On building a team: a letter to a new manager.
Dear Fran
Firstly let me offer my congratulations on becoming a team manager. I know that for months now you have been saying “I can do better than that” – so now here is your chance!
I’ll address my comments to the issue of you building a team and not maintaining or looking after it because the latter is not what I’ve been asked to do.
A team consists of a group of people who work together on a common task (Ward, 2003). The idea is that more can be achieved collectively than by people acting individually (Ward, 2003) – and you need a shared task for that team otherwise you are just managing a disparate group of individuals. They need some kind of connectivity between themselves, with the tasks they perform and with the external agencies with which they network (Open University, 2003a).
Who do you include in your team? Your might even want to consider whether you yourself are a team member. I’ve worked in a team where the cook was not ostensibly a part of the team but she knew more than anybody else there! You might even consider whether or not to include service users in the team. According to Read (2003) this is an increasing
trend. However he admits that there are many factors which mitigate against this leaning.
I know you can’t necessarily choose the team you inherit, but once you can start making your own appointments the relationships within the team will start to change. On the subject of recruitment of staff, Ward (2003) has noted that some managers don’t feel they are in charge until they have appointed their own staff. It’s not unknown for a team to look back to a ‘golden age’ when it worked under a previous manager (Days in the Life, 2003a); and the interregnum before a new manager is appointed could force the team apart so that team members no longer feel part of a whole (Open University, 2003b).
Because you were promoted from an in-patient acute mental health unit to manage a mental health rehabilitation residential unit, your lack of specific experience might inhibit the gaining of credibility with operational staff, as pointed out by Kitchener et. al. (2003). In such a case a directive or inquisitorial style of management is not advisable – the offering of support to and respect for the autonomy of front line staff will quickly win people round (Kitchener et. al., 2003). As a team manager, there are ways in which you can exercise your power (Seden, 2003), and how you do this may affect the attitude of the team and its members (Ward, 2003); so you’ve got to be discriminating about how you use the power you have. Likewise, Seden (2003) also points to different types of organizational culture. How you exercise your authority, and how you implement the type of organizational culture within your workplace, can affect how your team works together and how well it delivers the service.
A manager can serve as a point of focus for the team, as well as serve as the embodiment of the corporate vision. This is not to neglect the day to day management of the service, but your team must feel it is involved in what is happening. A disempowered team will not be able to empower its clients (Hickey and Kipping, 1998). Enablement is an important function of the manager (Davies, 2003). Workers have expectations of their managers. Such qualities as day-today access (I once worked with a
manager whose door was always opened in a symbol of approachability), support and understanding, flexibility, the willingness to take responsibility, and the ability to take decisions and to stand by them are important to a team (Waine and Henderson, 2003).
By the same token, team members can sometimes be very established in their ways of doing things, presenting an additional challenge for a new manager. Tuckman (Open University, 2003c) has a model which helps a manager to understand the process and what they might need to do in order to make their mark. Firstly, you need to help the formation of clear ideas about what the purposes and rationale of the group are (called forming); next, during the storming stage , the manager encourages discussion of the ways of working together, and might need to impose or shift the boundaries within which individuals work; thirdly is the norming stage, whereby with the manager’s support the group will
accept as given the new ideas and roles within the group; and finally the group is performing, and doing things the way you want. It’s something of a simplistic model perhaps (Ward, 2003) useful way of understanding the process. Ward also notes how the system of forming a team needs continual evaluation and review, as this will encourage the team to appreciate individual differences and permit of improved communication – so discouraging binary thinking. Binary thinking means seeing your
colleagues in terms of what you are not (eg., qualified and not
qualified), rather than appreciating differences in personalities and in roles (Davies, 2003). As you know, we are both working in the caring services at a time of great change (Clarke, 2003), and you may encounter a team which is resistant to such change (Ward, 2003). The situation can be greatly improved by staff seeing how their manager deals with change, so that they will be prepared to surrender some of their own inflexible ideas. Force-field analysis, is a way of understanding any situation involving change where there will be team members driving change, and other team members resisting it. A skilful manager can achieve a working balance between the two forces by reducing the restraining forces (Skye et. al., 2003).
One of the ongoing challenges for a team manager is to keep the team moving forward and to stay together (Ward, 2003). Staff development is vital to the employees of an organization and helps people to feel they are developing. One of the best contributions which a manager can make to this issue is not only in terms of regulating individual workload, but also to foster a supportive atmosphere, a positive culture and mutual respect between team members. Recruiting the best people to join the team is an important priority for managers (Ward, 2003). The team
manager needs to be clear about exactly what the team needs but at the same time this must be balanced against wider considerations such as corporate goals and values. The manager is uniquely placed in terms of their ability to innovate (Seden, 2003), and one of the signal features of the new managerialism (Waine and Henderson, 2003) is the autonomy which the role offers as the legislative framework is general enough to permit it (McDonald and Henderson, 2003). So you have the scope to
create your team in the way you want.
When new staff are recruited, it is vital to help them to make a
comfortable start. Many a promising employee has left an organization overwhelmed by the workload suddenly dropped on them without recourse to an appropriate induction to the organisation and to their role. The manager can ensure this takes place by, for example, using senior staff to mentor new employees for a fixed period after starting (Ward, 2003). In one workplace I was given an induction pack, and spent a fortnight networking with other agencies and being tutored in corporate values, before ever starting any work. This might also preclude the unofficial sort of induction ‘over the photocopier’ as Ward (2003, p. 45) humorously describes it, which is really another term for harmful gossip. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has issued specific guidelines on staff recruitment and induction (Open
University, 2003d, 2003e).
I’m not saying you need to be a psychologist, but some knowledge of the human relations approach to organisations is useful for a manager (Ward, 2003). This approach focuses on the primary task of an organization – that is, what it has to do in order to survive; the function this task has for society as a whole (such as helping people with a mental health problem integrating into the wider community); and the anxiety which this creates amongst the staff. Obholzer (2003) talks about the workplace being a sort of ‘container’ of social anxieties. I think his article is useful in the way it offers a human relations perspective upon the mechanism of team work, but that his assessment is pessimistic. He suggests that team members use the workplace as a receptacle to ‘contain’ this ‘anxiety’. I think that for individual team members the organization is also a forum to play out and resolve these anxieties. For the individual team member, that personal and professional reflection forms such a major part of their identity as practitioners (Skye et. al., 2003) mean that these anxieties are inevitably expressed. I also think that moreover corporate anxieties are played out within the team. For example, corporate values which inform the delivery of a service might in turn place pressures upon a team which is struggling to discharge these responsibilities.
It might be a reasonable question to ask, as Skye et. al. (2003) do,
whether theories of human behaviour are useful to managers, and how applicable to practice they are. They suggest that it is important for a manager to develop the ability to solve problems through the systematic application of knowledge, skills and experience. Many managers may have a ‘common sense’ knowledge, but by its nature this is fragmented and therefore cannot be applied in a systematic way. One of the least complex ways of looking at an organization is in terms of general systems theory – ie., that the organic parts of it (your team members) can be viewed as subsystems which interact with each other. For human systems to keep going they need to exchange energy with other systems, an idea which corresponds to the work of Payne (Open University, 2003a). Such interactions involve a level of reciprocity between the different subsystems. Whilst human systems struggle to maintain equilibrium without losing their integrity, any interruption to that system (such as a new team manager!) will unbalance it and necessitate the struggle to achieve a new equilibrium. Systems theory is useful to managers because it provides a framework in which to view and to understand the dynamics of your team (Skye et. al., 2003). For example,
you might have a member of the team you have inherited who is
disaffected – for example they may have applied for the post you were awarded (Day in the Life, 2003b). Ward (2003) declares that in such a case the manager’s skill lies in seeing beyond this individual and the possible conflicts and disharmony they cause, and examining wider issues which may affect them. These can then be resolved, with outside support if necessary.
In any work caring for a group of people, a team must have the two key components of interdependency between team members and a network of interaction between staff and service users (Ward, 2003). In a group setting (such as the residential unit where you are moving to) the team needs to be more interdependent than in other areas because often team members have to rely directly on each other for immediate collaboration and mutual support during their everyday work. This means that within a team good communication and appropriate arrangements for supervision are vital. As Ward (2003) points out, collaboration and communication are not accidental; it is a team manager’s role to facilitate this. Skye et. al. (2003) point out how the manager needs the ability to observe, listen and reflect. Managers can get the best out of their staff by encouraging a culture of learning through listening, responding and flexibility (Peace and Reynolds, 2003).
For example, the way in which the unit is planned can indicate territory and can indicate where power and control rests with individuals. An enabling environment will encourage staff – even something as basic as decoration can have an enormous impact upon what the team feels about the workplace (Peace and Reynolds, 2003).
One of the things which you might want to take into consideration is that of building team spirit. One management tool (Open University, 2003f) suggests that you could contribute a great extent to this by being fair with your team, not devaluing your praise by giving it so often, and being aware of the different personalities in your team so that you don’t generate friction. You could treat everyone as having an input to the team and you could put different people in charge of different projects which helps everybody in the team to feel they are involved You could try to encourage team members to help and support each other. I have worked in a team where a manager’s actions did not match her rhetoric, and it caused resentment within the team.
Your problem as a team leader isn’t one of schism – i.e., being pulled in one way by the needs of the service you are providing, and being pulled another way by the corporate vision. Your team is there to do both with you under your direction. How well you manage your team is going to affect how successful you are in this aim.
REFERENCES
Clarke, J., Doing the Right Thing? Managerialism and social welfare, in Reynolds, J., Henderson, J., Seden, J., Charlesworth, J. and Bullman, A. eds., The Managing Care Reader, Routledge, London, pp. 195-203;
Davies, C., 2003, Workers, professions and identity, in Henderson, J. and Atkinson, D. eds., Managing Care in Context, Routledge, London, pp. 189-210;
Days in the Life, Managers’ Diaries, 2003a, Bronwyn, Manager of a Voluntary Sector Project, in Reynolds, J., Henderson, J., Seden, J., Charlesworth, J. and Bulman, A. eds., The Managing Care Reader, Routledge, London, pp. 9-11;
Days in the Life, Managers’ Diaries, 2003b, Anita, Manager of a Community Mental Health Team, in Reynolds, J., Henderson, J., Seden, J., Charlesworth, J. and Bulman, A. eds., The Managing Care Reader, Routledge, London, pp. 7-9;
Hickey and Kipping, 1998, Exploring the concept of user involvement in mental health through a participation continuum, Journal of Clinical Nursing, 7(1), pp. 83-88;
Kitchener, M., Kirkpatrick, I. and Whipp, R., 2003, Supervising Professional work under new public management: evidence from an ‘invisible trade’, in Reynolds, J., Henderson, J., Seden, J., Charlesworth, J. and Bullman, A. eds., The Managing Care Reader, Routledge, London, pp. 220-231;
McDonald, A. and Henderson, J., 2003, Managers and the law, in Henderson, J. and Atkinson, D. eds., Managing Care in Context, Routledge, London, pp. 75-101;
Obholzer, A., 2003, Managing social anxieties in public sector organizations, in Reynolds, J., Henderson, J., Seden, J., Charlesworth, J. and Bulman, A. eds., The Managing Care Reader, Routledge, London, pp. 281-288;
Open University, 2003a, School of Health and Social Welfare, Course K303 Managing Care: Study File, Payne M, Open Teamwork, Resources 16;
Open University, 2003b, School of Health and Social Welfare, Course K303: Managing Care at Wellbridge, Scenario 2, Managing People, Meeting Room, CD;
Open University, 2003c, School of Health and Social Welfare, Course K303: Managing Care at Wellbridge, Management tool: Tuckman’s model – Workbook Task 3, CD;
Open University, 2003d, School of Health and Social Welfare, Course K303 Managing Care: Study File, Recruitment, Resources 17;
Open University, 2003e, School of Health and Social Welfare, Course K303 Managing Care: Study File, Induction, Resources 18;
Open University, 2003f, School of Health and Social Welfare, Course K303: Managing Care at Wellbridge, Management tool: Building team spirit – Workbook Task 3, CD;
Peace, S. and Reynolds, J., Managing environments, in Henderson, J. and Atkinson, D. eds., Managing Care in Context, Routledge, London, pp. 133-158;
Seden, J., 2003, Managers and their organizations, in Henderson, J. and Atkinson, D. eds., Managing Care in Context, Routledge, London, pp. 105-131;
Skye, E., Meddings, S. and Dimmock, B., 2003, Theories for understanding people, in Henderson, J. and Atkinson, D. eds., Managing Care in Context, Routledge, London, pp. 211-236;
Waine, B. and Henderson, J., 2003, Managers, managing and managerialism, in Henderson, J. and Atkinson, D. eds., Managing Care in Context, Routledge, London, pp. 49-74;
Ward, A., 2003, Managing the Team, in Seden, J. and Reynolds, J. eds., Managing Care in Practice, Routledge, London, pp. 33-55.
