by Alexandrien Van Der Burgt-Franken
The GoodWork Project has been working with Stichting Beroepseer (The Professional Pride Foundation) in the Netherlands for many months, and we are very excited about the work they are doing. They started a GoodWork Hub this year, and now are piloting GoodWork sessions using the Toolkit in various professional settings. Below, read an account of the first of these sessions at the Radboud Hospital in Nijmegen and the plans for future sessions.
The Professional Pride Foundation in the Netherlands is starting to use the GoodWork Toolkit to lead sessions on GoodWork in an academic hospital. The translated GoodWork Toolkit will be used during four sessions. For these sessions, three groups of hospital employees will be selected: the junior staff, the nurses, and the heads of the different departments of the hospital, including senior doctors and educators. The first session took place in April, and the second session will start this week.
Yolande Witman, doctor and researcher, and Alexandrien van der Burgt, trainer, coach and chairman of the Stichting Beroepseer (Professional Pride Foundation) are the process leaders of these sessions.
The central theme of the first session was, “GoodWork in general”. The main questions here included: what is GoodWork? Why is it important? What do we need to achieve GoodWork? What questions do we have about GoodWork?
The session started with interviews. The participants were asked to interview one another. They discussed the question “What makes you a good professional?”.
After the interviews, the facilitators led a discussion about GoodWork and the inherent challenges in achieving GoodWork. This discussion enabled the participants to think about their own criteria for GoodWork in their professions. At the end of this first session the participants were asked to sort the value-sort cards to determine which values they prioritize in their careers.
In the second session, participants will talk about excellence. Two narratives from the Toolkit will be used: one about Alfred Bloom (“Chasing Excellence”) and Lauren (“The Price of Principles). The target of this session is to formulate a useful definition for excellence and to explore the criteria included in excellence. Participants will also investigate the difference between professional and personal standards for excellent work.
In the third session, the focus will turn to ethics and GoodWork. The fourth session will involve a discussion about engagement, or the meaning professionals find in their work.
At the end of these sessions facilitators plan to organize a central meeting where the three different groups will be brought together. During this final meeting, they will share their experiences from previous sessions and exchange ideas. The hope is that these disparate groups will learn from one another.
In September the results of the GoodWork pilot in the Radboud Hospital in Nijmegen will be presented and discussed.
Stay tuned for updates on the next few sessions and on the final session in September.