This was a busy week with a lot going on so I will pick out some highlights to reflect on and discuss.

Healthcare Social Media

Last Friday Heather Moorhead (@HmmMoorhead) the Director of the Northern Ireland Confederation for Health and Social Services (NICON) asked if I would organise live tweeting for the NICON 2013 Conference – Transforming Your Care: Transforming Our Practice – on 6 & 7 March.  I agreed and we spoke again early this week to agree a hashtag – #nicon13 – which I registered with the Symplur Healthcare Hashtag Project.

I also created an official Twitter account for the event – @NICON2013 –  which will be used to curate the live tweet.  And importantly we have identified a named individual responsible for administrating the official account during the event.  The hashtag will be communicated in the conference joining instructions and Heather has arranged WiFi access and two large LCD TVs which will be used to show a live stream of the tweets.

The real challenge however, will be to encourage people to participate in the live tweet at the event.  Many probably don’t even have twitter accounts so we might have to organise a brief crash course in signing up and tweeting during one of the coffee breaks on the first day.

Many people are still uncomfortable about healthcare social media – but as with everything in life there are risks and opportunities, and properly managed it can deliver great benefits and value by facilitating openness, transparency and dialogue.

 

Clinical Leadership Fringe Session at NICON 2013

Heather also told me how NICON are seeking to promote clinical leadership and this year they have 22 clinical bursaries for clinicians to attend the conference.  She asked if I would like to organise and lead the clinical leadership fringe session.  I agreed, and after brainstorming and jotting down a brief description of what the session should cover I turned my mind to the senior healthcare leaders I could ask to facilitate the session.  I was pleasantly surprised by the willingness of the individuals I asked, to make a commitment to travel to Derry/Londonderry at such short notice to help with this.  I imagine it says something about their dedication to promoting clinical leadership!

I think it is essential that clinicians at all levels have the opportunity to attend events like NICON 2013 where high level policy and strategy are discussed.  This lets them take time out from their busy jobs to stand back and see the big picture and this is critical to allow them to see what they are leading towards.

 

To find the real leaders look to see who people are following

I spend a lot of time thinking about leadership, talking about leadership and observing the leadership dynamics of teams and organisations, and this week I had an interesting chat with a person who is providing significant leadership in an organisation without holding a formal leadership position.  One key element of this is visibility.  This person is their, visible to the staff, providing leadership.  In contrast, those in formal leadership roles are not visible, and in fact many staff would not recognise them, and couldn’t name them.  So if you want to find the true leaders in an organisation – don’t look directly to those in formal leadership positions – look to see who people are following.

Many great leaders in history such as Martin Luther King Jr and Mahatma Ghandi didn’t hold formal leadership positions but had many tens of thousands of followers and achieved great changes.  Why – because they provided people with leadership when they needed it.  People chose to follow them.  People chose them as leaders.  And even today in all walks of life – you’ll find some of the greatest leaders amongst the ranks, not in formal positions of leadership.

Don’t wait for someone to give you a leadership position or ‘make’ you a leader.  No-one can ‘make’ you a leader.  You need to ‘be’ a leader.  And you’ll know when you’re a leader when you look behind you and you have followers!

 

Dr Mark Newbold to address Northern Ireland’s medical leaders

This week I emailed Dr Mark Newbold (@drmarknewbold), CEO of Heart of England Foundation Trust, to invite him to speak at the 3rd Annual Northern Ireland Medical Leadership Symposium in Belfast on 20 June 2013.

Dr Newbold is one of the few medical CEOs in the UK and is well known for his engagement using healthcare social media.  He writes a weekly diary on his blog – marknewbold.com –  giving an insight into the working week of a healthcare CEO and tweets at @drmarknewbold.  I have become a regular reader of his blog and he was kind enough to give me advice on beginning my own journey into healthcare social media.

He has written a blog post giving 10 reasons why healthcare bosses should use Twitter and recently wrote an article for the Guardian Healthcare Professionals Network giving his Top Ten Tips for NHS Tweeters.

I look forward to welcoming Dr Newbold to Northern Ireland and hearing him address our medical leaders about healthcare social media, openness, accessibility and visible leadership.