patient safety issue or a finance or a quality problem, and what we
do, senior leaders, experts, they were identified the desired outcome to address this issue, then
come up with possibilities and data to make a choice.
This is when we engage people, and Jaban says this is what we should do.
This is what he says we should do. As soon as we identify that there is an issue that needs
addressing, we should start engaging people straight away, and when we say people, the
people who will be impacted or need to be part of the change, so what we need to do is make
the desired outcome a shared outcome, and we need to make the option shared options, and
we need to make the choices shared choices, and if we follow the Jaban approach to change,
we should ban the word buy-in.
How do we get the conditions to buy into change? We should ban it because actually, we don't
need buyers who by into change. It is too late. We need people who are investors.
So, if we want to avoid resistance to change, we have to create investors, people who will…
Who have got a vested interest awesome power to make or break the change. We need to
involve them right at the start.
This is my second piece of best advice about resistance to change, a lovely quote from Harold
Schirmer. He says that resistant behaviour is a good indicator of missing relevance, and again,
people will not invest in change of it is not meaningful and relevant to me and my situation and
my interests, so you know, we need to be thinking about that from the start. How can we create
change that is meaningful and that is relevant to people?
Now, let's go back. In module two, we talked about the relationship between structure and
agency, and we said very often when large-scale change happens, we focus on the structural
mechanisms like performance calls and regulation and program management incentive
systems.
We need to do these things, but actually, one of the most effective, quickest ways we can make
change happen is to build agency.
We defined 'agency' as the power to make a positive difference, and this change agents, we
need to be building that power. Here are some of the things we talked about last week, how we
do that with activation, building capabilities, social movements, solidarity and so on. We need to

be working with both.
Here is another side we looked at in terms of structure and agency. We said it is about rules
versus freedom, because at the end of the day, agency is about the freedom to do the things
that fit with our values and connect with who we are in the world. So if our focus in the school is
about change agency and change agents, let's think about resistance to change in the context.
So, very often, when we talk about being resistant to change or other people being resistant to
change, a big issue and distinction that has really helped me is understanding what is going on,
and if that resistance - does this person had a resistant personality and being difficult - or is it
reactants? I will give us a crash course on this, so just bear with me as I take us through what it
means.
So, our starting point for thinking about reactants is to go back to some really fundamental
issues around what we need in the world, what basic needs to be have to do our best in the
world, and this is from a particular theory which is called self-determination theory which comes
from Ryan in DC, and this particular one says that as human beings, for us to do our best, we
need competence, to feel that we have the skills and knowledge to do the job.
We need relatedness, and we need autonomy which means that we need the space and the
freedom and the agency to do our very best.
Out of all of those three, the psychologist said the one that is most important is autonomy. We
need a sense of freedom and space and agency to that we can do our jobs.
So, bearing that in mind, it was a little question. Again, we have two research psychologists.
They put two signs on the walls of college bathrooms in the USA. On one, they put, "Do not
write and these will send any circumstances." On the other side of bathrooms, they put, "Don't
write on these walls." What do you think they found after two weeks? Let's put a few comments
in the chat box. What do you think they found?
Yes, I think you got it. What they basically found was when a sign was put on the wall saying,
"Do not write on these walls under any circumstances," People wrote on the walls. It was like a
red rag to get people on the walls. That is reactants. This is when we tell people not to do
something, and they feel it is a threat to the freedom other agency.
Let me give you another example now. Kathryn and I were in a conversation last week, and we
have a new system for… It will be the basis of the new website, and for us to blog and share
content.
[Katrina.Captioner is Live]
The people that set this up for us, but set us up in competition with half the Horizons team on
one team, and half on the other and we had to compete against each other. Honestly, if it was
my choice, I would not get us competing with each other. You know what? We signed up to it as
a team and we had to do it. Kathryn missed the initial training, and she was in the same team as
me so I said to her, "Look, we signed up to this and we are the leaders in the team so we have
to be role models and you need to do this."

This is what Kathryn said to me, "I don't like being told what to do. If you tell me to do something
I would do the opposite." Kathryn, tell us what was in your mind at that point.
KATHRYN:
It is very funny to me that you are using this example because this is the quintessential reactant,
right? What I'm saying is quite cheery by nature but the evidence suggests that we all have that
street, we more or less have a latitude to exercise it. If you tell me to do something, even if I
really want to do it and understand it, what it does is pushed me away. But the example you are
giving, I was completely up to doing it. What I needed was the space to make some sense of it
for myself and that was what I was reacting to. So thank you for that.
HELEN BEVAN:
So me coming along saying that we've got to do this because we, the leaders, please get on
and do it. It created that reaction and you. And did you know, you are right, we are all like this.
Reactants is exactly what Kathryn said, it's the instantaneous reaction of being told what to do.
In a way, that kind of threatens our autonomy or agency. Here are some researchers who have
a proper definition of it, it is an unpleasant motivational arousal that emerges when people
experience a loss or a loss to their free behaviours. This happens to me all the time, tell me to
do something in a way, you know, I don't like and I see is a threat to my freedoms and I will
react.
When I feel reactants, this is how it makes me feel. If someone tells me to do something, I want
to do the opposite of what they are telling me to do. Actually, somebody telling me to do
something in this way, it drives me to engage in the behaviour that is forbidden or restricted
even more. Makes me feel uncomfortable, and aggressive, angry and it makes me want to sulk.
It is an emotional reaction, and makes me lose the big picture big some getting an emotional
reaction and increases my resistance in being persuaded emotionally. What is interesting about
reactants, it gives me an urge to do something.
Reactants is very different to the land business. People and organisations are so worn down,
there are so many rules and they accepted passively, the kind of people who change agents are
much more likely to display reactants.
And you know, I need to do something about this. It is outrageous, don't tell me what to do. I
think an awful lot of situations, it is totally avoidable - a lot of reactants. The kind of behaviours
we exhibit when we behave in a reactants way is the same as a 2-year-old.
For those interested, I put additional resources here, and I did not put it in alphabetical order,
because I like to promote free things, the first couple are free resources, so have a look,
because it's very interesting.
Here are eight ways of doing it;
1) Look at what Mark Jaban said, when people buy in, they are most likely to get reactants from
the start.

2) Listen and understand when engaging in change, find a point of common interest. People
react in a reactance way, lower the resistance, don't argue back against them, be curious and
accepting that they are reacting this way and find out why.
Some of the researchers suggest that we have a foot in the door approach, ask people to do
something small and kind of get your foot in the door and then get into do something bigger.
5) Build social support, when we act with reactants, we lose our perspective, so we need people
around us to put it back together again. One of the key things that we need to do is avoid being
condescending because as one of the easiest ways to spark a reactant.
I put a picture here, stop talking at me and start talking to meet you want to stop reactants.
The next one is, give the person time because we get an emotional response that clears up, do
not tell me to do that because I'm not doing it. Give them time to cool down a bit and then you
can get back to normal.
The final thing which helps to think about this in a wider sense, is to break the rules campaign
which is a really cool thing to do.
There are some really good resources around breaking rules. So this here comes from the
Institute of Healthcare Improvement, USA, and they've got breaking the rules about care.
If we want to avoid situations of reactants, and a lot of people are doing this, let's turn it the
other way round and see how we can break the rules. What are the rules and organisations to
get in the way and stop us delivering great care and services or whatever else it is that you do.
What are the rules you would like to break?
I try on the resources, they talk about three kinds of rules that we might want to break. The first
kind of rules are habits on myths perceived to be rules that might not actually be. They are rules
adhered to.
The second group are administrative rules of policies that actually our organisational leaders
can change because the policies and rules make no sense. All they do is make us react against
them.
Number three is rules in a wider context, the regulators put this in place or government policy,
beyond the rules of the organisation. But things that leaders can advocate on.
I have worked on breaks rules with a lot of organisations now, and there are one of these three
kinds of rules that people want to break the most. Which kind of role do you think consistently
when you do this with a big group of people they want to break the most? You think they want to
break one, two or three? What do you think?
That is interesting. I would say just looking at what you are putting their, actually, most people or
the biggest group are rule 2.

Actually, the biggest rule grew by a long way is 1. It is about who can talk to who in the
organisation, pecking orders, typically two thirds of the roles, when you start analysing them as
role number one.
If you remember this, this is being both modules. So far, and it is this idea that certainly in a
National Health Service in England, there is a sense of permission culture, I can't even make
small change happen in my service because I don't have permission. Let's actually flipped this
around and as well. Starting off breaking the rules, actually, you know, what permissions do we
want?
Let's work with people across the whole team and organisation and give everyone permission.
Particularly, I think in a context where what we find, when we do, you know, campaigns to break
the rules actually most of the rules. People want a break in people's heads. Let's flip and talk
about what permissions are we going to give.
One of the things we know is a positive culture is a really good way of building change agency
and that's what we want to do. I'm going to stop there, first of all, can we hear from our chat
monitors so Kate, Ian, what are you hearing on the chat box?
IAN:
You want me to go first? So, a lot of sympathy that Kathryn…
HELEN BEVAN:
What? Working with me?
IAN:
Debbie confessed that she had been like Kathryn since she was a child. And starting to think
through the reasons for that. Also, an interesting comment from June when you are faced with
reactant in people, be positive to people who react, do not ignore them. And I agree with this in
terms of solutions.
HELEN BEVAN:
Thanks, Ian, that the idea is resonating with people. Kate, anything to add?
KATE:
I think people are getting around the idea of connecting over a coffee, and it is (inaudible) and I
think it is quite an interesting point. There were also points about tools such as PDF cycles
within the process and thinking about how we deliver this, those aspects in mind. Great
discussions going on, thank you.
HELEN BEVAN:
Fantastic, Lee, would you like to say what is happening on Twitter?
LEE:
Hello, everyone, people are enjoying the concept of reactants to get through what we might see
as resistance to change. People enjoy the concept of curiosity as well, so it is refreshing and
giving way to things. A comment from Sean saying that reframing is so important, when you are

looking transformational change, you have to respect autonomy of teams and respect
comments. That is a great one.
HELEN BEVAN:
That is great, and when we force compliance, that's what we get is - reactants. Really good, so
at this point I am going to pass over to Catherine, who is going to take us through the next stage
of the session. So Catherine, you start to get the presentation.
SPEAKER:
Thanks so much, Helen, I guess I don't need no introduction because I've had that already. It is
a serious point, I will be doing most of the module next week which will be on how we move
from 'me' to 'we' and give a full introduction of myself then. I will be transitioning from resistance
and reactants to resilience which is something we get asked most about horizons.
You can summarise on this question, why is it that some people seem to be able to take knocks
and challenges and work through them well? Possibly work through them better than others?
That's what we will be exploring next. I want to put you in mind of something we saw a module
to, where Helen talked about these two ideas, the idea of the contributor and the compliant.
The contributors somebody who is connected to a higher purpose, has a direction which is
about shared goals and values. They embrace change and seek ways to collaborate. And works
to who they are, rather than to a list of what they have to do.
What we will be exploring under section is how we can apply this in the way that we approached
resilience. So first up, what are we talking about when we talk about resilience?
We using this definition here, it is the ability of an individual to adjust to adversity, maintain
equilibrium, retain a sense of control over their environment and continue to move on and a
positive way. We take the definition from a number of sources, particularly the work of Debra
Jackson and her colleagues who did a lot of research looking at personal resilience as it relates
to midwives and nurses.
When we look at resilience, we're not just talking about our capacity to take knocks, we are
talking about resilience as an opportunity for personal growth over time. In other words,
resilience, here, is about how we respond to setbacks and how we use those setbacks to
become stronger. Through experience over time.
In a way, you can say this is about our spiritual and our psychological muscles. As much as
training the body is about our physical strength. One of the things that links resilience and
reactors as a way of framing resistance, as this idea of a mindset. When I say mindset, I mean
the established set of attitudes that a person holds.
What is my approach to a given problem? What do I believe about that in terms of the way that I
know the world? A long time, we believed as a culture that we opted within a fixed mindset.
Much like the body would develop through childhood, and leases and form, we believe the same
thing happened to the mind and that at a certain point, we were fixed in the way that we think
about the world and our place in it.

That idea has really been challenged, particularly in the field of psychology in the last 30 years.
In particular, by the work that has been led by an extraordinary woman called Carol Dwak, who
developed the idea of the growth mindset, the idea that a capacity, not just to absorb
information from black to continue to learn and to build our psychological and spiritual and
intellectual muscles throughout life is a continuous process.
In other words, applied effort and hard work, as well as brains and talent as it was known when I
was young. Also in terms of what we can accomplish in the world.
I think this feeds very well in what we do in schools, but it also has a sound evidence-based, so
if you look at neuro scientific evidence, the understanding that we now have of how the brains
plasticity works, how the ability to create new neural pathways based on experience and how
they continues right through our lives rather than being formed and then fixed. It is very
consistent with the idea of a growth mindset.
[Max.Uk.Captioner is Live]
If we think of this as something that we can use as a resource to become more effective change
agents, then it sits squarely in this space, so I will introduce you to Carol, it is a quotation that
she gave about her work.
(Reads)
This is an extraordinary idea. It is great for children but help narrative for anyone at any point in
our lives, so what we are looking for is taking his challenging ideas, applying them to this idea of
resilience, and thinking about how we grow it over time.
Lee has done another of her beautiful sketch notes which I will introduce you to now. I asked
her to do one to explain them practical ways to build resilience, and something we get asked for
a lot in school is how we take these amazing concepts and really apply them practically.
So what I'm hoping we can do now is go through and look at a few of these ideas as snapshots
for what we can do practically in order to strengthen that resilience muscle.
First, choose your battles. Don't sweat the small stuff. This is the idea that if I find myself in a
repetitive loop of behaviour, take a step back and ask myself, is the difficulty the time
experiencing work the effort in order to achieve the effect of goal that I'm striving for in the long-
term?
More often, the answer is yes, and that is a battle that we might want to choose, but more often,
when I step back and try to get perspective on something, I realise that I am in a loop of
repetitive and futile behaviour that I have a responsibility to shift out of.
So, choosing battles isn't just about the win, it's also about knowing when we need to hold back,
and in a sense, it's being aware of our own energies.
In Horizons, we are fans of old proverbs, looking at how different cultures look at the same
issues. This is one of my favourites. It is an old Cherokee proverb, "If your horse dies, get off it."

Says it all.
Secondly, people who have the potential to wear me down have good intentions. There is
something about talking and finding out what they are. In community organising, we say very
few people have a narrative about themselves that they are a difficult and wilfully obstructed
person.
So, part of the work is in finding out what that is, what they are trying to do and pushed through
it. In a way, I wanted to distinction between being critical, which is absolutely vital, and
sometimes being that person who is wearing for other people around us.
Are we at risk of being one of the people who are wearing other people down?
It is OK to be critical, but be aware of what or not there is a more constructive space. A friend
said it is the people who feel a bit like a shrivelled balloon.
It is not quite buoyant or giving you energy, the party hasn't got started, so think about where we
are contributing in that space.
Thirdly, one of my favourites, celebrate your achievements, however small.
The reality of victories is that they are almost always compromised, they are not delivered to us
on a plate, perfectly formed as we imagined them.
The skill here is learning to release the balloons when we have something to celebrate, and I
would let Vista one of the trends we have seen in healthcare improvement, a celebration of joy
at work.
The institution of have to have put joy at work is one of the four pillars of what will make an
effective health care system of the future. I think this is very much part of joy not floating around
if they really, but something we help to create.
This is Henri Nouwen, someone who wrote a lot about spiritual joy. He says, "Joy does not
happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day."
This is a simple idea, but to practice it can be difficult.
I want to link this back to model one to this beautiful piece of art, "All of my good ideas are
battles." For some of us, the pursuit of joy on a daily basis, the constant reframing of what we
are experiencing and trying to shift our mindset can feel as much of a struggle, and when we
are looking at how we practically apply these techniques, there is one thing about thinking about
my own resilience, but also, how do we build the resilience of others? Had we help others with
their battles?
So, I will go through some others and then go through it briefly.
This is what school is all about, an opportunity for us to jump in and say I am much stronger in a
relationship with other people, and giving yourself space where you can build this in your life.

If you ask an activist and she understands the world, she will say power, and if you ask her what
her first question is, she will say who are my people?
It is about asking who are my people creatively? Very simply and practical exercises to think
about who your people are, looking within four or five minutes at where you have connections,
so before I come back to the chat monitors, look after yourself, your physical and mental-health.
If Lee has, I am sure she would say that looking after each other is of equal importance, and it
links to the idea of self-care.
When I think about how we survive and how we are resilient, we think about injuring things that
happen to us. Injuries is not the same as coping and recharging.
Sometimes you would rock up to court in the morning, and the barristers would say proudly
they'd been up all night, and this is a nonsense for people who want to make change, because
enduring brother then recharging is actively destructive to our ability to sustain change efforts
over time.
So, this idea of self-care is not simply an afterthought, waiting until my body breaks down until I
take care steps. Those of you have access to social media, I would love you to share some
examples of things you do that build a sense of care, things that people might get experience
from that you weave into your day.
The final couple of ideas, while we can take inspiration from what others do, we have to make
sense of resilience for ourselves. We can look back at how we make change spread because
the same principles apply.
Often, when we think about building resilience, we take ideas from others and try to force them
into our own lives. I think there is a better way of doing this, and I will take Helen's frame of
ACE. The idea here is to take one small action that has meaning for you, make it actionable in
your life, so I want you, would you are joining in groups or individually, just take 2 minutes and
think back to your childhood.
Think about something that you love doing, and that I want you to think about how you can
capture that same joy in one small action that you take.
The next step is to think about how that connects to someone else. Is it something you can do
with someone? Is it something you can do for someone? Is it something you submit tell
someone about? We know that when we nailed that connection, we're more likely to stick with a
connection overtime.
Finally, make your data visual. Collect it, adapt what you are doing, create a cycle of what you
are learning, what that helps you to know and how you adapt over time.
In other words, make what you are doing extensible so you can join it in different ways that
people can join in with you. That is a very simple exercise we can do to foster our resilience.

Finally, and then I will go back to the chat monitors to see what other ideas people have been
sharing, this one. Learn from your mistakes and move forward. Try not to be afraid of the
between expectations and reality. No plan survives contact with reality in its perfect form, and I
often refer back to this because it makes me laugh.
Often we have an image of changing our minds and it is perfect and beautiful, but the reality
might look quite different. When I look at the picture on the right, I have got a choice, do we see
a dodgy hedgehog with bad teeth?
All, do we see a necessary step that I need to take in order to get better and possibly one day
make something like the perfect picture.
That is how that links to the mindset question, and so much of this is about being kind to each
other, which is where the final image that Lee included is to remember what makes you special,
what unique contribution you have in the world, and as groups, how much space are we
creating for each other to be able to celebrate what makes each of us special?
[Katrina.Captioner is Live]
We saw Donna Bedien before, one of the people of policy improvement and he said that all you
need is love in order to improve the system. So these are ways to think about resilience and I
will come over to Ian and Kate in the chat room to see what other ideas people are sharing.
IAN:
In terms of how we build resilience, and how we celebrate our achievements, and there is a
particular emphasis about being joyful. Someone says that have a daily issues meeting, over
the last 24 hours.
When we get onto that, how do you keep CARE of yourself, the whole self-care, the chat room
just lit up with ideas, walk to the beach, the woods, yoga, singing, arts, even dancing...
HELEN BEVAN:
What about Kate or Lee?
KATE:
I think people split their weight between two things, between the connection and environment
around us and thinking about going out for, connecting to the community in nature and also
connecting with oneself and reflecting on… And this was through things like being still, taking
time out and listening to others around you.
Also, praying, doing things like tai chi, connecting to groups for well-being as well.
SPEAKER:
Fantastic, Lee, did you want to add to this?
SPEAKER:
People on Twitter have been talking about what resilience is that we need to talk about more,
and those pathways really important, especially with self-care and things. And also, there have

been a lot of reflections on Twitter, untainted compassion challenge, another had a team
meeting where they were celebrate achievements on resilience and finding people, sharing and
supporting others as well.
SPEAKER:
Fantastic, thank you. This leads on to the next part where I want to introduce an extension, if
you like, on resilience. I'm going to bring in some emerging research coming from the United
States, in particular, around the idea that the Americans call grips.
It is about the response to any interaction of resilience, and grips response to be ability to
manage this over time. (unknown term) defines this is perseverance and passion for long-term
goals. Grip is about doing what you love, but not falling in love. It is about staying in love.
It is the set of characteristics that enable us to create and maintain purpose over a long period
of time. A note on the word passion, because when I first read this, I must read it in a way, in a
red passion for the idea of the lightning bolt moment which is very prevalent as an icon and our
culture, how did you find your passion? When did you suddenly realise that you wanted to,
become a healthcare improvement expert? Or from the police service or whatever it might be.
What your research shows, for most people, this is not how it works. Passion, in this context, is
much less about tense emotions, much less about obsession and situation. It is much more
about a sustained an enduring devotion to something over time. In that sense, this idea of
fireworks as something of a red herring. Fireworks exploded in a blaze of glory and they tend to
fizzle way.
What I'm going to suggest is when we think about Grits, it is not just about work, a vocation
suddenly becoming a cross. Passion is moral compass and a firework. Something that guides
as over time, it emerges over a period of years. In the process of discovery is active. We have
to look at a compass to make sense of it, we have to enquire into the work we are doing and the
meaning that it has in order to discover what the passion as within it.
In other words, in this context, to maintain and create purpose. Over time, this is something we
helped to create. It is not something that simply happens to us. That's how it links back to the
growth mindset. This is my chance to get payback on Helen Becker, she does not know that I'm
going to reference heavier.
When I think about GRIT - perseverance and passionfruit long-term goal. Helen is a great
example of this, someone who has them leading healthcare improvement in three decades now,
those of you who saw Helen's blog a few weeks ago, where she told her story of how she'd
started to do this work. Helen did not start working in the health service, she did not start
working in healthcare improvement, she started working in local government and, through that,
found a kind of interest and public service and she followed that interest and refined it over a
number of years, decades even.
We could put a narrative on this, Helen has had this mission that has been cost and overtime. In
one aspect, this is true, but in another. It's a bolt through the process of actively pursuing it
following the sustained devotion and effort of particular interest. It is not just about improving
health by doing things better, but actually transforming health care by helping us to see better

things to do.
And that only came through GRIT, the determination to stick to it over time. We have put the
scale, the assessment tool that Prof Duckworth and her colleagues use, and attacks questions
that cause us to reflect. New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from the old ones
connect and matches change over the years? Do I get obsessed with an idea over a short time
in the later loses interest? You might find is a reflective tool, that really helps you to focus on
some of those big questions about what is the thing the time pursuing through time? How can I
better cultivated make great to be able to do this?
We are nearly out of time. One final idea, when people ask us about resilience, they ask about
personal resilience, how do I cultivate resilience for myself? I want to suggest one idea that
happened to me through experience which is this; when I focused on how I built the resilience of
other people, the process of doing that has made me more resilient at the same time.
So what is in the process of supporting other people to build their resilience, we improve our
own resilience over time. When we led chairs are other people, and coach someone in how to
fight a winnable battle on when to let things go, when we help someone who when I was
struggling, a link to the school and maybe say let's talk afterwards about the module. All of
those small concrete steps through which we build resilience of others.
It may also be that that is a key way that we can do this for ourselves. We will be picking up on
some of these themes in next week's modules, where we will be looking at… Let's just get the
right slide… There it is. We will be looking at mobilising in organising which is a subject close to
my heart, so will be looking at public narrative and how we move from me into we. The
individual to the collective agency which is going to transform public services in the future.
In the meantime, you have got the learning management system, Change Starts With Me, and
next week we'll be uploading the second module of that, pulling out much more details, the
things we have been exploring today. How do I build resistance? How do I deal with resistance?
And how do I support of the people and make them more resilient?
For those of you who have not yet joined them, we've been running a set of Edge Talks, and the
idea to discuss the concepts and make sense of them with other people right around the world,
these upcoming and I hope you'll be able to join us for a few of them.
So the week after next, we will come on and look at the skills and characters that make people.
Effective change agents for the future. The last thing I will leave you with, the one thing that, if
you have not done so, we are running hundreds of copied trials around the world, we've run a
first round of matches, here is the link that you need to join for next time and be paired with
somebody for an exciting conversation. Thank you very much for today, we look forward to
seeing you next week's module.

School for Change Agents 2018 Module 3 transcript

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School for Change Agents 2018 Module 3 transcript