Transferable Skills

When I talk to members of my team, particularly when they are considering alternative roles, they often tell me that “I can’t do that”. I then take them, line by line, through the job description and ask them why they think they can’t do it.

One person told me once that they weren’t very organised. She was a mother of 3 school age children, a wife, had a full time job and all the family pursuits that go with kids. I asked her to think about how she cooked dinner in the evening. She said that she’d think about what to cook before leaving for work in the morning, when she got home, she’d get everything out of the fridge, put it in the pot/pan, then check in with the kids and their homework, then finish tickling the pot/pan and dish up. I asked how she managed all that to which she replied that it had to be planned and organised. Lightbulb 💡 moment. That means she could organise. Its a transferable skill.

The Psychologies Magazine suggests when you’re thinking about a new career, that by doing a skills audit you can determine if there are any core competencies that need working on. Things to think about are communications, research planning interpersonal and HR, positive attributes, management, leadership and decision making, financial management and critical thinking.

The article also noted that you only need 70% of the skills listed on a job spec to apply for it. Then, once you’ve thought about what skills you have, and worked out what you need and why, the next step is to marry up your skills with your values.

I’m going to conduct the skills audit just to find out where my shortcomings are, and focus on “pivoting a new future“.

Leading to a new path

Its funny how things turn out sometimes.

After feeling stuck in a rut for a while, I’ve been making some noises and needing to do something different and I’ve been investing some energy in to making that happen. I still have a long way until retirement so I need to be enthusiastic about the work I undertake to make it valuable and fulfilling.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have a calling or a vocation. I’ve moved from job to job in line with my strengths or desire to do something different.

As I head into the final months of my 40’s, the thought of changing career, or doing something else is quite daunting. I’ve been fortunate over the years to have been in the right place at the right time, with the right people behind me. This has enabled me to move roles, increase my responsibilities and wage packet to go with it. Those people are no longer at hand and I am becoming that person for others. But I do still need a job that I’m engaged with.

A while back I made some noises about wanting to move away from service management and go back to project management, where my skills are more commensurate. I also want to spend more time doing things that I enjoy (e.g. #bellringing) and to do better at that too.

Deciding that I want to invest more in my own final years of employment and thinking about the “what if…” scenarios has helped me formulate what I want to do.

Its not about the pay packet, I’m not motivated by money, although I do enjoy having some. I need to have purpose, value and satisfaction. I need to feel that I can use my experience, knowledge and skills to contribute to a larger society.

Change is never without its worry. Am I too old to do this? Will I regret it? What if it doesn’t work out? Should I just bite the bullet and hang the consequences?

Two opportunities are currently about to present themselves and I’m going to reach out for both of them. Now is the time to do what I want rather than what I must.

Being fed and watered (and flowered)

Most of Saturday daytime was taken up by attending the virtual meeting of the Central Council of Church Bellringers Executive and Workgroup leads meeting. Although technically neither of those things, I am generally invited in my role as Public Relations Officer so that I have some idea of what’s going on.

The Exec and I meet once a month (the Exec meet otherwise as Trustees at different times so I’m not party to discussions I shouldn’t be), then once a quarter there’s a larger meeting that includes the Workgroup leads too. Saturday was that day.

On these occasions some element of logistics is required with regard to lunch and other refreshment throughout the day. C and I have it well sorted.

Before the meeting started in the morning I put in my lunch order, as there’s only half an hour break allocated. This time C sourced vegetable samosa, garlic and herb focaccia and a custard doughnut whilst he was in town, from the bread stall in the High Street. The samosa and bread were duly served warmed up at the alloted time.

C had also sourced a poinsettia whilst he was out, which made its way on to the windowsill during the course of the early part of the meeting, before the lunch break.

At lunchtime the afternoon cuppa order was placed and timing agreed. At the alloted time, whilst I was on screen, my mint tea accompanied by a chocolate orange brownie that I’d made yesterday was delivered, in full view of the other participants on the video call.

This prompted 2 participants to message me privately, via the chat function. One simply said “you’re lucky” the other put in their order for “tea with milk and no sugar“.

A little while later the first messager advised that his tea cuppa had now arrived. I replied to say that mine had come with the brownie, which was met with raised eyebrows and mouth gaping, and a tiny spec of jealousy me thinks!

I’m lucky that C helps me facilitate attending these meetings by picking up the domestic slack. Its all in the planning you know.

Brownie baking

No, I don’t mean cooking small Girl Guides!

Been a bit of a busy day and the rest of the weekend doesn’t appear to be much better so in order to assuage the need to bake, it would have to be something quick and simple.

As it happened, the previous day saw something pop up in one of my social media feeds showing chocolate brownies decorated like Christmas trees. They looked quite effective.

The picture above was my attempt at replicating the design with what I’d got to hand. To be honest, they look quite good in the flesh.

I’m not very good at coming up with my own designs for cakes and bakes but I can copy someone else’s design generally. I always state that where that is the case and never claim them as my own.

The other thing I did, to keep in with a theme amongst friends at the moment, was to add some orange flavouring to both the brownie mix and the icing. Chocolate orange flavoured goods are definitely a staple requirement.

I’ll get to test them out whilst in virtual meetings over the weekend and I’m sure there won’t be many left come Monday morning. 😋

Children’s TV shows

On a meeting video conference earlier and whilst we were waiting for other people to join in we somehow got on to the subject of children’s TV programmes from our childhoods.

It was quite funny looking at people’s expressions when my colleague and I started talking about Charlton and the Wheelies and Terrahawks. Top Saturday morning televisual viewing when I was young.

Of course there was The Clangers, Rhubarb and Custard, the Magic Roundabout, the Wombles, Captain Pugwash, Bagpuss, Ludwig, Mr Benn, Hector’s House, Ivor the Engine, Jamie and the Magic Torch, to name but some of my regular viewing.

I dare say that most of these now would not be commissions as they’re probably not PC, but back then they just seemed harmless entertainment. They are of their era.

Terrahawks was probably one that seemed ahead of its time with regard to gender and ethnicity. It was an 1980’s Gerry Anderson and Christopher Burr production, so along similar styles to Thunderbird etc There were female fighter pilots, an oriental commander, and one of the baddies was known as “goybirl ” or “birlgoy” because they never decided what gender it would be and its voice would change between male or female depending on whether it was innocent or naughty.

Interestingly Terrahawks was set in the year 2020 and followed the adventures of a taskforce protecting earth from extraterrestrial andriods and aliens. I wonder what they would make of the real 2020.

When time is important

Time is money. Good time management is really important in this busy world of ours. But with the increase in reliance on technology is it really helping us be more efficient with our time management?

You could argue that with the advent of video conferencing, the hours spent travelling to and from meetings now become time we could spend being more productive. The trouble with video conference meetings though is they also block out much of the interaction.

Sometimes there’s a glitch and someone can’t get logged in. Or someone arrives late and interrupts the flow by announcing their late attival. Sometimes the details of the meeting are changed but not communicated to everyone. Sometimes the right people aren’t invited to the meeting.

One such occurrence that does wind me up is the system we use at work for meetings. In itself it works fine. But if you are attending the meeting because someone else has forward the invite to you, you don’t get any updates.

I planned most of my working day around a meeting that was due to take place at 2pm. The agenda had been emailed round earlier in the day so I’d read all of the attachments carefully to make sure I had some vague idea about what the meeting was for. I made sure that I went to lunch earlier so that I would be back in good time. I passed messages on to other people to action knowing that I would be in a meeting for a couple of hours so unable to action them myself. Got my whole day pretty much mapped out.

I logged into the call and it said I was the only participant. Fair enough I was prompt, so I’ll give everyone else a chance to log in. After about 3 minutes waiting I’m starting to think this is a bit ominous, so I email a colleague who is supposed to be on the same call. No response from her. Then I check her e-diary to see that she has had a cancellation for the meeting. I double checked my diary but no cancellation received. Then I noticed my invite to the meeting was forwarded. I wasn’t on the original list in invitees.

It seems that the video conferencing software can’t pick up forwardees, so they won’t get any updates. I guess there’s no reason why it should. And no one else thought to pass the message on. But again, why would they?

I have spent the next 10 minutes trying to either get logged into a meeting, thinking I was inept at the logging in process, then trying to determine what was going on. I suppose, given the fact that I’d passed a number of actions on to others, I do at least have the time to spend investigating the issue, but that’s beside the point. I later found out that another party who had also had the invite forwarded had recieved the cancellation. So how did that work? Further investigation required and/or a call logged with IT me thinks.

I watched a TEDxNHS talk back in January featuring Rachel Pilling and Dan Wadsworth that explained if you took 15 seconds to do something now that could save someone else 30 minutes later, then that person did the same, and so on, just imagine how much time would be released and how much less frustrating life would be. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDqNHIKavVE&app

I guess I need someone to give me a 15 second masterclass on this video conferencing system as I clearly don’t have it set up properly.

There’s an app for that

NHS Leadership Academy Healthcare Leadership Model

It seems that there’s an app for just about everything going. The latest one to land in my inbox is from the NHS Leadership Academy based on their Healthcare Leadership Model.

This model became very familiar to me as I was studying my MSc in Senior Heathcare Leadership via the Academy. It covers the 9 leadership dimensions of inspiring shared purpose, leading with care, evaluating information, connecting services, sharing the vision, engaging the team, holding to account, developing capability and influencing for results.

Throughout my course, which was a few years ago now, I referred to this model constantly. It has practical suggestions as to support you whether the behaviours are essential and you demonstrate proficiency, strength, or showing exemplary performance as a healthcare leader against each dimension.

To be honest, you could take away the “healthcare” part and it applies to any leadership role in any organisation, at any level.

Being an effective leader manifests itself from how we manage ourselves as leaders. How we recognise our self-awareness, self-confidence, self-control, self-knowledge, personal reflection, resilience and determination are the personal qualities and foundations of how we behave and how we interact with others, and they us.

All of this has a direct impact on our colleagues, our teams and our culture and climate within our teams and across our organisation.

Every now and then I revisit the model and on my latest look discovered that there is now an app that allows you to record observations of leadership behaviours and explore them using the dimensions. You can add your own reflections on yours or observed behaviours and look at summaries.

I shall download it and have a play.

Izzy, whizzy, let’s get dizzy

Every now and then I have an episode of Meniere’s or vertigo, where everything goes a bit swimmy, my eyes find it hard to focus and I get a bit unbalanced. Its most disconcerting.

The worst cases I’ve had have kept me bed ridden when even moving my eyes was enough to make me physically sick. Any attempt to move my head or get out of bed was just not going to happen.

I’m never quite sure what triggers it. According to the NHS website Meniere’s is a condition affecting the inner ear that can cause vertigo, tinnitus and hearing loss. I don’t tend to get tinnitus or hearing loss with mild cases but with the most severe episodes I have.

I started to feel the onset of symptoms on Friday. As you will recall this was the end of a particularly difficult week with me needing to go into work on my day off. During the weekend the dizziness came and went depending on what I was doing. On Monday morning I headed into work feeling slightly unbalanced but not particularly feeling nauseated. I managed to get through the day without too much trouble but I had to be careful around over use of PC screens. I found that scrolling around documents and emails did then tend to make me feel a bit sick.

I have therefore taken the evening off looking at screens, social media, games and outside work work in the hope that it will give my eyes and brain a rest.

P.S. feeling much better today.

My new set up

Our back room has been a bit of a tip for quite some time. It used to be step daughter #1’s bedroom. We eventually moved the main PC down and created a one person workspace.

Over time both of us has needed workspace and have had to take it in turns on the main PC or one person on a laptop in the lounge. That’s OK for short meetings and quick pieces of work, but not conducive to longer periods of time when we’ve both wanted to get on with something.

With the Covid-19 situation suggesting that people should work from home if they could, there just wouldn’t be a sensible place for me to do that. I also want a place to put all my #bellringing workbooks etc. And I could be on an evening conference meeting and C could still use the main PC for whatever he wanted to get on with.

We finally agreed that I should have my own desk space so purchased desk and chair, and set about tidying up the junk.

This weekend has seen a couple of trips to the tip and a lot of sorting of boxes and files, but finally created enough space to get the desk installed. I now have my own workspace and comfy chair. I’m actually quite looking forward to doing some work from here.

I also get the window seat, so can watch the birds come and go and gaze out of the window. I mean, concentrate really hard.

Back in my happy place

Been back in the kitchen, getting my bake on. Haven’t baked anything for a week or two for various reasons, so it was great to be back in my happy place after a particularly difficult week.

Fortunately my BakedIn box arrived, so that avoided any difficulty decisions having to be made.

I’ve never made butterscotch before. It does warn you in the recipe card that it will be hot, but that didn’t stop me sticking my finger in it for a taste 😋

How long do you think is a polite length of time to wait before scoffing some? Quite frankly, I’d happily tuck in now but C is busy putting together my new desk and chair for the study, and we need to go up the tip to get rid of all the stuff we’ve decided to chuck out during the clear up to make space for said desk, and we haven’t had lunch yet. Maybe it’ll have to wait a bit until afternoon tea time.

I had thought at one time, reasonably seriously, about going into a baking business, or having a little tea shop and selling homemade cakes. Trouble with that is, you have to have the space and facilities to meet all the necessary food hygiene and safety requirements, and actually doing it all would take too much of my personal time up, which would impact on my #bellringing time. I do make the odd cake for friends and family, and I have been commissioned in the past to make cakes for a fee, but I do it very much on my terms. If I’m not “feeling” it or I simply don’t want to, I will say no. I make cakes because I want to, not because I have to, in order to make a living. I absolutely applaud those who have turned their hobby into a business and if I wasn’t so consumed by #bellringing, maybe I’d think a bit harder about it. But for now, I’m happy making simple things to enjoy.

I wonder what my grandad would make of it. I used to love watching him mix a cake together without weighing anything, just by feel. He was a master Baker in his day, and didn’t bat an eyelid at making my sister’s wedding cake, including the Royal icing from scratch, in my mum’s kitchen. I sat round the table watching him work.

I wonder whether that was an early influence on me. My first full time job out of school was as a cream finisher in a bakery, putting all the finishing touches to cakes, doughnuts and all sorts of yummies. I’ve always said that if I did set up my own cake business that I would name it after him. Duffell’s Cakery. And the logo would be a side profile of his face in ginger to reflect the colour of his moustache.

We would have had fun in the kitchen together.