Reconnect, or Disconnect?

Duncan McNiel, the affable Director, gone. His PA, Amy, gone. So what happens to the team-building programme now? Sue, the Development Director and pupil master of us naive interns, was by now a very busy person as she had been given an extra job by the Commander – managing communications. She said the programme had to be “re-anchored” with the new director, Robert MacCawdor, and to keep her informed. “Catch you later” was her stock phrase when running away from you down the corridor in her frenetic busyness, always with a rictus smile on her face. She meant well but she was too busy, over-burdened, and stressed.

The “re-anchor” meeting with Robert MacCawdor did not go well. Of the team-building meetings that had gone before, he said with intense menace, even hatred, “What did we learn from this?” He was frank; he saw no point in the programme as the team was fine but he would tolerate it as it was what the Commander wanted. He instructed, May, his PA, to issue the necessary invites to his team-briefing sessions.

The message was loud and clear: the team is fine and don’t interfere. With his cold staring blue eyes, he communicated intense contempt for me. For the first time in my working life, I understood what theoreticians called coercive power. I felt fear.

St. Angela’s University Teaching Hospital (illustration by Bill Morris)

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