Hi Reader,
Some weeks the article is an argument I have been wanting to make for a while. This week it is closer to a long text message to one specific person.
She is a leader I have sat with this year. Competent, careful, no longer fighting for things she used to think were non-negotiable. She told me she did not know what was wrong, only that she did not recognise herself in her own week anymore.
I have been there myself. Have you?β
Over capacity. No time to reconnect with a team we love to support. Non-negotiable priorities that leave us exhausted.
What follows is what I have been turning over since that conversation. It is for her, for me, and for you, the people who recognise themselves in the same shape.
"I do not know what is wrong. I just do not recognise myself in my own week anymore."
That sentence (or one like it) is at the start of every conversation I've had with operational leaders in aged care this year.
The leader who said it to me first is the reason this email exists.
What is wrong is not her. It is the slow erosion of five conditions that used to produce her professional judgement. Input she used to read. Peer talkback she used to have. Authority that used to match her accountability. Time inside the working day to think. And time off-shift from learning entirely, which is how the part of the mind that decides things actually resets.
She has not lost her nerve. She has lost the conditions that used to ask her to use it.
The rebuild is upstream of her, which is the part that is hard to hear and also the part that is the relief.
My article this week names those five conditions, and what rebuilds them in practice.
If you have noticed yourself going quieter at work and have not yet had the language for it, this is for you.
The article ππΌ https://www.hyphaenetwork.com/signals/what-rebuilds-the-aged-care-leader-who-has-stopped-pushing-backβ
Worth reading at the kitchen table with a coffee, not at the desk between meetings.
A few things you will find in there, if you are an operational leader in aged care right now:
- The drive home in silence, where you used to be running an idea over in your head
- The sector content you used to read with curiosity and now skim for compliance and close
- The yoga class that did what it said it would do, and then it was Monday again
Most leaders I sit with are missing two or three of these conditions. The rebuild is real, and most of it is not done alone.
β
One more thing.
The room I have been describing, where the carrying can be put down with people who do not need it explained, does not exist for most middle leaders in aged care.
I am building it. A small cohort, drawn from different organisations, working real cases in a regular rhythm. Opening publicly for the first time.
You see it before anyone else.
If that is what you have been needing, reply. I will send the detail. Hit reply or email me at samantha@hyphaenetwork.com.
See you next week.