A reverse mentoring programme seeking to transform NHS culture around diversity and inclusion is now being rolled out more widely, following the success of two pilots, including at Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust and Gloucestershire Care Services NHS Trust (now Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust) in 2019.
The NHS Leadership Academy Reciprocal Mentoring Programme is one of a number of initiatives to enable NHS leaders to work in transformational ways in creating inclusive and diverse organisations that value the power of difference.
While the NHS has made progress in this area, it recognises that it needs to do much more, and that there is both a compelling business and moral case for this, said NHS Leadership Academy national lead for coaching and mentoring, Charmaine Kwame. She presented at the EMCC Global conference in June with EMCC UK president Rita Symons, who has helped design and implement the programme.
Kwame shared headlines from studies highlighting workplace discrimination because of ethnic origin, sexual identity, disability and gender, including NHS Leadership Academy research carried out in 2013 which revealed white staff are 1.74 times more likely to be appointed once shortlisted than their BAME counterparts (Kline, 2013), and BAME staff are twice as likely to enter a disciplinary process and more likely to be disciplined for similar offences (Archibong et al, 2010), for example.
Naming George Floyd who recently died while being restrained by US police officers, she said, “It’s not just in the health sector. We know there’s work to be done and people are going to be questioning the very fabric of who they are in the days going forward.”
On the programme, Kwame, who won the 2019 Coaching at Work Award in the Internal Coaching/Mentoring Champion category, said, “We wanted it to be the meeting of equals…it’s not about creating victims and perpetrators or victims, it’s about bringing together people in the system, those who have power and those from those underrepresented groups to work in a very strong partnership to create the change in the system.”
Mentees are board-level executives in the NHS (executive or non-executive) and mentors are people from under-represented groups recruited by NHS organisations. Both parties need to bring the following: courage, ability to share experience, curiosity, respect, active listening, resilience, reflection, commitment to act as ‘change agent’, and commitment to learn.
Although the programme explores concepts such as cognitive bias and white privilege, its main focus is on human connection, drawing on theory from intergroup dialogue, and non-violent communication, among others.
Symons said, “We’re looking at what are the ways we can really have a conversation that’s based on trust, empathy and people really connecting at an individual level? That’s what we’ve tried to do with this programme. We are ambitious and what we want to do is change the culture of the NHS, so while individuals will undoubtedly benefit, it’s a systemic programme aimed at getting enough conversations that we get to a tipping point where everybody values the power of difference.”
Symons introduced delegates to the concept of ZOUD (Zone of Uncomfortable Debate), saying, “We know change happens in a period of discomfort. [So] we do put people into a challenging situation, we use forum theatre [to normalise concerns such as about saying the wrong thing], we ask people to really engage and be vulnerable.”
- See also: Coaching at Work volume 14, issue 6: https://bit.ly/37CMrPm
- See also:Rita Symons on what more we can do to banish hate