Feel the pain and do it anyway! An experiential workshop teaching emotional management in crisis situations

The need for inspections and audit is seen as key in providing safe and efficient services (cite Ofsted, CQC?) However, negative ratings in inspections also significantly impact organisations and their staff. (Stats and cite include workforce transitions) There is little existing research on these particular themes and it appears to be an underdeveloped area of research and practice. In response we developed a workshop that would provide the opportunity to further explore these impacts. Working with mixed group of early career managers from health and social work backgrounds undertaking level 7 qualifications in leadership and management, we developed an experiential workshop to enable staff to explore these issues in some depth. Working with Visiting Professor Karen Norman, the course leaders discussed common themes in relation to our own and others‘ experiences of audit, inspection and crises across the professions we represent. We noted that this was an area that received little attention in current teaching and in particular the emotional aspect of managing the self and staff within this context was mainly ignored. Using case scenarios we asked groups of students to develop their own organisational structures and then introduced crisis events, drawing on existing literature and research, including findings from the relevant inspection agencies. Students responded in a number of different ways. Similarities in the manager‘s experiences and responses were consistently noted In this workshop teaching staff and students will describe our findings and replicate some of the elements of the processes involved with the audience.