A Little Sceptical But Trying

Work has been a bit of a trail and triumph. I finally got caught up on a tiny portion of the paperwork but the machinations of management are more than a little frustrating. The meetings are going smoother but even what was supposed to be a ‘Oh there’s nothing to update you on’ turned out to be ‘Here’s a list of new things you must do, and we are changing things to a far more complicated way but not yet’ type of meeting. I keep saying to myself that I will not speak up, not stir the pot then like an out of body experience I watch myself opening my mouth and questioning the wisdom of management. That is the kind of thing makes a short meeting quite long. My only suggestion to the supervisor was if you are going to change certain things that affect the group home and it’s staff make sure that it will work in a practical manner.
It brings me back to that topic of partnership and what it truly means. Strangely last week we had one meeting all about teamwork. Part of it was a survey trying to discover what we thought about our team, how did we work as a team and so on and it was supposedly anonymous. The second half of the meeting the team had to write out then discuss what types of workshops would we like to see implemented to help promote teamwork and what are the barriers that prevent teamwork. The wording was rich with implications. It didn’t seem to include the supervisors, managers and all the powers that be above them in that part of the equation You didn’t want to give pat answers, you wanted to say something that would have an impact for the better. You want your voice heard. Say you had a poor work team there you are sitting in front of everyone speaking about workshops that the team should have. How do you answer, is it communication skills, is it information sharing is it one staff not pulling their weight? Maybe it’s not your immediate team that you’re thinking of when you answer but how the organization works as a team. I think what management wants to hear are suggestions for your immediate team because it is something they think they can fix, everything else is just to big. Under the gun and with the supervisor watching us, we furiously wrote our answers to those two questions. Then each of us had to read out loud what we had written and all of us had to discuss each of the answers. The supervisor wrote down whatever was pertinent and commented on our commentaries. Then we hand in the anonymous survey and our written opinions. The supervisor puts it all into an envelope and tucks it into her briefcase. Luckily we have a strong team that values our different approaches and whatever comes from this survey our team has already explored and probed relentlessly what we do and how we do it as a team.