What's in a title? but at least I am still 'not a psychologist'

Today has been D-Day at my work: the start of a our new Community LD Service structure kicked in and 'went live' going forward: 

• I have got my new work's smartphone - so that I can be online at all times, even if working remotely.
• I have got a new office phone number, as well as new address, as well as my new smartphone number, as well as my old proper mobile number.
• I have had my working title changed to 'Intensive Interaction Highly Specialist Practitioner' and am no longer a 'Project Leader' anymore, presumably as we as a trust no longer see the Intensive Interaction work here in terms of a general project ... so after 14 years I will have to work hard to get my head around the idea of it and me being something else with a new putative identity.
• I have, for the fist time, used my 'Outlook' calendar to tell myself what I am supposed to be doing (today - retrospectively, collecting my new phone, and then filling in my Outlook calendar, and then properly moving in to my new office space, and then doing this Blog to increase my digital footprint). 
• I have properly moved in to my new office space - more or less: downsizing 14 years of accumulated stuff hasn't been easy, physically, cognitively or emotionally - but perhaps de-cluttering is a necessary, and maybe even useful thing to do at various times in our lives.
• I have used the new toilet near my new office - it didn't feel right somehow: its not just me is it, but this is a big psychological security issue!.
• My 'Outlook' calendar is now set up (at least for this week) so that all my managers can see what I am supposed to be doing.
• My new income generation targets have been activated ... Q1 & Q2 figures soon to be required, Q3 & Q4 then to be estimated and operationalized.
• I have used a new cup for my coffee/tea - again it didn't feel right somehow: but eventually this was yet another psychological security issue bravely confronted and overcome - I have now brought my 'I am not a psychologist' mug successfully into play (a recent-ish present from Secret Santa! What could he have meant by that?).
• I have manged to get through the day mainly with a smile on my face, and did so with the kind support of my most trusted and supportive colleagues.
• I have firmly resolved to come back to work tomorrow to do it all over again (well some other stuff actually), to try to help people with severe or profound communication or social impairments gain the clear psycho-social benefits from positive and affirming social interaction i.e. having access to Intensive Interaction (highly specialised or not).

I realise that this is not a particularly profound blog, so sorry for that, but sometimes the seemingly simple and mundane stuff is what really effects us the most: especially when the locus of control is somewhere external...

Cheers, Graham. 

‘The Myth of the Hero-Innovator ...'

Trying to be 'the' person who, by going on some training and then cascading some new knowledge across a team, can push radical change forward is difficult ... and in larger organisations it can be nigh on impossible. An interesting piece* on such organisational level change states:

‘This then is the myth of the hero-innovator: the idea that you can produce, by training, a knight in shining armour who, loins girded with new technology and beliefs, will assault his organisational fortress and institute changes both in himself and others at a stroke.  Such a view is ingenuous. The fact of the matter is that organisations such as schools and hospitals will, like dragons, eat hero-innovators for breakfast.’ (Georgiades & Phillimorep 1975, p.315)

This 'hero-innovator' idea is based on the false belief that because organisations are made up of individuals, we can change them just by changing those individual members. What we should also do is look at developing the positive (or at least productive) relationships, and the host or working culture that we share with our colleagues, and do so in a way that is supportive of the underlying social network that enables us all to collectively be at our most productive.

Georgiades & Phillimore offer 6 guidelines that can give change (lets say the successful and sustainable adoption of Intensive Interaction) its best chance. These 6 guidelines are:

1: ‘The manager of the change effort should work with the forces within the organisation which are supportive of change and improvement rather than working against those which are defensive and resistant to change’ [remember the 'laggards' and 'antagonists' - initially try to work around them, at least for a while!]. 

2: ‘Try to develop what has been called a ‘critical mass’ in each change project. The manager of change should aim to produce a self-sustaining team of workers which is self-motivated and powered from within’. 

3: ‘Whenever possible, the manager of change should work with the organisationally ‘healthy’ parts of the system which have the will and the resources to improve… [and] avoid being seduced or pressured into working with or for parts of the system which might be regarded as lost causes‘. 

4: ‘The manager of the change team should try to work with individuals and groups who have as much freedom and discretion in managing their own operations and resources as possible’. 

5: ‘The manager should try to obtain appropriate and realistic levels of involvement by key personnel in the hospital or school system’ [i.e. upwardly delegating some work to senior staff] . 

6: ‘Arrangements should be made for most of the team to work in small groups or pairs for mutual learning and support. People should not be expected to work alone ... until they are quite experienced’. 

So if you are the person that is being given the role of the Intensive Interaction hero/change agent i.e. the person responsible for changing the care or educational practices of a team, a class, a service or even the whole organisation, perhaps these guidelines can be of some help in building a positive and supportive 'critical mass' of like-minded colleagues ... they certainly have been a help to me. 

*Georgiades, N. & Phillimore, L. (1975) ‘The Myth of the Hero-Innovator and Alternative Strategies for Organisational Change’, in Kiernan & Woodford (Eds.) Behaviour Modification with the Severely Retarded, Associate Scientific Publishers, Amsterdam.

Change: getting on ... and getting on together

Change: getting on together... and getting on together

Not wanting to overly ring dry the issue of change, and how it effects us all in different ways, but having been present in a couple of recent change related meetings that seemed generally fraught and at times openly antagonistic, I thought it might be useful to look a bit more at the effects change (sometimes unwanted, at least initially) has on us all.

It left me thinking about two issues:

Firstly, I thought about how people who face the prospects of what might for them be unwanted change will often feel insecure and anxious about it's prospect. 

I then went on to think about the well established, although admittedly simplistic model of the 'Hierarchy of Psychological Needs' by Abraham Maslow, who has been labelled as the grandfather of positive psychology (I have a copy of the original 1943 paper, and although it is now often rightly criticised in more academic psychology circles, to me it still seems pertinent and keenly insightful - I often see these psychology states at play in myself!). 

This tiered model of psychological need places the creation of psychological security just one step above the fulfilment of basic physiologic need (i.e. feeling safe is what we as humans will prioritise after gaining access to air, water, food, etc). This means, according to this model, that we can't generally move on to developing positive relationships with others (the next stage up) if we currently feel threatened or highly anxious i.e. when we are more likely to be in the 'fight or flight' state of mind. In these situations we tend to become defensive, both of ourselves as individuals, and often of our current roles or ways of being. 

The second issue I thought about was how stress (a cumulative, unconscious process) and anxiety/worry (a conscious, issue focused process) reduces our cognitive processing performance and efficiency. According to a theoretical model outlined in a paper on 'Anxiety and Cognitive Performance' by Eysenck et al (2007) ... 'Worry has two effects. One effect involves cognitive interference by pre-empting the processing and temporary storage capacity of working memory.' 

The second effect of this negative emotional state is on executive function i.e. it impairs our decision making processes. To me this seems highly plausible: why, because I think that it clearly describes the effects I tend to feel myself when stressed - I can't think as quickly or as clearly as usual, my access to my working memory seems to be impaired, and I struggle to effectively decide what to do! 

So what of these observations: well I suppose they lead me to think that during my now not inconsiderable working life, my best work has always been done when I have felt part of a collaborative effort i.e. working as part of, or from within, a supportive and socially cohesive team. Doing what can be at times stressful and emotionally demanding work is made easier, and over the longer term more emotionally manageable, when I have felt that I have had the general support of the other team members - or a least a feeling that they understood me, and appreciated what I was trying to achieve (even if the didn't always agree with what I did, or the way I did it). 

So in my experience spending time on developing effective working relationships has paid dividends in increased individual and collective productive capacity - so we need to 'get on' (socially) to 'get on' (productively), although there is admittedly something of a 'virtuous circle' effect in these two things.

But finally, the cognitive/emotional issues I have noted above i.e. that stress and anxiety/worry can seriously inhibit cognitive performance, memory access and executive function (well it does for me) - I think that these same issues are very often at play when working to support people with a communication and/or social impairment. I often think about how people's cognitive impairment is likely to be significantly exacerbated by conditions of high stress/anxiety, a state not unusual in many of the people I work with who have severe or profound intellectual disabilities and/or autism. 

So how then do we help them? One way would be to be positively socially responsive to them in non-anxiety causing ways ... and how might we do that I hear you ask ... well, most probably through a sensitive process of socially validating, and positive rapport building, Intensive Interaction!