It’s June 2021, and we’re at the back end of nearly 18 months of restricted living. Out of the blue, I find myself at something of a crossroads, career-wise. I need to make decisions about where exactly I should go next, and that’s a tricky process. Midwifery leadership development has been my working life obsession since about 2009, so I really want to stay in that world.
When I was doing my doctoral research, one of my supervisors came up with the idea that I should regard myself as one of the subjects of the study, because like the midwifery leaders I was observing and interviewing, I too was going through something of an identity transition. Having been first a musician, then a midwife, I was now in a liminal space: if I stayed in the Business School, where the doctorate was based, how would I ever be able to call myself a midwife again? But if I went back to clinical midwifery, as a band 6 with a doctorate, I wasn’t going to fit in very well and I knew I would struggle to move the research on in any practical way.
So I spent the next few years flitting between disciplines: some years spent as a maternity care researcher at the University of Nottingham, then some time as a lecturer in leadership and management at Newcastle Business School. Finally, I took up a role that seemed to incorporate both practical and academic elements, enabling me to work with midwives to support their career and leadership development – but here, of all places, my identity came to be challenged (and ultimately rejected) beyond anything I would have expected.
So here I am, in June 2021, remembering something a very good friend once said to me. I was sharing my worries about belonging nowhere at the end of my doctorate, and she said, ‘You won’t belong nowhere, you’ll belong everywhere’. I’ve never forgotten that, and it’s the principle that will drive this business idea: I’m bringing clinical experience, meaning I can speak the language of midwifery and healthcare, academic understanding of leadership and identity questions, and practical tools to support midwives’ learning. If I can do anything to help the midwifery profession develop a strong identity and support the development of our future leaders and effective teams, then it doesn’t really matter what my own identity might be – and maybe that’s at the heart of belonging everywhere: being useful to lots of people in lots of contexts.
Today I’ll be presenting on the subject of midwifery leadership and identity at the International Confederation of Midwives‘ Triennial Congress – it would have been in Bali, but for obvious reasons it’s now a Zoom event *sigh*. This seemed like a good day to launch Why Not, so pop along to my shiny new homepage to explore what I’ve been up to lately. There you’ll find lots of information about how I’m working to support midwifery career, leadership and team development – using some very colourful psychometric profiling tools, a giraffe, and an unusually happy pig!
