Secret Musings of a Change Agent 8 - Cordelle Ofori
What makes ordinary people great at making change happen? What characteristics do they share? What path have they followed? What’s their attitude to failure? And what advice would they give to others? I’m on a mission to understand more. After last week’s pause for reflection, I’m delighted to feature Cordelle Ofori, Consultant in Public Health Medicine for Manchester’s health and social care system as I continue my mission in my blog series to help us all understand how we build change capacity for the future.
Cordelle Ofori oozes credibility. She’s a woman driven by a burning passion to improve peoples’ lives and address health inequalities. She’s clearly very knowledgeable, well-studied and intelligent. And just as importantly, she acts with humility. She’s clear what her strengths are, has the confidence not to feel like she has to have all the answers and takes her time to invest in relationships, build trust and listen, really listen, to what people are saying to her. I met Cordelle when we both worked pre-Manchester Local Care Organisation to help establish new integrated ways of working. Cordelle is one of those people that other people trust. When she speaks, people listen. And her team adores her. I was really keen to know more about Cordelle’s story and what it is about her that gives her such credibility.
Cordelle is a black british born woman with Ghanain parents who grew up in Manchester. She’s had a plan and a mission from a very young age. Her mum proactively told Cordelle that if she was to succeed, she would need to work 10 times as hard as the white british girls she was at school with. This philosophy meant that from thereon in, Cordelle was very deliberate in what she did. She worked hard and was successful in gaining a place at medical school. Cordelle has always been interested in people - what makes them tick and why some people are disadvantaged by where they live or the circumstances that they live in. This natural curiosity led Cordelle to start to explore the World Health Organisation which is how she discovered the world of public health and her passion was ignited.
Work 10 x harder
Cordelle’s advice to Cordelle when she was growing up
That sense of being deliberate in what she does comes through again, as Cordelle describes how aged just 20, she reached out to people who worked in public health to understand their experiences and ask for their advice about how to build a career in this arena.
Once a qualified doctor, Cordelle did her GP training and cut her teeth in early GP practice, actively seeking out jobs in areas of deprivation in London. She wanted to make a difference to the lives of people whose life outcomes are impacted by where they live. Cordelle tells a powerful story about working half the week as a locum in a deprived area of London and half the week in the more affluent Parsons Green. One day she saw two patients - one at each surgery. Both presented with back pain - similar issues which they had been experiencing for similar amounts of time. Her patient accessing the practice in the area of deprivation had to wait 8 months for physio. Her patient in Parsons Green was taken upstairs for an immediate appointment with the onsite physio. Two people. Similar circumstances. Different responses. Significantly different impact on their life. One gets to recover quickly and move on. The other continues to suffer over many months and be exposed to high level risks relating to their mental health and well-being, employment status, quality of life.
It was these kinds of experiences that made Cordelle come to the realisation that if she was to achieve her aspirations to make systemic changes that would impact on many people, she needed to change role and it was this that finally propelled Cordelle into a career in public health.
Health Inequality
Seeing patients in different areas get differential access to health care drove Cordelle to change role
When I ask Cordelle about failures she’s learned from along the way it’s not a particular occasion that she speaks of but rather an evolution of approach. Cordelle reflects that when she was younger she thought she was a good listener and that as someone who has lots of ideas, is creative and sees the bigger picture, she was often in a hurry to push her ideas forward. Over time, she came to realise that she doesn’t have all the answers and to recognise the importance of spending time getting to know people. She is now careful to invest time to understand what matters to people, where they are at and just as importantly why they are there because she knows how important this is in achieving change. Cordelle is very naturally strengths based in her approach, recognising that most people want to do a good job and seeking to understand why people aren’t on board. In doing this she builds trust instead of writing people off as difficult to manage or negative. This trust is then manifested in Cordelle enabling people to identify their own solutions - because ultimately, she knows that if we find our own solutions, they’re more likely to work in practice.
As an aside, one of the things that Cordelle has in common with a number of other people who have featured in this blog series is that she doesn’t think about herself as someone who is great at making change happen. I’m fascinated by this. What’s it about? Is it something about us self-identifying by our job role title or our professional training? Is it a sense of humility and pragmatism that means people just see themselves as doing their job? I think it’s a really interesting question to ponder as we think about how to unlock more change capacity in our organisations.
Two family members have been big influencers for Cordelle - her mother and her grandmother. Cordelle describes her mum as inspirational - not only did she work and bring up a family but she was always involved in the community. For example, she set up the award winning African Women’s Health Forum in Manchester which meant that Cordelle was exposed to the benefits of community from an early age as she helped her mum out with fundraising and other events. Her Grandmother left a comfortable life in one part of Ghana to move to a poorer area where she set up a nursery because, just like Cordelle, she was driven by a passion to make peoples’ lives better.
Passion to make lives better
Cordelle’s “awesome” grandmother has been a big influence
In addition to these 2 awesome women, Cordelle talks about her supervisor when she did her GP placement in medical school. She talks of how he was the first person outside of her family and since school who really believed in her and made her believe she could be a good doctor. The confidence he gave her has stuck, even now, 20 years later. And it’s clearly had an impact because when I listen to how we acted with Cordelle - trust, great feedback, empowerment - these are exactly the same qualities that Cordelle uses to do what she does now.
When I ask Cordelle about her change superpower she talks about how she likes people and always sees the best in them - what they have to offer, what they bring and she generally starts from a place of assuming that people know more than she does. She goes on to reflect that one of the qualities she admires in other people is humility and talks about how powerful people like Martin Luther King and Barack Obama use simple language to make concepts accessible and understandable and don’t feel the need to prove how intelligent they are - having the “confidence to just be”.
Cordelle’s advice to aspiring change agents is threefold: Never stop learning about people - what makes people tick? What matters to people? Try to find something you like about people - and apply the same to yourself, so know your strengths and focus on them, and; it’s all about relationships. Cordelle ends with simple clarity - you can’t affect change if you can’t get on with people.
It was a pleasure talking to Cordelle and it’s not hard to see why her team love working for her so much. We talk about strengths based leadership a lot and Cordelle absolutely personifies this for me so it’s fabulous that we get to understand a little more about what drives this and what’s influenced Cordelle’s journey so we can think about how we build change capacity for the future. If you enjoyed this blog and would like to understand more about what makes a great change agent check out my blog series for more “Secret Musings of a Change Agent”.
