The confusion of NOT Belonging: "No, we're not them, they're different and we're separate"

I was at a North London hospital yesterday accompanying a friend. We signed in at reception, she was called in to her appointment, I could see some patients returned back to the waiting area for a while after a prep session.

So I asked at reception whether I should stay-put to give smiling support to my friend, or go down to the café.

The receptionist answered:

"Oh, I couldn't tell you about that. We're not them."

Confusing.

"Well, how long might she be?"

"No, we're not them, they're different and we're separate."

It was a Lewis Carroll conversation: the person you are looking to for help is explaining not only that they can't help you but that they shouldn't, because they are not part of the group that would be able to help you.

She defined her lack of help through NOT belonging to the department my friend was seeing. She reinforced the internal structures:

"They just lease the space from us."

Uh? It's all one NHS hospital, we weren’t in a private wing or external company.

Then, Status:

"We're Surgical. We do day surgery. A whole lot of top specialists doing lots of different things. ‘They’ just do one thing."

And finally, NON accountability.

She was not accountable for looking after the patients of ‘Them’ beyond signing-in. So, you see, she couldn't possibly help me.

The problem for this member of staff was sharing a reception service with another department which used to be separate. Though her job is to serve Reception for both units, she feels she 'belongs' to the surgical, not the investigative, team. So she refused to do anything beyond the basics.

She was dressed in claret-coloured kit, 'raspberry scrubs'. (A staff sign said this was required dress code for surgical teams: you get the importance of this now.)

"You need to ask someone in blue" she said grabbing a lady in blue.

"Hello" said the lady in blue

"I'm Esther. How can I help you?"

Esther was straightforward. She told me how long it might take, where to wait (the next room, not hard to point to), to get tea for me but nothing for my friend because Esther was in charge of that.

That's because Esther is a recovery nurse. She is not a receptionist. It is not her job to look after patients' anxious friends and families. She is not accountable for this. But she does it anyway, because it makes a difference to her that people feel comfortable about the procedure they are coming in for and the support around them.

The raspberry-scrubs receptionist could have told me all that, in less sentences than the confusing stuff about her Not Belonging to the other team.

OK, it’s not a big deal. Organising people in reception has low level risk. 
But it’s a neon-highlighter for how a sense of 'Not Belonging' can trounce personal accountability.

In another context, what if Not Belonging, and Not Being Accountable, spreads to an ethical judgement or a safety risk? We’ve seen catastrophic risks in many sectors. 

Belonging leads to commitment; commitment means accountability.

Commitment means doing more than basic tasks. 
Commitment means relationship more than transactions. 
Commitment means looking at consequences of actions. 
Commitment means connecting up with other teams.

Commitment means being willing to go further, accepting accountability for follow-through.

But it all begins with Belonging.

"We're not them, they're different, we're separate" sums up why organisations need a clear sense of belonging.

Most organisations are complex, many-layered, a mix of mergers, acquisitions and sub-contracting, old and new departments, specialist teams.

In the minefield of belonging to different territory, the lines of accountability can get mangled.

Each break in belonging is a potential breakdown of accountability, or failure-point for ethics, safety and strategy.

Wherever you fit in, you're still part of the same goals. Your team, and its particular specialism, interconnects with others. ‘We're’ all 'Us'.

And that means having a sense of belonging, a shared ethos on which to base commitment, and clear accountability to uphold it.

Show everybody in the organisation how it all connects, the principles that bind all its communities into one, as well as the particular focus of each team.

In a complex organisation like a hospital, it is interdependence not independence that makes it all work.

In this way, belonging brings the cohesion to achieve effectiveness as well as efficiency.

I asked Esther if it was a good hospital to work in. She gave answered firmly:

"It is. But do not look at these new buildings and say it is a good hospital.

Look at the work, look at the people doing the work. Look at how they work with each other.

Then you’ll see: is it a good hospital?

It is a good hospital. But that doesn't mean that everybody in it is good."

She’s right, and about a lot more than hospitals.

Do your teams feel they belong to the same organisation?
Do your people share accountability?

Talk to us about how to create a sense of Belonging.

isabel@belongingspace.com

www.belongingspace.com

Twitter @IsabelBelonging

Twitter @BelongingSpace

Is SARAH common sense or a get-out clause? Shared ethics is a vital part of Belonging

The Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill 
Shared ethics: shared responsibility

Mixed feelings on the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill, getting its second reading in the House of Commons today.

Does this new Bill encourage people to jump in and take social action? 
Or provide a get-out-clause for them to avoid being sued?

Certainly taking social action - doing something rather than standing by when someone is in need of help - is how we sustain our communities and uphold our society's ethics. Shared ethos is a vital part of Belonging. 

The rule of law works precisely because of this: integrity is both an individual and collective responsibility.

But a separate law to say 'it's OK to take part' feels a bit forced.

It has come about from serious concerns that people may avoid taking action for fear of recrimination and compensation-seeking.

As the introduction says:

"The bill has been developed in response to concerns that people may be put off from taking part in voluntary activities, helping others or intervening in emergencies due to worries about risk and liability. The government also wants to make sure that when people such as employers have been taking a responsible approach towards the safety of others during an activity and something goes wrong, the courts will take account of the circumstances.

The bill therefore contains measures to reassure people that if they’re acting for the benefit of society, intervening in an emergency or demonstrating a generally responsible approach towards the safety of others during an activity, then if something goes wrong and they are sued for negligence or for certain breaches of statutory duty, the court will take full account of the context of their actions."

The ambulance-chasers, the class-action lawyers hearing cash registers ringing, the parents blaming the school for a simple knock-over in a playground: they've all added up to a massive cost in both cash and justice.

But is there a risk this is interpreted as impunity for vigilantism or lack of due diligence for Health and Safety?

We are assured not:

"The bill does not tell the court what conclusion it should reach and does not prevent a person from being found liable if the circumstances of the case warrant it. It does not therefore give anybody licence to take unnecessary risks with people’s safety or leave the injured party without a remedy when the defendant has failed to meet the appropriate standard of care."

Critics have said the new Act is unnecessary as the 2006 Compensation Act already does this job. It was devised to "find ways to discourage and resist bad claims; and to improve the system for those with a valid claim for compensation".

Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, is referred to in The Times article today on the new Act:

"British people have become too inclined to blame someone else when something goes wrong, the justice secretary said yesterday.

Chris Grayling said the “blame someone else” attitude in society had helped to fuel a compensation culture that needed to be broken."

The Government Factsheet  stresses the considerations for acting responsibly and taking reasonable care, and that the Act

"..will not tell the court what conclusion it should reach and does not prevent a person from being found negligent if the circumstances of the case warrant it. Nor will it have any bearing on criminal liability."

But this comes alongside moves from the Government to reduce the powers in the UK of the European Court of Human Rights.
  
So is this new Bill merely a way of reducing the weight on employers of pesky Human Rights or Health and Safety directives?

We express our belonging in our ethics and how we collectively uphold those standards. Language tells much. The emotionally-loaded title - "Social Action", "Heroism" - is less objective than the usual cold, neutral wording of the Westminster Bill-presses.
Wrapping this up in phrases like 'reasonable care' makes it all sound like common sense. But as human rights come under pressure the shared sense of ethics can become less common. 

It'll be interesting to see how the debate goes in this afternoon's Parliamentary business.
Though any coverage will be overshadowed by the PM's statement on the tragedies in Ukraine and Gaza. 

And in those horrors we see what can happen when we express belonging through violence, making our boundaries so small and fragile. 

Yes, Westminster, we could do with a lot more social action, responsibility and heroism. We need more SARAH: on a global as well as a national scale.