In teams we launched into a quiz designed to familiarise us with the outline of the course. The last part of the quiz required us to write a brief summary of the course objectives. After much Pop Idols style deliberation by the training team our answer:
"To equip people with the skills to effectively manage teams in the fullfilment of efficient and effective service delivery."
was chosen and just about nudged us into the lead.
The point of the quiz, of course, was not to see who could score the most points but to demonstrate the need for leadership and predictably we all fell into the traps. Nobody monitored the time being taken (we were given 10 minutes - it actually took 16) and we failed to take a review of the task and share the work between team members for efficiency eg divide the questions up or appoint a scribe. This lead to over running the time limit and the production of too many answer sheets. This proved to be a very effective demonstration.
Communication and collaboration are to be assisted by the use of shared folders in Groupwise; one for the whole group and one for each of the learning sets which we were going to be put into.
We were advised to always submit a draft of any written assignments by 12.00 on the Thursday before the deadline. All assignments need to be in electonic format and submitted to the given email address.
We broke for the usual high quality Cliffe House lunch.
After lunch we were put into to learning sets. Each learning set consists of 8 people and acts as a support and collaboration network. We agreed the agenda, venue and date of first meeting with difficulty as people with digital diaries could not access them.
An excercise to discover the qualities of good leadership led me to think about Joel Leach, a lecturer of mine whilst studying music at Northridge University in Los Angeles. What I remember most about Joel is that his inspiration, drive and enthusiasm always left you feeling empowered, motivated and valued. Must look Joel up on t'interweb.
Limits of Authority
Introduced to John Adair and his book Action Centred Leadership in which he describes a supervisor/manager role through a 3 part model: task needs, group needs and individual needs. The analogy used was that of a circus plate spinner.
In our groups we discussed various scenarios which required some leadership. Our group discussed Staff Interruptions. This lead us to a discussion about what factors would limit the free reign of a team leader:
- Union agreement
- Policies and procedures
- Expenditure
- Procurement
- HR
- Emas
- Difficulty of the work, grievance/disciplinary
- Child protection
- Legislation
- Data protection
- FOI
- DDA
We also discussed the limitations of specific projects.
- Use of equipment
- Resources
- Time scales
- Capacity
- Professional standards
We ended the day with a video called The Boss. This followed Brian and Lee - one the boss of a traditional manufacturing company and the other of a modern media company - as they swapped positions and ran each other's companies for 2 weeks. The two of them had very different managerial styles and it soon became clear that the one with the greatest involvement with the needs of customer, company and staff was going to be the most successful. Must look out for this on YouTube.
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