Mediation Tools & Approaches

Mediation Tools & Approaches: "docs"

Safeguarding Children: The Importance of Training

I'm certain readers share the sense of shock that surrounds the Plymouth Nursery Worker who abused her position and the trust that went with it, abusing children for the gratification of herself and others. Vanessa George gained the trust of the families she met professionally and was invited to baby-sit for them at evenings and week-ends.
For those families who granted her access to their children, access based on trust and good-intention, I find it hard to imagine the sense of outrage, betrayal and guilt they may feel.
We are currently delivering Safeguarding Training to Trainee Teachers and other members of the Children's Workforce at a local university. The section on safe practice invites trainees to suspend disbelief; the disbelief that would be abusers would seek employment within the Children's Workforce specifically to gain access to children and their families and that in doing so they seek positions that combine trust and power.
It's a difficult and challenging session-not always easy to hear but nonetheless one that I feel has a vital role to play in increasing the awareness of all concerned on the sorts of opportunities paedophiles will seek to exploit in order to gain access to their targets.

From The Heart

We very recently carried out a day's development and training delivering our "Conflict to Confidence" programme to a training organisation that engages with disaffected 14-16 year olds and delivers Entry to Employment and Apprenticeship training to groups with high risk and vulnerability factors.
Part of the programme asks participants to develop a "Two of Us In a Lift" conversation; the premise of which is to as participants to think of someone who they admire, would like to meet and to imagine that you are in a lift with this person-they ask you "What do you do for a living, what makes it the right job for you?" You have 60 seconds to reply and get your message across. When I've delivered this before I've had some really interesting, comical and sometime raunchy characters make their way into the lift-all great fun. This time was made different by 3 participants, two of who chose their deceased fathers as the person they would most want to tell how well they'd done and what they'd achieved. A third chose his grandfather, a stroke victim whose speech has been affected-he wanted the chance to have a "real" conversation with him.
Presenting programmes is great-it's one of the very best parts of our work. This occasion was a powerful reminder of the worth of "Good Work" in contributing to our awareness of who we are and what we stand for in an often difficult and challenging world.

Use of Praise-Worth It or Too Soft and Fluffy?

The idea of praise “for everyone and for everything” detracts from the need to (apologies to Bill Rogers) to “be caught doing good.” The manner in which acknowledgement/praise is delivered would seem to be critical to its success. I have experienced young people who would rather chew broken glass coated with cyanide than be singled out for praise-however this does not mean that they are incapable of or unwilling to respond when their achievements are acknowledged in a manner consistent with their wants and need. Maybe like criticism, praise sometimes needs to be softly spoken.
I despair of the rose tinted rear-view mirror view of the past. Forty years ago I attended a Birmingham Comprehensive school that had its fair share of staff that would use this approach regularly and often. It achieved absolutely nothing. Staff who gained respect gained it because of their ability to create and work within clear boundaries that included a proportionate response to challenge in the context of a firm, fair and friendly approach to the pupils.
Like it or not, the use of praise needs to figure on a continuum of approaches that acknowledge both wanted and unwanted behaviour,
Our company delivers esteem raising programmes to learners who may have “slipped below the “praise radar”, have low aspirations and are achieving below potential. The proportionate use of praise combined by work with and support of the workforce (Learning Mentors, Behaviour Managers) has made an impact-sustainability is a further and different challenge.
I welcome approaches that allow us to “build up credit” in the learner’s emotional bank and model relationships that recognise the importance of calibrating success and confronting unwanted behaviour.

Personal Planning for Retirement

WORK/LIFE CHANGES APPROACHING?

We so often define ourselves through our jobs that it can be challenging to think about who we will be when we choose change, or circumstances mean that we have to change.
What are we talking about?
When you start out in your career, you spend time and effort making plans, developing ideas to carry you through the years that follow. Making sure you leave nothing to chance regarding decisions which will affect your career. Does that sound like you?
When you are approaching retirement, you have the benefit of experience, knowledge about what works for you, time to develop and fine tune interests you have never had time for, family grown up and maybe even left home, all kinds of opportunities.
But not everyone looks forward to retirement as a positive move. For many people, it is a time of uncertainty, worries about who they are, what will they do, what can they achieve, how will they be identified.
In your working life, you were known as a teacher, accountant, salesman, driver, office worker, nurse etc, you had an identity because of the job you did. But what about during retirement? Who will you be then?
The answer is you can be anyone you chose, because you have the time to develop the skills, take on new interests, learn how to be yourself again.
Look at the following questions/statements; see if you answer a quiet “YES” to any of them:
Am I approaching retirement in the next 2 years?
I am looking forward to it.
Am I concerned about what I will do with myself?
Am I concerned about how to keep my mind active?
Am I dreading the thought of no routine in my life?
Have I always been governed by strict times/bells at work?
Has my career involved other people making decisions for me?
Am I feeling less than confident about retirement?
Do I have concerns that I can’t express to my nearest and dearest?
I have a long term plan which will guide me through my retirement.
Do I need some help to devise plans to develop me into retirement?
Do I see retirement as the end of my life as I know it?
I have someone I can talk to someone about how I feel.

Have you answered a quiet “yes” to any of these questions?
Do you recognise that you need to plan your retirement to get the best out of it?
You have all of the answers you need, but maybe you need some help to put those plans into some kind of order. Retirement is as important as your working life, possibly more so, because you will make the choices about what you do, how you do it, who you are. You have worked all of your life, now work at enjoying your retirement.
We, at Coady Consultants Ltd, offer you the opportunity to work with one of our Personal Coaches who will provide Coaching for Personal Development into Retirement. This will involve working with you to look at the concerns you have, removing barriers, prioritising, planning.
WE ARE NOT FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVISORS, we are professionals in our field of personal development.
We can help you to find the answers you need in order to make your retirement a successful one. We can encourage you to develop the thinking, strategies, planning and self awareness which will allow you the opportunity to look retirement in the face and say “I AM PREPARED AND LOOKING FORWARD TO IT.”
Our by-line, as a company is “Working with you to improve”, so, here’s your chance to find out. We can work with you to improve your chances of enjoying the retirement you have worked so hard for.
If you would like further information, please contact us enquiries@coadyconsultants.co.uk

Coaching In Workplace-Enabling Interventions

Coaching In Workplace-Enabling Interventions

Coady Consultants understand the challenges Leaders and Managers face in recruiting and retaining their workforce. We know that substantial investments of finance, time and emotional energy are made in training and developing individuals and teams. We fully understand the cost, both in human and financial terms, when valued colleagues encounter challenges either at work or in their personal lives. We have been approached by Senior Mangers to work with colleagues who it is felt may need to look at their approaches to their work role. When we are asked to do this, we understand the massive investment of trust made in us by managers and those we work with. We understand that each individual is unique and we respond to their specific circumstances accordingly.
We understand too the need for employers to deliver their duty of care to their workforce. Here are some examples of how we can assist.

§ We have been approached by Leaders and Managers and worked with team-members where it is felt that an individual tem-member may benefit from increasing the inter-personal options and communication strategies they have available to them that in turn enable them to work more effectively with others.

§ We have worked with long standing and valued employees who may be experiencing a difficult time in their lives and whose performance is becoming a cause for concern.

§ We have enabled individuals to begin to resolve sometimes complex areas of life/work balance, increasing their sense of well-being and achievement on doing so.

§ We have helped individuals come to terms with aspects of their personal-life that are having an unwanted impact on their work-based performance

§ We have enabled individuals to, on occasions, re-align their goals and ambitions. In a minority of cases this has resulted in the individual making choices that ensure a “dignified exit” for all concerned-enabling them to move on with a sense of resolution, closure and purpose.

§ We have enable individual to accept mediation as a means of resolving inter-personal difficulties in the work place.

Every intervention is supported by a Coaching Plan, this included a confidentiality agreement and stresses that our work is not advice, therapy or counselling may address specific personal projects or general conditions in the client’s life or profession. We are able, where agreed, to support our interventions by “e-coaching” and telephone coaching.

Choose To Change

Teams fascinate me! The presence and sometime absence of interaction, where the real power lies and how the team talks about itself add up to an exciting series of questions, the answers to which can be a little disturbing. Like icebergs, the visible bit isn’t what we need to be concerned about, it’s what goes on underneath that sets the real climate.

We have been invited to work with a number of teams and I want to out together an outline of what we do. Some of this will have been discussed in other blogs-some elements will be new-however that is very much the way of working in an exciting and developmental role. Some time ago, at a particularly intransigent period in my professional life, I was advised that “If the only tool in your box in a hammer, you will treat every problem as if it were a nail!” Since that day I resolved to carry a comprehensive box of tools around with me and to use them!
I like to start with a few questions well in advance of the event-I need participants to understand that this is a great opportunity to move things forward and that they should take their individual roles seriously by committing themselves to some pre-work. This is always feed back in anonymity as a “Team Overview”.

There are some important core areas to work through. No matter whom we are and what we are doing, we would be very unwise to reject the notion that in these challenging and insecure times your job is an asset. I don’t want to frighten people but it is sometimes worth spending a few minutes getting them to think what life would be like without it. I ask participants to accept that, whatever we’re doing it can be done cheaper by someone else and to accept what we all know: most expensive isn’t always best, cheapest isn’t always worst. I want the answers to these questions:

§ Who are we and what are we like?
§ What values and beliefs do we stand for?
§ How do we know?
§ What impression do we give to our customers?
§ Do we know who they are and what they want from us?
§ What are the impacts of our behaviour on others: our co-workers, our managers, our customers, our competitors?
§ Who would miss us if we weren’t there?
§ Why?

It’s a challenging session. I’m deliberately taking participants beyond what a valued colleague described as “nodding dog syndrome” (sorry to all our nodding dog readers!) and into asking some tough questions about their professional identity. I’m saying to them: the way you present yourself, talk about your job, your boss, your colleagues, the language you use and the conversations you have are your very own “designer label”. Let’s be very careful about the association we want others to make because of the labels we wear and present to the outside world. Like a bumper sticker, they’re with us all the time and whereas we may have forgotten that the sticker was still there, everyone else can see it and will assume something about us because it’s there. If that sounds a tad harsh I make no apologies: live with it. We can choose to change our personal labels and stickers sometimes we just have to take a hard look to see if there are any that are visible to others only because we’ve forgotten about them-things have moved on since we first put them there!

There’s a real conflict between our need to change and our need to retain stability. We’re biologically set up to retain “sameness”. When we’re too hot we need to cool down and vice-versa: we want to reach a point of sameness most of the time. We accept inevitable change, the seasons, life, death, joy and grief and in doing so try to hang on to those things that we think should stay the same yet change at an accelerated pace: our jobs, our roles and relationships and the expectations of others.

Some stability is desirable, some change is inevitable-it is we that choose how we deal with change-led challenges. Teams grow, contract and adapt-the way the team is led, the vales transmitted within spread leadership, the type of dialogue developed enable us to better understand what it we need to do to deliver our roles in a shifting context.

Our programmes encourage participants to take an honest audit of what it is they believe in and what they can do at an individual level to contribute to the well being of the whole. We can not wish away the pressure for change in a rapidly changing context-at the end of one of our Team Development Days it is our belief that participants will have a greater understanding of what they need to do, to change and to “be” to deliver their role with a degree of integrity.

It is with more than a nod to Steven Covey’s excellent work that I state that adapting your personality is easy enough, delivering on your character is a different thing altogether our work gives an opportunity (without over-doing the navel gazing!) to help and challenge people to better understand their characters in the context of the work place as an aspect of their day-to day being: we give participants the tools with which to Choose to Change

Implementing Organisational Coaching and Mentoring

Introduction

This is an "active piece of work": we'll update as things develop!

Coady Consultants has delivered a Coaching and Mentoring Skills Based Programme to Middle Managers with the following intended outcomes:

To up-skill Managers
To introduce a range of materials to support the processes
To rehearse and practice skills and approaches
To agree on developing a professional support group
To further develop and extend the skills gained within the context.
Is significantly different in its approach to existing structures:
1:1 Meetings
Key Performance Indicators
Appraisal
To work within the contexts of Ethical Behaviour and Human Dignity

The programme has combined the key elements of coaching and mentoring in order to produce an intervention and support strategy that is specific, flexible accessible and replicable. It enables participants to establish goals that are in kilter with organisational needs and requirements whilst retaining a high degree of personal ownership.

Participants have explored the ethical context of the intervention; have acquired an overview of the importance of clarity, rapport and feedback. An established coaching model (The GROW model) has been deployed within the context of the programme. Feedback was positive: participants established support networks (4 above) prior to leaving the event with the intention of engaging with each other on specific areas of work. Whereas it was felt important to allow a period of time for participants to engage with each other and to practice the approaches discussed during the Development Day, it is noted that participants felt that they would need a period of ongoing support as they implemented the processes and incorporated them into their practice.

Securing the Development

We are in a position to offer participants access to further support from the programme facilitator using the following model.
Our client purchases an initial allocation of on-going support from the facilitator. Participants are then able to contact Coady Consultants to “book” a specific telephone support, enabling both parties to:

Set aside a specific amount of time
Reduce the likelihood of interruptions
Be focussed on the issues for discussion

Telephone calls can be further underpinned by access to e-mail support from Coady Consultants on matters related either to emergent issues from the development day or those which are related to practice. It is envisaged that this would be delivered on a “purchased entitlement” basis.

Spreading Good Practice

The initial cohort of 10 has been asked to engage with other Managers to model and deliver the Coach/Mentor processes. It is clear from individual and collective responses to the programme that the group will deploy the techniques used with their own teams.

Coaching led approaches within organisations can make a significant impact on morale, motivation and matching personal and organisational goals. Whereas the programme delivered combines specific elements of Coaching and Mentoring, it emphasises that a coaching relationship should be a consensual one. Furthermore, our development programme acknowledges that there will (hopefully infrequently) be occasions when the relationship between the Coach/Mentor and their “Client” is no longer sustainable and an alternative Coach/Mentor may be better suited to the process.

We would therefore seek to increase the number of the Company’s Workforce who have had access to the development in order to:

Increase the workforces’ awareness of coaching/mentoring processes
Increase the workforces’ capacity to deliver coaching/mentoring processes
Increase the workforces’ capacity to receive coaching/mentoring processes

We are therefore proposing that consideration is given to extending the Coach/Mentor delivery programme to a wider cohort of the Workforce over a phased and agreed period and that the Telephone/e-mail support strategy discussed earlier be incorporated as part of the process.

Coaching & Mentoring-Bringing It Together

We were approached by an existing customer organisation to explore the use of a combination of coaching and mentoring approaches to increase the confidence and competence of mid managers in order to develop teams and individuals across the company. Our remit was to create something different to appraisals and 1:1 supervision. There’s a difference between Coaching and Mentoring-so to start with a couple of definitions


Coaching

“Coaching is a one-to-one interactive relationship that helps people identify and accomplish their personal and professional goals faster than they could do on their own.”

Mentoring

“A slightly less formal arrangement that allows participants to access support as and when they feel it to be necessary.”

Our client wanted to develop the supportive aspects of mentoring together with some of the more specifically targeted features of coaching”


The programme was designed and delivered to embrace three areas: Mentor, Professional Friend and Facilitator.

Fabulous results-high quality evaluations, follow-up work and a satisfied client.
The drive from the North West of England to the Midlands, is on one of the busiest motorways in the country. The M6 was a joy that night,
We’re going to underpin our programme with a support strategy that involves telephone and e-mail contacts with those who attended the event. They have, with minimum prompting, arranged a mutual support work. It’s a National organisation and where geography is in the way, video-conferencing has been organised.

Fantastic!!

Lunch Time Supervisors-An Authority Approached Us....

Lunch Time Supervisors: Beginning The Journey

February for the shortest month of the year, February can seem to last forever; the buzz of Christmas and New Year has long since past and this year was a cold, snow and slush laden affair that made Summer seem a long way off.
It’s always great to get a telephone call asking if we’d be interested in some work-it lifts the spirits and refocuses our energies and puts some energy into thinking and planning for the future.
A local authority contact had found us through the Web Site (www.coadyconsultants.co.uk )and was very interested in our Lunch Time Supervisor Development Programme: could we deliver it, to a series of Local Authority Secondary Schools in April, with a catch-up session in May? Our resources created a really favourable impression and the contract was agreed.
One of our Associate Consultants delivered the package-the feedback has been hugely encouraging: for the vast majority of those attending this was the first exposure they had received to training that acknowledged the huge contribution their role makes to the health, safety and well being of learners during the lunch period.
There is something very powerful about dignity achieved through recognition. Participants want to develop their skills and understanding of how they can better contribute to outcomes for learners and to work with Senior Managers and Duty Teams to improve the lunch-time experience for all concerned.
We have a strong set of evaluations that continue to point us in the direction the consultancy has followed since its inception, namely that to obtain the very best from people, there has to be a strong inner compass that points in the direction of mutual respect and dignity for all of the workforce.

From Conflct to Confidence: Addressing Underachievement

Our Consultancy has been pleased to work in partnership with a number of schools, further education and training organisations in areas related to the behaviour of learners, students and trainees.
We also deliver our own mentoring and coaching programmes, designed to raise the achievements of all learners by addressing some of the “blockers and stoppers” that are preventing progress. We deliver interventions with the intention of raising aspirations and enabling learners and trainees to break out of the truly unhelpful boundaries that exist because of artificially low expectations, lack of confidence and self-belief. We want the young people who work with us to develop realistic expectations that are fun and challenging.
We know that a key element in raising achievement and making progress is the quality of the relationships formed with trusted adults at critical times. I can’t think of any of my current or past associates and friends who are unable to name and recall the positive input made by significant adults throughout their childhood, adolescence and early adulthood.
The Children and Young People Workforce combines the skills of leaders, managers, teachers, lecturers and trainers to delivers its programmes. This important task would be made much more challenging without the contribution of Para-Professionals: Mentors, Learning Assistants, Student & Pupil Support Managers who bring their very special and refined skills to supporting trainees, often with high risk and vulnerability factors, throughout the learning/training process by providing supportive challenge, trust and advocacy.
We also know that some of our most valued colleagues would like an opportunity to meet with others who are involved in similar work, to address specific challenges and to talk about “what works”. Our programme “From Conflict to Confidence” provides a structured framework in which the above and more can be achieved. All participants will have an opportunity to consider how best to deliver their role within an ethically valid framework that considers best practice, the sources of anger and aggression and the importance of a systematic approach to intervention and support, together with an opportunity to receive ongoing support from Coady Consultants Ltd.

Developing Lunch Time Supervisors (ii)

We prefer to enter longer-term sustainable relationships with our customers. One of the benefits for us is that we get to see the outcomes of the work we deliver: it's immensely rewarding to witness, in real terms, the amount of movement teams are capable of making.
Working with one of our customers, we have developed a "Lunch Time Team Charter", a simple 3 Fold leaflet that delivers some very powerful messages about the the Lunch Time Team and how it contributes to the well-being of the school community.
An enthusiastic and committed management team have worked with us throughout and the 3 fold will now be

• shared with the whole workforce
• e-mailed (where appropriate) to parents and carers
• used as part of the induction pack for next academic year's Year 7 learners
• the subject of tutorial/assemblies

Nothing beats good practice! There are regular meetings between the supervisors, student support managers and a Deputy Head Teacher. It was a privilege to attend one very recently and to witness at first hand the shift in dialogue in this team of 12 people. It has moved from sounding "stuck, helpless and problem-donating", to a place where it is "dynamic, resourceful and problem-solving."

My drive home that evening was made up of around 25 miles of gentle rolling country-side between two major urban areas-the spring sun and crisp skies of late March contributed to the feeling of well-being that had arisen from the massively positive messages and tangible progress demonstrated by a team that had committed to the development process, supported by a school that takes seriously the value-added to be gained from investing in the development and growth of its workforce. Some days are just better than others!

Developing Lunch Time Supervisors

We've approached by a number of schools to train their lunchtime supervisors. Hard working people who deliver a massively important thankless task at just above minimum wage. They tell us that they feel undervalued by the workforce and are subject to low-levels of co-operation from children and young people.

Where we've put some training in things have changed for the better. After using our systems the Supervisors have reported that they "feel better about their jobs" and this has had a significant impact on learners. The chief element of change seems to be to increase the worth and regard the supervisors are held in by the rest of the work-force and to get the message across to the kids that Lunch Time Supervisors should enjoy the same level of regard and respect as that given to other team members.

Assertiveness skills, handling your own anger and adopting a common approach seem to have made a difference in every case. Schools should be safe at lunchtimes, this sort of thinking does not come cheap-they need to consider the benefits of the investment. Safer schools, a reduction in bullying and intimidation and a better start to the afternoon session give some indication of the value of the investment in training and development. Trained supervisors have a greater sense of confidence, worth and value and can use their skills in other areas, allowing them to progress in their jobs with the Children's Workforce

Team Development. A Dignified Approach

“External consultants are free loaders on the make who have loyalty to no-one other than themselves. “ Now there’s a long sentence to communicate with just a glimpse or a reluctant handshake: I’m pretty certain I’ve heard it or something like it though.

• Fact, teams fall out.
• Fact, sometimes it gets better by itself.
• Fact, sometimes managers intervene and the situation may improve-there are others when their intervention may exacerbate an already difficult situation.

Having an insight into the nature of the conflict will help, there can be movement from Hot (overt) conflict to Cold (covert) conflict. In our experience, Hot Conflicts are easier to recognise, approach and are open to intervention. The overt nature of the Hot Conflict either isolates key players or causes them to join up with groups who share a similar view of what has happened and therefore what needs (in their view) to be done. Cold conflict presents us with a range of far more subtle and toxic organisational pathogens.

We have recently worked with a team to bring to an end a Cold Conflict that had begun with a typical (and as I write, sadly topical) re-organisation. Several experienced team members had left, their posts having been made redundant. A re-organisation and re-structuring meant that it was possible to replace them numerically with less experienced people in re-defined roles. Clusters and sub groups rapidly evolved accompanied by increasingly declining levels of cooperation and increased levels of mistrust generally and mistrust of managers specifically, From the outset, it seemed reasonable to conclude that the team had become absorbed in a purpose other than work and that, as a general view, management had lost its ethical right to manage. There were other rumblings as cliques grew more defined and felt free to comment on the performance of other team members, querying both their competence and their commitment.

We were commissioned to deliver a Team Building Programme. Our role was to enable the team to reach a point from which it could secure a better future in the context of a highly competitive internal and external environment.

We used the following approaches:

• A questionnaire that enabled us to communicate with the team (collectively and individually) about perceptions and beliefs with the aim of recognising “Where we are now”.
• 
  A questionnaire that enabled us to talk about the situation in Hot and Cold terms within a framework that supported discussion and openness.
• 
  A process of identifying the Team’s internal and external audiences and to take ownership of and responsibility for delivering “healthy and productive” messages.

Team members were required to complete a challenging exercise in developing a dialogue that defined their expectations towards and from each other and their managers-in short they have a right to be managed, management has a duty to manage.

We looked at “soft skills” in the context of emotional intelligence” and their impact on the dignity and regard with which they wanted to be treated as individuals and the reciprocal need to treat others in a similar manner. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”

The process was spread over two sessions, each under “Chatham House Rules”. The first event was challenging participants were understandably defensive. They were nonetheless receptive to the pre-event feedback and provided some insightful, if occasionally reluctant contributions that enabled us to broaden the scope of discussions throughout the day. Our approach required us to ensure that quieter team-members had significant opportunity to register their views and observations. This would require more vociferous participants to accept the premise that they would sometime need to “take a step back” from their usual (preferred?) style of behaviours in meetings.

IT WORKED. The opportunity to reflect of the relationship between the team and its internal and external audiences provided sufficient focus to give a common purpose without too much introspective navel gazing, increasing a sense of helplessness or re-affirming dysfunctional positions.

We left a two week gap between sessions in order to create some space in which team members and managers could reflect on the issues raised. This “gave permission” for team members to talk to each other, consider their positions on long held beliefs and to consider their individual readiness to “shift their positions”.

There’s a risk: those with deeply entrenched views who are likely to witness a reduction in their power and influence have an opportunity in which to secure their power-base. We took a judgement call, my view being that we had in our first session, exposed and secured agreement regarding the need for change. Actions that may undermine this position may therefore be seen as contrary to the good of the team. Day 1 had given me an opportunity to sow the seeds that enabled team-members to consider the “ESSENCE OF HUMAN DIGNITY” as a significant contributory factor to team performance. The “gap” provided a space in which the seeds could germinate and grow.

There was a WOW FACTOR at the beginning of Day 2! It was apparent as we were setting up, that the conversations people were having over their “coffee on arrival” were energised, there was a lot of laughter and a tangible sense of purpose. The optimism experienced at the start of the day was an accurate indicator of what was to follow and remained present throughout.
Our “job” was to reflect to the team, the reality they had described on the pre-event questionnaires and during the first session. Our “challenge” was to enable the team to describe a new reality and acknowledge the changes required and individual and group stages in order to produce sustainable growth. Our role was to guide the team in its discussions, so that the risks and challenges associated with change were articulated and understood in the context of the perceived and actual benefits to the individual, the team and the organisation.

We were required to be bold and to engage participants in a process that required them to describe in precise terms how they should work together, address challenging issues, achieve consensus, deal with disagreement and accept that this takes within a context in which they have a right to be heard and management has a duty to manage,
Here are some of the benefits/outcomes participants shared with us:

Talk needs to be followed by an Action Plan – who/when/by given date/deadline

Be prepared to revisit the Action Plan to achieve consensus

Increasing levels of communication needed

Decisions not currently made by consensus

We have lost the ability as a team to achieve the targets set as there are not enough regular divisional meetings to make the team effective

Individuals need to be accountable

The sessions were very helpful

We need to remind others of the protocols of making a complaint; this teaches them professionalism for life

We need to take ownership of issues, not undermine when someone else takes ownership

We need to make time to talk to each other away from the work-place

This has raised our awareness of roles/responsibilities/pressures etc at every level – BUT this needs to be incorporated into the Induction process for new staff so that unnecessary/unrealistic expectations are not fostered.

“Open door” policy needed – to get to know each other

Mentor system in place, but not everyone aware of it

There is a physical divide to the team as they operate on 2 floors – previously a concourse system

On reflection – do not put all new staff in one office, they need to work alongside experienced staff

Admin sits apart from the rest of the team and as such feels apart from any team spirit which may be engendered.

We are now aware of the problems and are in a position to do something to improve it.

Perhaps the most satisfying recognition of what had been achieved came a few months later. The team had been required to produce a piece of challenging work for accreditation which if gained would mean increased job security and some growth.
The team was successful-it is the manager’s view that the outcome would not have been achieved without the increased sense of collaborative working, focus and purpose secured over the development programme and delivered in the context of the relationship between desired outcomes and human dignity.