The blog of Wayne.

Follow the signs.  I  have recently put myself in what I like to call a position of “yes”. This is the ability to say yes to opportunities at short notice and look at the good that can come from these opportunities. It is a very fortunate position to be in but this has made a huge difference to my mindset and my positivity.   For so long I had too much of a negative mindset and outlook on life. I got stuck on the negatives and was struggling to see the positive aspects of life. These feelings crept up on me, making me risk averse and less confident, I didn’t like it.   I would often find myself looking at the worst-case scenario or thinking about all the terrible things that could happen, overlooking any positive aspects of a situation. Since negative events are usually by nature more complicated and powerful than the positive events, we require more brain power to minimize the consequences of the event and deal with the experience, making it a more memorable and int...

  The feeling of someone always having your back.  I have worked in small, high performing teams for most of my career. From the Royal Marines, to being a winchman on Search and Rescue to working with the Emergency Medical Retrieval Service. I have taken for granted the fact that I can rely on those around me. We get the job done and we have each other's back. So, when I was recently asked about Esprit de Corps and how it could be improved or developed it got me thinking. What exactly is Esprit de Corps, and how is it formed?  I think in a lot of people’s minds Esprit de Corps is a military thing. However, a quick Google search and up comes the definition of ‘a feeling of pride and mutual loyalty shared by the members of a group’. To me, it is the feeling of belonging.   I was a member of one of the most exclusive clubs going, the Royal Marines. During training you are instilled with over 350 years of history, legacy and pride. And you are now part of it, carryi...

  One of the first things you learn in the military is how to deal with the dislocation of expectation. This can be expecting to be picked up by some form of transport only to be told you’re now yomping (walking with a heavy pack) back to base or expecting to be going home for Christmas and finding out you are off on a deployment in 2 days time (on Christmas eve). This has been Covid-19 for us so far.  We first started talking about our response to Covid-19 on the 6th of March. From here on in it has been an absolute flurry of activity with various work streams formed. There were heroics and a surge for a solution for something that we didn’t know how hard would hit us. As time went on and with a lot less retrievals than anticipated this turned to over- engineered solutions making things more complicated than needs be and tying ourselves in knots.  Covid-19 tipped us out of a dingy into fast flowing water. After the cold water shock some people were able to front cra...