The past 12 months have been an incredibly busy period for me. As well as overseeing services in Wales I have overseen services in England, worked through the second-half of my level 7 senior leadership qualification with the CMI, moved house, and maintained my family responsibilities. Over the next couple of weeks I have both my final level 7 assessment and starting a new job to contend with. All of this has meant a few things have slipped. My attendance at the gym have dropped dramatically, something I wish to address in the next month, and I have found it difficult to keep up with my reading. The long drives up to the Midlands and back have meant I've been able to make the most of my Audible membership, but there is something very different about holding a book in your hands and reading from that. I feel I benefit from it in a different way than I do from listening to an audiobook or watching a YouTube video. Not to say one of those methods of learning is superior to any of the others, it's just a different experience. I've taken advantage of a bit of downtime between jobs to reflect on what I have read and learnt over the past year. There are a number of books I have read or listened too but am yet to write up for the website. These books include “Nudge”, “The Art of War”, “The First 90 days”, “Understanding Cognitive Biases”, “Good to Great”, “Be Useful”, “Radical Candor”, and several others. I have long been passionate about personal and professional development, and have a huge “to read” list scribbled down in one of the many notebooks I carry with me. Purchasing a new Kindle to replace my much neglected, very old iteration that still had a physical keyboard, has been fantastic in helping me keep up my reading habits. I carry it with me most places despite having the app on my phone. The device itself is much more comfortable to use compared to staring at a tiny phone screen. Now my “to read” list also consists of the many samples I've downloaded in anticipation of future purchases. What I have found across the dozens of books I've read and hundreds of hours spent listening to audible, is that I have been too narrow in my focus. The vast majority of the non fiction I have read has been purposely chosen to develop existing skills or to introduce me to new skills. For example, “Thinking Fast and Slow” gave me great insight into the way that I and others come to conclusions and make decisions. Shane Snow’s “Dream Teams” made me think in a whole new way about team building and diversity. Chris Voss and Tahl Raz’s “Never Split the Difference” helped me reflect on my negotiating skills and improve them beyond what they were previously. But despite the diversity of titles I have read and listened to, seeing my library when I turn my kindle on let me to realise one thing. Every single book I have read focuses on one key idea. A book on negotiating. Books on diversity. Books on listening, on communication, on finance, on language, on habits, on economics and so on. Every one of them valuable, every one of them insightful, and usually with actionable measures that I can apply to my job or home life. All of them introducing me to new ideas and new concepts. But not one on developing my own thinking.
As ever, I’m always keen to hear of new books and resources that can introduce me to new ideas or challenge my perceptions. Ebooks are preferred, but I’m open to Audible podcasts and YouTube channels, too. Drop me a comment here or on my LinkedIn and let me know!

Another week goes by, and here in Wales we are no closer to any sort of clear plan being put in place to support the Welsh Assembly Government’s ideological target of removing profit from children's social care. I did attend a recent market sounding event in Cardiff, which did little to reassure me that the market will be ready to move to a non-profit model in time to meet the assembly's aims. At least one provider left the event early on, convinced we are seeing the unfolding of a self-made disaster for children's social care in Wales. Like many providers I have been in contact with, he's given serious consideration to leaving the sector. We know that no local authority in Wales is in a position to meet the needs of children who may be in desperate need of somewhere to live once these providers close.

The conversations I have had with local authorities suggest that they too lack an appetite for this change. Some of them have openly stated to me that they do not care if those people looking after their children are making a reasonable profit or not, so long as the quality of care is good. All of the research into this area seems to confirm there is a negligible difference between the cost of care provided by the local authority and care provided by private companies; and there is no difference in the quality of care either. Good practise and poor practise exist regardless of which sector the children's home operates in.

What we're seeing is unpopular and ideologically driven change being forced through without adequate planning or funding to ensure the children looked after in the system remain safe. I believe that if the government genuinely wants to remove profit from social care, it should grab the bull by the horns and ensure local authorities have the funding and support to run their own internal services, rather than hoping that a hodgepodge of good intentions and poor planning will somehow magically meet the needs of the most vulnerable children in the country.

The care and support of children who are traumatised, have been abused, or have complex learning difficulties, is a difficult and demanding job. Good quality care is expensive - to use a metaphor, you can't expect a Mercedes-Benz for a Kia price. A lot of the rhetoric we're seeing in this “debate” is apparently focused on addressing the profiteering which does exist in a small sector of the Welsh market. However, what I'm seeing is this element of dubious business practise being conflated with the cost of care. The whole sector is being punished for the sins of a few. A good company charging what lay people may see as a high amount for care is not the same as profiteering. We need to root out the profiteering elements in the marketplace, there is no doubt about that. But many people are commenting on what they see as the high cost of care, without any idea of what care should cost. Every children's home needs a staff team; some children may need two or more staff with them at all times to meet their needs. That staff team will need to be trained, inducted, supervised, and some will need to be put through relevant qualifications. Some homes employ waking night staff on top of their day staff. Some homes offer education. Some homes offer specialist psychological and therapeutic input. Somebody adequately skilled and experienced has to oversee and manage the home and care package. And I truly believe that the low status of care in this country means that people do not understand the knowledge, skill, and complexity that goes into good quality residential childcare. None of us would dream of walking into an operating theatre and telling the lead surgeon that we think he charges too much, and asking whether he really needs to cut so deep, and does he really need all these other people around him, and does he think he's wasting too much soap when he cleans his hands, and isn't this all rather expensive? Surely there is a cheaper way to do it? Why then, without any experience in the sector or any knowledge of how difficult and demanding the job can be, and without any knowledge of the support and care many of these young people need, do people feel entitled to jump in and tell us in the sector that we're charging too much for something they're not prepared to do themselves? I'm talking here largely about the way the debate has spilled into social media, but I've met many professionals not directly involved in the running of children's homes who do not appreciate the skills their colleagues bring to work every day; and there exist many more decision makers in government who are clueless about what the job of caring entails and what the sector actually needs.

Disclosure: I have been a left-wing voter all my life. Given the choice, I would have all children's social care provided by local authorities, in the local area, by well-paid and trained staff, wherever it is possible to meet children's needs (as I believe privatisation should have no role in the NHS). If we are looking to remove private companies from the care sector, this is the model we should be following - doing it properly, not in some half-arsed attempt to massage the market in the direction the Senedd wants.

But even under such a model children will need specialist care that it is simply not cost effective to provide in every region, and so some children will still end up moving further from home than they would like. And (pie-in-the-sky thinking)  if this were to be funded and planned and executed properly by the government, we still would not meet the main aim the government wants to achieve - that of reducing cost. Staffing is the most significant cost faced by any care organisation. Good quality staff are difficult to find, difficult to recruit, and difficult to retain. Again, this comes back to the low regard that we have for carers in this country. Such staff should be a lot more expensive than they currently are. We should be rewarding them far more than we currently are. If you think this is wrong, compare the rewards offered to carers and children's homes managers with the packages offered to any other profession in the country. If you need to recruit a teacher, you are not competing with Lidl and Aldi for the same pool of staff. Yet that is the reality faced by those looking to staff care homes. The obsession with driving down costs means that this is unlikely to change anytime soon. 

Forcing those who make a small profit (many providers have a profit margin of around 6%) out of the marketplace will not be the universal panacea for all the industry's problems many people are proposing it will be. It is not going to reduce costs. It is not going to save the government any money. It is not going to improve the quality of care across the sector; in fact with the unavoidable skills drain caused by many people leaving the sector as companies leave and are not replaced, we are likely to see a dip in the quality of care offered to young people. We may even see increased costs, as the lower number or providers remaining in the sector will mean more competition for a smaller number of beds.

It is a worrying time for all concerned.
 
Further reading:
https://nation.cymru/feature/owners-of-private-childrens-homes-fear-impact-of-plans-to-eliminate-profit-from-sector-in-wales/
 
https://www.icha.org.uk/Public/Document/Download/2257?fileName=97ab9545-c790-4945-8710-833deb74ba92.pdf
 
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62287a3a8fa8f526dba3430a/Wales_summary.pdf
 
https://www.gov.wales/removing-profit-care-children-looked-after-board-discussion-july-2024-html

I’ve been a loyal customer of my bank for several years. At least, until this month. I closed my savings account and transferred the money to my ISA. I transferred my credit card balance to another company to take advantage of a 0% offer. Probably thousands of pounds’ worth of business, gone with just a few clicks. 
I doubt anyone noticed. Certainly, nobody cared. 
Rewind a few decades and I would no doubt have had to visit a physical building and speak to a person behind a counter. That person would probably have asked me if there was anything they could have done to change my mind, and maybe even have called the manager over. They would have asked why I’m moving my account, and they may even have been able to offer an incentive to convince me to stay. The scale of banking makes this sort of customer care impossible. 
Twenty years ago I started my career in care. One of the motivations for leaving teaching for the care profession was the fact that teaching was starting to feel like a conveyor belt of coaching children to pass SATs, regardless of the actual value of those abstract assessments. As a carer I got to know the young people I was working with in a much more holistic manner. Partly because I was no longer working under the label of ‘teacher’, but mainly because I was working usually on a 1:1 basis. Later, when I found myself as a senior RSW, deputy manager, and then manager, I maintained that close knowledge of the young people and staff. It is an essential part of any caring role. 
So where does that leave me as a senior manager? Currently I oversee ten beds over five sites across south and mid Wales, with responsibilities that extend far beyond those of a home manager or project manager. This year, if all goes to plan, there will be another site with another two beds as well as work on a multi-million-pound multi-site project in West Wales. All of this will pull me further away from ‘front-line’ work. So how do I ensure the company doesn’t become just another gigantic, faceless corporation leaning more to the ‘industry’ side of the ‘care industry’? Having briefly worked, for one of those companies where you are just a column on the payroll and there are no people to care for, just beds to be filled, I am determined to do all I can to stop even the suggestion that we will head in that direction. 
This is the sort of thing that really does start with the senior management team’s actions. Not their words – anyone can write a mission statement putting the needs of clients/service users at the heart of the service. This is a lovely marketing tool, but to really care at scale you need substance and integrity. Caring at scale can’t be done by the MD, the CEO, or even the Director of Services. Our job is to create the culture in which care is central, and every decision we make sends a message across the company and beyond about how serious we are in that intent. Do we invest in our staff? Do we ensure the homes we offer are places we’d want to liv in ourselves? Do we regard minimum standards, legislation and guidance as things we want to exceed, or simply meet in order to save the extra expense? Do we hire manager, team leaders, and carers who live these values, or do we look at interviews for people who can manage a spreadsheet and find every last penny of efficiency, no matter the real expense? Do our people understand the cost of everything, or the value? 
It is easy to get swept up in the profit and loss statements, the cash flow predictions, the spreadsheets, and the language of management and finance. This is especially true when your chosen role takes you away from the day-to-day lives of the people in your care. What’s so important at a senior management level is to remember why we do this, and ensure we employ people who carry our values – but then support them do work in a manner that supports this. ​

It’s been a while since my last update. A long while, in fact – this will be my fist website update since September 2023. The reason? 
Life. 
Mid-September I decided to step away from the website for a while. Many of my hobbies (writing fiction; playing guitar: recording with GarageBand; building guitars and tinkering with effects pedals; even going to the gym) had taken a back seat to other commitments. 
Work exploded. We lost a manager, necessitating my taking over his project. I have certainly had to put my change management chops to the test, with my initial QA audit finding improvements I needed to make in every area. It’s added an extra eight hours’ driving a week to my schedule. This has been in addition to my regular duties as a director. In situations like this, there is a choice between complaining about the workload, or seeking and growing from the learning opportunities on offer. I have to say that these additional responsibilities have reminded me of all that I’ve missed about frontline management (as well as all the things I haven’t!). We’ve also had a change in senior management, offering further opportunities to learn, grow, and contribute. 
Then there was the diabetes diagnosis, which has necessitated more planning in how and what I prepare and eat, especially on the days I’m travelling two hours two and from work. 
My progress through my level seven senior leadership qualification continues unabated, and already it’s time to start thinking about my end point assessment, essentially a business proposal containing the most important elements of the previous eighteen months’ learning. It’s not due until September, but the prep starts now. 
Our chair of governors (I’m the safeguarding governor for a local primary school) left, leaving his position vacant. I’d been on the board of governors for several months and found the whole process a little disjointed. I thought that being chair would be a bit more involved. Let’s say my habit of understating things like that is at least consistent. 
I’m also contending with the worst landlord I’ve ever rented from – a bar so low only professional limbo dancers need apply. The amount of time and effort needed to get emails acknowledged, let alone anything significant done through them is unreal. 
All of which has meant I’ve not been able to keep up to date with my blog and book reviews. 
It also means I’ve had to rethink my approach to organising myself and my commitments. 
At one point I was managing two Outlook accounts for work, on the work laptop; my personal Gmail account, together with a mish-mash of Dropbox, Evernote and OneDrive on my personal Macbook; my personal google calendar on my phone; my governor’s Onedrive/Outlook account; and whichever notebook I happened to have on me at any given time. Not only was this an atrocious way of collating and organising information, it also meant I was trying to juggle various commitments at any given time – writing a work email that reminded me of something I needed to notify the head of, jumping from online diary to online diary to see where I could fit an online meeting; and generally feeling pulled in a dozen different directions at once. 
FYI, there’s no such thing as multitasking. It’s a lie. The human brain can’t do it. You can’t engage in a book and a film at the same time. You can’t do deep-focus writing whilst really listening to music. You can’t (insert any activity of choice here) and drive at the same time. 
So I took back control, in a way far more successful than Brexit will ever be. It started with the realisation that I didn’t have a time management problem - I had a focus and concentration management problem. Whatever I was doing, there was always something else I could be doing, new tasks and ideas appearing out of nowhere, or the feeling I should be doing something else. Damn, did I remember to check all my diaries after agreeing to that meeting? And who’s emailing me now the middle of writing this email? 
Firstly, I took the luddite approach of ditching all the online calendars. Well, not entirely. I still accept Teams and Zoom calls via email invites. But I purchased a week-to-view diary insert for my trusty old Filofax (and I mean, really old: a bargain-bin impulse buy from Llanelli Tesco back when I was still in uni, so about 2002 at the latest). All my appointments for work, governing, my level seven and my personal life are written in there. Now I have only one place to look when someone says, “Tuesday’s no good for me so can we do Wednesday”. And then decides that, actually, the cat’s pedicure was Wednesday, sorry, can we do Tuesday after all? [pro tip: use a lot of pencil for appointments]. That step alone really streamlined the process. 
Then I bought a lot of paper inserts and dividers for the Filofax. This allows me to keep a running to-do list/weekly planner with me at all times. I generally outline this on a Friday or Sunday evening, and add to it through the week. This is used to remind me to chase up emails, make calls, etc. It’s not a planner for larger tasks. This means I generally complete all the tasks by Friday, and can put it in the bin at the end of the week. It’s surprising how effective this is for a sense of achievement. I own a few Lamy Safari pens in different colours, and tend to use blue for work, red for governance, and green for my L7 and personal tasks. This sheet is one of several paper-clipped together; the others consist of ongoing project notes that I need to keep handy. For example, we are currently looking at how to improve our induction and onboarding process. We have had a few online meetings about this, as well as a number of emails. I keep these notes handy whilst this is something that’s still ongoing. When I drop by the project I’m managing I usually have a few specific things I need to achieve (I’m only there twice a week at most), so I keep notes on the most important things I need to do. These systems keep me focused on the task at hand whilst also giving me a space to ‘dump’ whatever ideas or non-urgent tasks that come to mind. I don’t have to deal with every email as it arrives, nor start a task before I forget [another pro tip: turn off email notifications, and schedule regular times throughout the day to deal with emails. If it’s urgent, they’ll phone. If it’s not, then it’s a distraction from whatever you should be focussing on right now]. 
The dividers are the plastic type, with sticky labels to identify the topic. These are a fluid element of my organisation. For example, we have to upcoming projects, one in Cardiff and one in West Wales, so each of these gets a section. As we get closer to realising the projects these notes will not be enough, and so I will relabel the sections for whatever is relevant at the time. 
Finally, I was bought for Xmas a Traveller’s Company leather notebook cover and inserts. At the moment it has three notebooks inside. One I use for general notes and ideas (fiction ideas, character/plot/short story outlines, ideas for guitar projects, films and music I want to check out, and the like). Five minutes on YouTube will show you what a rabbit-hole journalling with the Traveller’s Company notebook can be – thankfully I’ve no interest in that, and am content to use it simply as a notebook. I may even take out the two additional inserts and keep one in at a time. 
I’ve found this method makes it much easier to keep track of and prioritise tasks. It also helps me maintain focus on one thing at a time. 
If you have any productivity tips or ideas, let me know. ​

“Show me a completely smooth operation and I’ll show you someone who’s covering mistakes. Real boats rock.”
If you’ve been following my book reviews you’ll know I recently worked through the original three Dune audiobooks. I’m currently re-reading the original Dune and listening to ChapterHouse Dune, the sixth of the original series and final one to be written by Frank Herbert.
The above quote is from ChapterHouse Dune. Whilst the last three of the original six (God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and ChapterHouse Dune) don’t have the same philosophical depth as the first three, they do a good job of describing the fallout from the philosophies explored in those books. Even so, this quote leapt out at me when I heard it- so much so that I had to pull the car into a lay-by, skip back, and bookmark it. It’s rare that a fiction book can so effectively summarise elements of politics, religion and philosophy through seemingly throwaway lines rather than deep observations, but Frank Herbert does this with alarming frequency. I wish I’d met him.
The above quote does the same thing for management.
Those of you also involved in quality assurance management will hopefully understand the vastly different outcomes an unannounced visit can result in, as compared to a planned and announced visit.
Unannounced visits have their place. You may get a more realistic and nuanced picture. Staff will be less prepared for your arrival, and therefore have less opportunity to plan for their conversations with you - meaning they will be less prepared to divert the conversation into more comfortable areas. This also means that they may be less likely to have relevant information to hand, should you want to take a ‘deep dove’ into a specific topic. You also risk arriving at time when people are simply too busy to give you the time you need to get done what you need to do. Different industries will have their specific risks also, with regard ti unannounced visits. Working in the care sector, you may find that you’ve arrived to interrupt an important meeting, an activity, or they may simply all be out. There is the risk also that you could arrive mid-incident, or that your presence precipitates one. A rarity, but still a risk.
With a planned visit you can ensure (as much as is possible) that everyone will be aware you are visiting, and prepared accordingly. They may have the relevant information to hand, and you can ensure your visit does not clash with any other arrangements. In care, the residents can be prepared also. You may find that they re more engaging and revealing as a result of having time to prepare for your visit. I’ve certainly found that children with attachment difficulties and people with certain learning differences such as autism much prefer to have time to prepare for your visit. If there are issues that need addressing, staff may have time to think about what those issues are and how they can be resolved, instead of being unprepared for the conversation. On the flip side, knowing you will be arriving may result in a team more interested in pleasing you and ‘achieving’ a positive report, rather than presenting you with an honest view of how things are going (“The boss is coming! Look busy!”).
Ultimately, a blended approach of announced and unannounced QA visits is likely to produce the best data. QA visits will only ever produce a snapshot of how things are going, at any rate; it’s the contribution QA visits make to all the other management tools that is important, along with how you use the information you glean. There are those who argue that unannounced visits are unfair, or that they are a means of trying to catch staff out. That to me speaks of a failing of the workplace culture, not an inherent flaw in quality assurance visits.
Real boats rock. It’s the job of quality assurance to find out how, when, why, and feedback to the crew.

I was talking with a colleague last week about talent management. Specifically, we were talking about how difficult both recruitment and retention can be in the sector. The company we were discussing had, at the time, a terrible reputation for its retention record. People left to seek promotion and training elsewhere at an alarming rate; the company seemingly had no interest in investing in its staff, preferring to write them of and replace them if they showed ambition.
At least, that was the impression we had of the company. When we discussed where various ex-employees had gone, it was apparent that this wasn’t entirely true. For a start, many people left to pursue entirely different career paths. This isn’t uncommon on the industry. Care, particularly residential childcare, can be mentally, emotionally, and physically gruelling at times. Some people find they do not have the resilience needed to make it through those times. This is not a criticism; all of us are more suited to certain roles than others. When one factors in burnout, it’s apparent that many people leave the care industry altogether when they leave a company, whether permanently or not.
Then there are the people who leave because of personal circumstances. Perhaps the shift pattern no longer suits their lifestyle, they leave for family reasons, or they move out of the area. This is a relatively small proportion of leavers. Similarly there are those who leave due to being dismissed or not passing their probation – again, a small proportion.
So what of those who don’t fall into the above categories? Many people leave out of a vague dissatisfaction with the company, often framed as “I need a change”, only to go and work for a competitor.
When we talk of talent management we tend to focus on those who are intent on career progression. This is only natural; in the same way that Hollywood creators characterise 9-5 work (and, by extension, 9-5 workers) as boring and uncreative, as mangers we have worked hard to get where we are, and our subconscious biases may mean that we judge other’s progress by our own perspectives (“Why wouldn’t you want to work your way up”). I know that personal and professional development are incredibly important to me; and for the longest time I had a very linear perception of what ‘professional progress’ meant: learn all you can in your present role, and get promoted before your job gets stale.
But there are those who have no desire to progress in such a way. They do not want the pressure and responsibility of a management position, or they do not want a role that takes them away from working with children. These people frequently get overlooked when it comes to talent management; yet they need to be as proactively managed as aspiring future managers.
The first step in doing so is to get to know them. Not just as RSWs or Senior RSWs, but as people. What motivates them? What inspires them to do the job? How do they see it or their role evolving? What skills do they have that they are not using right now?
Secondly, it’s important to understand what stage of their career are they at. Perhaps they were previously set on a management role but have since wavered. Why? What are their priorities right now?
With a solid understanding of the person you're working with, you can begin to look at opportunities to help them grow in their role and without any expectation of promotion. They may wish to take on extra responsibilities within their existing role; mentor other staff; promote the company at external networking events; take on a training role; transition to another role at the same ‘level’, even on a temporary basis; or learn new skills that can be brought back to the team. On occasion, you may find that they do not want to take on any extra responsibilities. They may be content for you to be aware that, at this particular moment, they are happy to focus on their job. Such lateral progression is often overlooked, but can provide variety, stimulation and development without what we would traditionally regard as 'progression'. You get a more settled staff member with increased skills and knowledge who will likely remain loyal to the team; and they get some much-needed variety.
Conversations like this are not effective if you regard them as a single event. These are the sort of discussion you should be having frequently. As noted above, people's circumstances change. Someone who is at the moment happy to focus only on the job at hand may have chosen to do so because home circumstances mean they cannot honestly commit to extra responsibilities. As soon as those circumstances change, their desire to progress may also change. If you are unaware of this you may soon find yourself recruiting for a vacancy.
Just because a person isn't clamouring for promotion does not mean they are happy to be ignored; you ignore them at your peril. 

In my most recent blog post I discussed that we receive many form of feedback, and that not all feedback is created equal.
In this post I want to talk about how we receive feedback, rather than choosing the type of feedback we seek and respond to.
When I talk about how to receive feedback in this instance, I’m not talking about listening skills per se, though they are vital. Rather, I’m referring to your frame of mind when receiving the feedback.
Receiving feedback can (and, sometimes, should) be difficult and challenging. This can even be true of positive feedback, for example if you are being praised for a job you’re not particularly proud of or if you feel co-contributors aren’t getting the recognition they deserve; or if you are naturally shy, unassuming, or struggle with self-esteem. I’m sure many of you reading this have been recognised for a job well-done whilst simultaneously suffering imposter syndrome.
Receiving negative feedback brings a different set of challenges. You may feel the feedback is unfair or unwarranted. You may, rightly or wrongly, construe it as more a personal attack than a form of professional support.
The first and most important thing to recognise is that you can’t control the feedback you receive, who you receive it from or, often, when you are going to receive it.
What you can control is how you ‘show up’ to the conversation.
When receiving feedback, I am focused on two things. My core values, and my emotional reaction.
Years of dealing with distressed behaviours in the young people in my care has given me the ability to give them the space they need to work through their emotions before making any attempt to support or guide them. I take this same, almost stoic, approach to receiving feedback. I let the other person say what they need to before I respond. Let them get it out of their system. This not only lets them feel heard, it also gives me the time and space I need to formulate my considered response.
This is especially important if the feedback is emotionally charged or if I feel it challenges one of my core values. If I feel my integrity or focus on positive outcomes for young people is being challenged, I feel threatened and want to correct the other person immediately. Just as a dysregulated adult cannot help a dysregulated child, meeting such emotional ‘attacks’ with an emotional response will only result in an argument. Once I have processed what is being said I can respond in a much calmer fashion.
An example of this is the strain that sometimes occurs between balancing the cost of good care vs the need for a company to make profit. Wherever possible I unapologetically put the needs of the people in my care first. Were I to receive feedback that I should be focused on profit first, this would be an attack on my values.
Responding immediately and emotionally to this would result in a fruitless argument. Instead, it’s best to consider how the feedback can enable me to lean in to my values. Could I have achieved the same outcome in a more cost-effective manner? Could I have delayed my actions until an opportunity to meet both demands arose?
If the feedback doesn’t enable you to lean in to your values in any way, you may be at an impasse. You may need to take a close look at your relationship with the other person. What’s more important to you, your values or your relationship with them? If the answer is your relationship, then perhaps it’s time to reassess what your values actually are. Values are the behaviours and choices you live, not those you profess to have. If the answer is your values, then you need to reconsider the relationship.
Whatever your response, it will be more meaningful and effective if you give yourself the space to process and reflect on what’s been said and why.
​

As some of you may know, I am currently studying for my level seven qualification in senior leadership and management. Today’s coaching session was to look over the work I had submitted for my most recent unit, ‘developing business strategies’, and to look at what I can expect for the next unit, ‘strategic resource management’. As ever, we strayed from the topic during the course of our conversation, and ended up discussing team development.


By now almost all of us are familiar with Tuckman’s four stages of group development - ‘forming’, ‘storming’, norming’, performing’, with ‘adjourning’ being added to a later revision of his theory.
Soon I began to reflect on two things: my experiences managing what was an established team with a few significant new members before, during and after lockdown with my previous employers; and my experience post-pandemic of joining a largely reconstituted team last summer, with a hybrid working style. In the former I was the manager of the team concerned, whereas latterly I have been a member of the SMT.


The experiences of these two situations differ greatly from my previous experiences in building and managing teams, where I was doing so face-to-face.


What I found is that Tuckman's model is still relevant in the age of remote working. In fact, it may be even more important in this context, as remote teams face unique challenges that can make it difficult to progress through the stages of team development. For example, remote teams may struggle with communication, trust, and collaboration, which are all critical components of team development.


In the forming stage, team members are getting to know each other and figuring out their roles and responsibilities. In a remote context, this can be challenging because team members may not have the opportunity to meet face-to-face, which can make it harder to build relationships and establish trust. With my previous employers, where I was the home manager, the staff team were still going in to theme to complete their shifts, whereas I was managing remotely. I found I had to rely on the induction process to do a lot of the heavy lifting in this area. My contribution was to take on as much of the administrative work as possible, allowing the team to build form their relationships with each other and the children. Not that I was entirely passive in this. I still established clear goals and expectations for the team. This helped team members understand what they were working towards and stay focused on the task at hand. Remote work can make it difficult for team members to get to know each other and establish relationships, which can slow down the forming stage. I had established good relationships with the majority of the residential team, which helped. In my current role I was the newest addition to the SMT, some of which was well-established and some of which wasn’t. This was a different dynamic for me, and even now we are still occasionally ironing out our roles and responsibilities as the company grows. As I work across Wales and our head office is in England, I do not get to spend as much time face-to-face with the Telford team as I’d like - especially those team members who aren’t part of the SMT. The second consideration in the ‘forming’ stage when hybrid working is how best to encourage open communication and collaboration. This can help team members build relationships and establish trust, which is critical for effective teamwork. There is a growing reliance on Teams, WhatsApp, Zoom, text messages, Basecamp, etc in this area; and whilst electronic communication is fast and accessible, what it lacks is depth. It’s difficult to read body language via text or Teams, especially with glitchy virtual backgrounds. Despite this, Teams/Zoom was essential in my previous role for ensuring I could spend 1:1 time with each member of staff for catch-ups, supervisions, and the like. I also found it useful for team meetings, in which I could reiterate my expectations regarding practice, communication and collaboration. It wasn’t as effective as being there in person; but it was harder for people to miss those meetings since they could join form home if they weren’t on shift that day. In fact, I recall several people joining meeting whilst isolating as they missed that social interaction. In my current role we (the SMT) do spend time with each other when we can, and electronic communication can be used to supplement this. Text messages and emails can be taken out of context, but when you know the person well who has written to you, this is harder to do.


In the storming stage, team members may experience conflict as they work through differences in opinion and approach. In a remote context, this can be exacerbated by communication challenges and the lack of nonverbal cues, as described above. Communication challenges in remote work can exacerbate conflicts and make it harder for team members to work through differences in opinion and approach. Wherever I detected or suspected this in my previous role, I would always contact one or both of the people involved separately, to act as a mediator, identifying and remedying misunderstandings.


In the norming stage, team members begin to work together more effectively and establish norms and expectations. In a remote context, this can be challenging because team members may have different working styles and preferences. Frequent team meetings when managing the home remotely were extremely helpful in this, as was a string company culture. I found that I had to be a lot clearer in my explanations of how I wanted the staff to work, since I couldn’t be there to role model my expectations. What I have noticed in my current role is that expectations can be greatly affected by the professional backgrounds of the different members of the SMT. Some of us have a care background, some NHS, some property.


Finally, in the performing stage, the team is working together effectively and achieving its goals. Remote work can make it difficult to coordinate and collaborate effectively, which can impact the performing stage. This can be especially true in teams that have a rapid turnover. Thankfully this was not a hurdle I had to consider during the time of lockdown, though once those restrictions were lifted we saw several staff members leave for other sectors (such as to return to outdoors education or the hospitality industry). In both that role and my current hybrid working patter, the importance of frequent and clear communication cannot be overstated. As a home manager it was essential to provide feedback and support to my staff to help them understand how they were performing and identify areas for improvement. As part of the SMT the considerations are more about ensuring we know what to expect of each other and holding each other to account.


Both working remotely during lockdown and my current hybrid pattern of work have served to deepen and broaden my appreciation for Tuckman’s theory. I have had to reconsider my approach to team building and managing as a result of both styles of working. Perhaps in the future I will end up in a role that is almost 100% office-based; it will be interesting to see how I rework my understanding of this theory as a result of that change.