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Know Better, Do Better

Image of Maya Angelou, with the text

 

Author: Caroline Harvey

A Moment of Reflection: Preparing for Change

I’m writing this blog at a pivotal time in my life both personally and professionally as I’m shortly due to go on maternity leave. It’s a slightly surreal experience updating your own job description, advertising for cover and speaking to people keen to apply. In many ways though it has given me the chance to take stock, look back at where I’ve come from, what I’ve been through, what type of leader I am now, and what leader I hope to be in the future.

“Know Better, Do Better”: A Guiding Principle

I first discovered the works of Maya Angelou as a teenager and her well-known quote “do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better do better” has been somewhat of a life lesson I’ve lived by ever since, no more so than in the various leadership roles I have had.

The funny thing is I never intentionally set out to be in a leadership role. My main goal was to work in community mental health as I’d enjoyed it so much whilst on placement and felt like I’d finally found something I could dedicate myself to after a few false starts in law and education. I’m very much in agreement with Professor Malcolm Higgs, who was quoted in the Article - What makes a good leader? (Jackson, 2025) - to have said “the last person you want to appoint is someone who says they want to be a leader – it's a responsibility not a reward” I’d set out to get things done and to try to make a difference.

The Making of a Leader: Highs, Lows and Hard Lessons

What has followed has been the making of me, from the naivety, energy and enthusiasm of being a newly qualified Occupational Therapist. Relying on sheer grit and adrenaline as an overworked Care Co-ordinator. The imposter syndrome of my first leadership role and then the bouts of panic, elation, cynicism, satisfaction, burnout, frustration, constant questioning and evolution ever since.

To me this is what resilient leadership is. You show up, you work hard, some days you succeed, others you don’t, you make mistakes, you celebrate with people, commiserate with people, apologise when you get things wrong, but you keep on coming back. You follow Maya Angelou’s advice. The only thing is, it’s your responsibility to find out, what is best? what is better? And there lay my motivation to enrol on the Estia Centre’s Developing your Team’s Resilience Course.

Leading Through Uncertainty: Why Resilience Matters Now

I have been in a Professional Head role for 6 years now and during this time I’ve noticed a shift in the strengths, needs and expectations of our staff. These are challenging times to work for the NHS. We’ve experienced a global pandemic, strikes, heatwaves, cyber-attacks, estates issues and financial difficulties. Staff sickness levels have gone up; more referrals are being made to Occupational Health and for staff counselling. Requests for flexible and agile working arrangements are now the norm. All during a time when the mental health needs of the general population are on the increase and the need for our services are at an all-time high (NHS England, 2024).

Having experienced more of a “sink or swim” attitude from my Seniors when I first qualified over 15 years ago, I found myself grappling to find the right balance between the needs of the service users and overall service with the health, wellbeing and expectations staff members now have of their employers. Not only did I think the people I lead and work with needed more resilience, but I did too.

What I Learned on the Developing Your Team’s Resilience programme

The Developing your Team’s Resilience course was a six-month commitment and covered the following topics: leadership and resilience, stress and wellbeing, constructive conversations, developing others and enabling change. After each session we would be asked to complete an end of module reflection and to think about what we were doing to help and hinder our Team’s resilience. It also prompted us to think of things to start doing, stop doing, carry on doing or change. This exercise had a real impact on me as ultimately, I’m a do-er and thinking of things in this way helped to make what I’d learnt feel less theoretical and more applicable in practice.

My big take aways

How I helped - adopting a coaching approach, enabling, encouraging people to take ownership.

How I hindered – being too quick to provide answers, swooping in to “save” the situation and being too responsive and available, not allowing people the opportunity to work things out for themselves.

Leadership guru Simon Sinek says, “leaders must transition from being responsible for the job to be responsible for the people who are responsible for the job” (Sinek, 2019). That our role as leaders is not to do the work for others but enable them to do it for themselves, allowing them to reach their full potential.

Having learnt these things about myself I endeavoured to;

  • Start – checking for people’s understanding rather than assume we’re on the same page.
  • Stop – doing for, to work on my patience and invest more time and energy into supporting people to find their own solutions
  • Carry on – with a coaching approach, to ask what do you think is the right thing to do? Before offering up solutions and telling them what I would do.

Stepping Away with Confidence: Empowering Others to Lead

So, as I come into my last few weeks of work before my baby arrives, I’m feeling more assured that the best thing I can do now is to make sure people have what they need to their jobs and to do them well.

About the author 

Caroline is Head of Therapies at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and has held a range of mental health leadership roles since qualifying as an Occupational Therapist in 2010. She is passionate about helping people live meaningful lives through Occupational Therapy. Outside work, she is renovating her Walthamstow home, loves cats, and is preparing for life as a new parent.

References: 

 

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