‘Time may change me, but you can’t trace time… Turn and face the strange changes’

Estelle Moore, Chair of PPN London

Reading Gita’s blog generated a whole era of songs in my head, like a treasured play-list that you can sing along to badly in the car when no-one else is listening.  We have been hearing in PPN London’s Workforce Council from art and psychotherapy leaders about the value of music and the arts in uniting communities at times of fear and uncertainty: how the arts transcend barriers and differences within neighbourhoods in the act of creating something together.  Equally we had reflected on the fact that the council itself creates a space where leaders of NHS talking therapies, forensic psychology departments, higher education courses and health psychologists (to name a few) might converse from their perspective about the NHS landscape, and the impact on them of ‘infobesity’; the anxiety related to the overload associated with exposure to informatics in this age of connective digital technologies.  Through honest dialogue we realise that no-one feels confident that they have a handle on it all, with the pace of change and the endless polarities that define the world of work in the NHS.

Sound could also reach into the silence that many in our workforce experience as an echo of discrimination, marginalisation and fear in our professions and our wider society. We are so much more likely to overlook the value of diverse and wonderful viewpoints at times of hostility and turbulence, as Basedau and Sicilia (2025) invite us all to observe.  One of the many insights in their paper that struck me as having relevance for leadership in complex times was authored by Lorde (1977), in the face of ostracism and betrayal: ‘that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength’.  

What is it that the people who inspire us do when they are confronted by overwhelming challenges? 

They stand for something.  They quietly remind us that silence is not absence; that transformation of silence into words and actions become acts of self-revelation, despite the dangers of choppy seas and the possibility of loss: drowning without connection to others and the horizon. People who inspire can re-connect us to the values that we need as our compass, and encourage us not to give up when our energies fade. Good leaders listen to the realities of the struggle but also circle back to the vision and the goal.

There are some leaders who are multiply blessed with privilege, strength and intelligence. But these are not the only qualities required for stormy seas: adaptability is necessary as ‘no battle plan survives contact with the enemy’ (Zahariades, 2020, page 29). Consistent effort is the other golden thread. In an ethnographic study of Olympic swimmers, Chambers (1989) discovered that excellence is in fact, mundane: it is accomplished through the doing of actions, ‘ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully’, adding up over time… the action in itself is nothing special, the case and consistency with which is it made, is”.

The psychological professions in our expanding roles, especially the thousands of colleagues at the daily inter-face with those who use our services, are doing this routinely. In the words of David Bowie, we turn and face the strange changes, and we persevere.

Links:

Microsoft Word - Our Stories Project 2.0 Final.docx;

basedau-sicilia-2025-lgbtq-in-clinical-psychology-training-in-the-uk-the-sound-of-silence

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mental-Toughness-Handbook-Step-Step-ebook/dp/B086SCHSBR

Chambers, D. F. (1989). The mundanity of excellence: an ethnographic report on stratification and Olympic swimmers. Sociological Theory, 7: 1 (Spring)