Twitter has blurred the boundaries of leadership – so be yourself
I recently collared Rob Webster, chief executive of Leeds Community Healthcare, on Twitter and asked him to write a post about leadership and social media. Rob is a fabulous tweeter and you can follow him @RobWebster_LCH. This is what he said: I was speaking at the first ever NHS Values Summit in Leeds last November. It was an event with lots of surprises – I had to follow a flash mob of older people doing street dance and engage hundreds of people from across Leeds – partners, carers, colleagues, citizens young and old. Nothing would ground the crackling electricity generated by the flash mob like a middle aged bloke in a suit. Off the cuff, I began by saying: ‘I am Rob and I am the Chief Executive of Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust. I am not just that though. I am the son of a father with Alzheimer’s; a father to a son with a learning disability; a brother to someone who committed suicide. I want to talk about what I value.’ The electricity kept flowing, the connection remained. Joining the Twitter revolution – I started using Twitter over a year ago. I was spurred into action by my friend Dean Royles, director of NHS Employers, who had a strategy for driving better communication and engagement with the NHS and was starting to get a real voice using the medium. As someone who naturally seeks to collaborate, communicate and influence, it made sense to me to join the Twitter revolution. I had three loose objectives when I started: to raise awareness of my Trust, driving better engagement with our...
Making ethnography count – my grandpa, social justice, and me
My grandpa – my grandpa once told me that it’s okay not to be religious as long as you are a good person. This statement may not seem that remarkable but for the fact my grandpa was Dean of Liverpool Anglican cathedral when he said it. He was busy supporting gay rights, race relations and women’s role in the church before I was even born. As a child I remember fantastic conversations about equality and social justice and the ‘religious sausage machine’ (his words not mine) that he was absolutely fine with me not being a part of. I learnt from my grandpa that you can be part of an established institution and at the same time a force for positive change within in it. I’m not a touch on my grandpa in terms of grandness but we share a pragmatism towards social change – a desire to influence from within as well as ally ourselves those outside – to be both insider and outsider. Inside or outside – the starting point for my PhD research is heavily influenced by all those childhood conversations with my grandpa. I am interested in insiders and outsiders; power and identity; stigma and discrimination; and specifically how social media may be complicating and disrupting them in the context of people providing and using mental health services. My grandpa was long gone before the birth of Facebook, but I’m sure the shifting nature of how we communicate would have fascinated him also. Ethnography – I’ve chosen to do an online ethnography – immersing myself in a social media site participating, observing and interviewing –...
How to create understanding through storytelling
I’ve been invited by @ClaireOT and #occhat to write a post for their next chat on Tuesday 12February 8-9pm UK time. The occupational therapy chat them is inspired by a recently launched @LeedsandYorkPFT campaign entitled Sharing Stories with the strapline ‘harnessing creativity and sharing understanding’. A bit of background – as a Foundation Trust we are a public benefit corporation as well as being part of the NHS. This means that anyone can become a member of our Trust. And once they become a member they are eligible to stand for election to our Council of Governors which includes people with lived experience of using our services, carers, staff and members of the public. Our campaigns – we have a membership of over 16000 and we want to make that count. We want to connect with them and involve them in a way which has meaning and purpose. Positively changing attitudes and behaviours towards people who use our services is at the heart of our organisational strategy. If attitudes change for the better then we hope our campaigns contribute to our purpose of improving health and lives. I know this all sounds a bit corporate but I want to show how are campaigns have a clear purpose and are an important part of our core business. Sharing Stories – we’ve chosen Sharing Stories as our 2013 campaign because we know from the research that the best way to reduce stigma is face-to-face contact on equal terms. But we’re also interested in the research that suggests ‘imagined’ contact can have a similarly powerful effect. There is quite a bit of research on this...
How kind are you to Twitter and how kind is Twitter to you?
I originally came up withe this post for @culturevultures after a few on and offline conversations we had about kindness (or not) on Twitter. You find the original post plus lots of comments here How kind are you in social media spaces? And do you have an online ecosystem where it’s ok to pop up the odd tweet about the emotional pain that we all experience at one time or another? And if it isn’t then is it the kind of ecosystem that ultimately bolsters or undermines your wellbeing? Erving Goffman (1922-1982) was an eminent social theorist who had interesting stuff to say about how we present ourselves in social situations. He described our social interactions as a series of performances – we are all actors trying to control the impression others have of us in order to avoid embarrassment and shame. Extending the performance metaphor, he describes our front-stage and back-stage performances – those we are prepared to show to our wider networks and those we keep hidden away. He also wrote about Stigma (1961) in which he explored how people manage impressions of themselves when they carry ‘marks’ which mean they don’t conform to approved standards of behaviour or appearance. So how does this play out in your Twitter ecosystem – the people who you follow and who follow you? Social media enthusiasts tend to emphasise the way in which platforms like Twitter connect us and strengthen our social ties. Cynics tend to emphasise the tendency for us to manage our identity in ways which are overly positive and can alienate us from others. The truth,...about.me
Victoria Betton
victoria betton
director mHabitat | NHS | social media & mental health doctorate | interested in digital inclusion | parma violets fiend | http://codesigndigitalhealth.co.uk
