narratives of identity

Together again after all this time

According to the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), this year’s theme for the International Day of the Midwife last week (Together Again: from evidence to reality) is ‘a nod to the upcoming 33rd ICM Triennial Congress, where our global midwifery community will come together for the first time in more than 5 years’.

Reading that, and creating my annual IDM piece of embroidery (the illustration for this post is full of sparkly beads and was created to represent the global nature of the midwifery community), I took a moment to reflect on what I’ve been doing since the last in-person ICM congress, when we met in Toronto in 2017.

Back then (and it really does feel like a lifetime ago) I was a Research Fellow in Maternity Care at the University of Nottingham. In Toronto, I presented on aspects of my doctoral research into midwifery leadership and identity, and brought a poster along as well. One of my doctoral supervisors had suggested my research into midwifery leadership and identity would create a career’s worth of work, and thinking about that now I don’t believe he was far from the truth.

Since leaving the University of Nottingham in June 2018, I’ve continued to explore the subjects of leadership and identity, both within and beyond midwifery. First, I moved into the business school at Northumbria University, where I took up a lectureship in leadership and management. I worked with undergraduate and postgraduate students from healthcare, other public sector and private sector organisations, developing my understanding of how identity narratives are created in a range of professions and contexts. While at Northumbria I also completed my PG Certificate in Coaching, and I became an Insights Discovery practitioner. I found that Insights could create a valuable framework through which individuals, teams and organisations might develop awareness of and solutions to such challenges as leadership, communication and collaborative working, all based within a positive psychology approach – celebrating strengths and at the same time addressing limitations.

In 2019, I took up the role of Professional Advisor for Leadership at the Royal College of Midwives, and brought my background in clinical midwifery, my research-based understanding of leadership, and my Insights-based understanding of identity narratives with me. Having been briefly away from the midwifery profession, I was now back in its midst, and I worked to develop workshops and programmes based on my hybrid learning and understanding.

On leaving the RCM in 2021, I established my own business – here at Why Not, I support midwives in their personal, team and leadership development. I love working with the profession so much! In the face of reports critical of midwifery and multidisciplinary leadership, my focus is always on what midwives do bring to the table, and exploring their understanding of leadership from a personal perspective – taking ownership of (and challenging) the idea that midwifery is leadership.

What also brings me joy is the range of opportunities I’ve been given to work with other professions. Within Why Not, I’ve recently expanded my workshops to include nurses and other healthcare professionals, and it’s been joyous to be able to see how Insights can impact beyond my home profession. Alongside Why Not, I’m an Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham, working on the NHS Leadership Academy’s Anderson Programme. I work with some inspiring and dedicated NHS leaders, both clinical and non-clinical, exploring how the core tenets of contemporary leadership theory (compassion, authenticity, collaboration, engagement) play out in their working lives. Beyond the NHS, I also hold an Associate Lectureship at Northumbria University, and there I work with student police officers. Again, I feel an immense sense of privilege to be supporting their development, exploring their understanding of self and others, leadership and teamworking.

What a few years I’ve had. Never having had any kind of career plan, I do feel that following opportunities and running headlong down unexpected paths has brought plenty of adventures. And so to Bali for ICM 2023, where you’ll find me presenting a poster on the subject of midwifery leadership, the theme I always come back to. I’ll be highlighting how the professional identity of midwives is inextricably linked to leadership, using learning from my Insights workshops to explore the assertion that midwifery is leadership. I’m excited to have the opportunity to be together again, after all this time: back in the room with so many inspirational midwives from around the world. Wherever I go, and whatever I do, I always come back to midwifery, and I’m grateful for it.

Bringing your Authentic Self to Work: fairy lights and origami

Bringing your authentic self to work, and particularly in the context of leadership and management, has been a hot topic in recent years. It sounds simple, and actually pretty logical, if you think about authenticity in terms of your values and behaviours:

‘Being your true authentic self means what you say in life aligns with your actions… It is who you are at your deepest core. It is about being true to yourself through your thoughts, words and actions, and having these three areas match each other’. Read more about authenticity here.

But what does it really mean for us to be our authentic self in the workplace, and what are some of the challenges? This week, I’m exploring the topic of authenticity in relation to my own office space.

As you can see from the image adorning this post, I don’t have what you might call a muted office backdrop. This is my most recent office space (at home, of course) but wherever I’ve had a desk I’ve taken the same approach. My colleagues at the University of Nottingham will remember my year-round tinsel and the seasonal crochet displays, while at Northumbria University I had a noticeboard full of Instax photos and running medals. While working at the Royal College of Midwives, I somehow managed to persuade the facilities manager to put up a shiny new noticeboard behind my desk, and I imagine he assumed it would be for important notices and spreadsheets. Well, it definitely did have some spreadsheets, but of course there were many other things on it as well. Although no fairy lights.

The backdrop I’m working with at the moment might look chaotic, but it’s actually been quite carefully thought out. The fairy lights are pretty normal for my house (to the point where my mum said it looks like we live in a grotto!), but the other elements are worthy of a closer look.

First, the origami cranes. I had a pretty tricky beginning to 2021, and during the first few months of the year I needed to work quite hard at distracting myself from some challenging events. I’ve always used origami as a means of disconnecting from problems, or as a support for thinking time (try it – it’s ace!) and someone told me that if I make 1000 cranes I can have a wish. I mean, I could just go and throw a coin into a well, but this method of getting a free wish will be such a conversation starter!

Next, the embroidery. For one thing, I love to sew (and I was sewing when it most definitely was not a cool thing to do), and I was exploring how sewing might be a way of expressing myself. As for the designs, these reflect all things midwifery: the giraffe relates to the subject of my doctoral research, while the other two pieces reflect the most recent themes for International Day of the Midwife.

And finally, there are several little art pieces and postcards, all of which have been gifted to me by significant people or chosen as a memory of important places in my life.

So how does it feel to bring my authentic self to work every day? At first, I found myself worrying that the backdrop to my office was just too colourful – should I be more corporate? Do I look like a crazy lady? But then I thought, should this even matter? And in fact, it’s proved a really positive ice breaker and conversation starter in lots of contexts. I’ve been told by midwives in my leadership workshops that they feel relaxed because they can see immediately who they’re working with. And in meetings, I’m very (very!) often greeted with expressions of delight at the fairy lights – apparently, they’re guaranteed to brighten up the dullest morning.

I’m lucky, in the sense that it’s easy for me to show myself at work: that backdrop is visible every day, and let’s not forget that I also have a long history of (perhaps) over-sharing. For others, it may be more of a challenge, as they prefer to keep some things back. For some people, there’s comfort to be found in separating work from home entirely. It really doesn’t matter which approach works best for you – it’s just important that you’re comfortable with what you choose to show, and that you’re not in a position where you feel it’s based on others’ expectations rather than your own decisions. That’s the true key to bringing your authentic self to work.

What is a midwife? The value of shared identity

Image by Andrea Piacquadio at Pexels

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, I presented at the (virtual) International Confederation of Midwives‘ Triennial Congress on June 30th. My subject was identity in midwifery (‘What is a Midwife?’), but the presentation took on a life of its own due to the immense amount of time that has passed since I submitted the original abstract – that was back in the early summer of 2019, and of course I’ve been doing a lot of work with midwives and other maternity care workers since then.

When I wrote the abstract, my subtitle was ‘Competing narratives of identity among clinical and managerial midwives’, and the presentation was due to discuss my doctoral research findings about how clinical and non-clinical midwives narrate the issue of identity quite differently at times, and how this can create tensions within the profession. Here’s an example of that discord in midwifery narratives:

‘I absolutely am a midwife through and through. I am a midwife who recognises her scope of practice, and I mean an enhanced scope of practice – my expertise is no longer the actual delivery of individualised clinical care. My expertise is in the macro-midwifery. And I think that’s one of the things we get hung up on, and why people say they don’t want to be heads of midwifery, because they’re not doing midwifery any more. And actually, they are’ (Susan, former head of midwifery)

‘I realise senior managers were once midwives, and I’m pretty sure originally they went into this for the same kind of reasons as myself, however ‘the needs of the service’ seem to have turned them into the kind of people who think it acceptable to give no thought whatsoever to midwives and staff as actual human beings instead of numbers to meet the needs of this service’ (clinical midwife)

Since I submitted the original abstract, I’ve been lucky enough to spend a couple of years exploring what we might do to build a bridge across those narratives, and how understanding midwifery as a profession that encompasses a range of clinical and non-clinical roles might support the development of a positive professional identity – and in turn, further understanding of the midwifery identity among relevant stakeholder groups. If we’re better able to understand the profession as a group singing from the same hymn sheet (and after all, I really do think we’re generally trying to achieve the same thing, wherever we sit), then other professional groups, Trust and Health Board managers, and of course women and their families, will also gain a new clarity and depth of awareness about the professional identity of midwifery, and how important it is.

So my presentation evolved into something more positive: the subtitle was now ‘Developing shared narratives of identity across the profession’, and I was able to highlight some of the work I’ve been doing to support personal, team and leadership development in midwifery. You’ll know by now that I’m using Insights Discovery as the framework to support the work I’m doing, and it felt good to be able to describe the positive reception that’s had so far. Most of all, it felt great to be moving beyond the findings from my research – after all, the reason I undertook the doctorate was because I wanted to find ways to enhance the midwifery professional identity.

When I completed the doctorate, a friend asked me what was the one thing I would like to do to move the research on. I said that I’d like to get midwives from every part of the profession around a big table, in order to explore and celebrate what we share, rather than what divides us. Why Not gives me the opportunity to do exactly that, and I’m excited to be part of the conversation around a very well-populated metaphorical table.