“I want to ask what you are already doing; I’m discovering so many cool things people are doing.”

“When people speak of hardship, how are we listening?”

Listen to a 3-minute summary at 30.28 minutes.

In this episode, co-hosts Drs. Laurie Charlés and Saliha Bava talk about teams, and how we are in leadership with each other and with ourselves as citizens, mental health professionals, and as family members. We discuss how the nature of what we are all experiencing is extraordinary, and the mutual sharing of that awareness with each other can have so much value. “This comes from our systemic training.”

“I’m discovering so many cool things people are doing.” We talk about how in an emergency response we must strive to work in ways that are constantly mindful of matching the actual needs of people on the ground with the attempts that we make to meet those needs, with Saliha reflecting on a memorable moment in a shelter during her response to Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. in 2005, and Laurie reflecting on a “Lessons Learned” conference on MHPSS response in Liberia in 2015, one year into the international response to the 2014 Ebola Virus Disease outbreak. Remembering to ask “learning questions” about how we are responding to hardship, alongside and at the same time as the actual moment of the response, in situ, is a critical way to operate during emergencies, and something many systemic folks would recognize as reflexivity.

CREDIT: Music: Gus Greene | Cover Art: Mark Greene

Teams and Leaders: Experiencing and Sharing The Extraordinary

Frontline Conversations & Systemic Response: COVID19By Saliha Bava & Laurie L CharlésApr 09, 2020