Managing and Leading Teams in Offender Services a Reflective Paper
Introduction
As part of the foundation degree in offender management a team project was participated in by the author of this paper titled Managing & Leading Teams in Offender Services aimed at giving a 20 minute presentation on the title as a team.
There was a requirement then to produce a reflective paper on the part played by the author showing an understanding of managing teams, identifying key factors in team building, and discussing potential for conflict in a team and strategies to resolve them.
How the author currently employs an approach to leadership in the work environment
It is the author’s belief that at present he employs a rather rigid military style leadership model in his working environment, consisting of dictatorial decision making but showing some flexibility by allowing his team to take some responsibilities and decisions under close guidance from himself.
This is in part due to a military background and a lack of any other real training in the past, on how to be a team leader and how to manage a team outside a military environment.
Incompetence is not tolerated and all the team under the author’s supervision are expected to show they are able confident and reach the standard he requires, any short falls are dealt with swiftly.
Outside agencies or departments are expected to comply with the goal of the author and anyone failing to meet that requirement is excluded from the team and its goals.
There are only shades of black and white grey shades are dismissed as irrelevant and treated with contempt as a distraction to the ultimate goal and success of the team, interdepartmental co-operation is not encouraged at times a costly strategy.
I would describe the author’s style as effective to goal orientated objectives but with a lot of collateral damage.
The authors approach to team working
The authors approach to team working has until now been very rigid as he has always placed himself in a position where he is in control of a team or the team. Little effort has ever been made to engage with other departments or staff and as long as the author’s team is performing there has been little interest in anyone else’s goals.
Conflict has always been dealt with autonomously and on several occasions this has in itself fed the conflict.
Working in a team whose goal was a singular objective where the author was not in control was unusual for him and required an approach not before employed.
There was a requirement to understand a different approach to what was a team objective, and allowing other personalities to blossom having far greater input than would normally be tolerated from other team members.
The team needed to grow and be allowed to do that which is something that took time, each member of the team needed to be allowed to show skills to the rest of the team and space for progression was needed, a slightly slower pace than the author enjoyed was employed and tolerated.
The authors approach to team working here had to be reviewed and reflected upon before any progress could be made; this caused a temporal issue for the author as control had been lost of the situation and its boundaries a difficult situation to work in.
The author has always taken the approach previously that if the team was achieving then everything else was falling into place.
The author’s contribution to the group presentation
During this project our team took the decision to go away and think about what we wanted to do and how we thought we could achieve it from an individual point of view.
From this we agreed to meet and during that initial meeting the work was divided up between us evenly once the team had decided what to use as a case study.
As part of the author’s contribution much research was undertaken into the cause and effect of the case study how it had been improved upon and how effective the improvements had been, this entailed as expected several hours of research time and writing.
During the project the author felt his contribution was also as the team coordinator and go between, this was noted early in the group when there was some conflict into what should be used as the case study.
Strategies were employed to resolve the conflict by taking an impartial view of what was to be best for the team and not basing a decision on previous allegiances to any one group or person.
The author kept in contact with the other members of the team by email and by landlines both at work and at home to both check on the groups progress and to allow other members of the group feel supported at all times every effort was made by the author to avoid favouritism within the group whilst maintaining an impartial perception from the rest of the group.
Once this was achieved and the feeling of unity was felt within the group, the author did everything in his power to maintain that atmosphere to allow the group as a whole to continue with its goal to the best of their ability. The team performance during the assessment
The teams performance during the assessment was actually found to be really good, there were many lessons learned for everyone in both team working and individualism within a team.
The common goal was the main priority however each member of the team seemed to want to show to the other members of the team, that their contribution was as important as everyone’s else’s.
This cohesive approach was refreshing for all of the team and made the whole experience more enjoyable for all concerned, the group dynamic was interesting and played an important role related to the team’s performance.
Each member of the team brought something fresh to the table with a different outlook and pace, there were however something’s the team thought could be done differently to improve what was achieved and how it was done.
For example an earlier reduction in silo thinking would have helped us get on to a faster start, some of the team tried to take on too much of the work load early on which slowed down progress and almost became a point of conflict within the team.
Another point the team felt would have helped was to utilise the individual skills on a singular basis, at times every member of the team tried to have input into lots of pieces of the puzzle instead of realising they had a skill that others didn’t and that they should be allowed to just get on with it.
Interestingly enough it was the most junior member of the team that seemed to take on much of the decision making, and the team as a whole seemed to accept this with no formal agreement or complaint with no real objection.
Conclusion
The title to this paragraph is in fact compliant with a normal essay and in this case the author feels it should really be headed as reflections on achievements and learning.
There is much in life we are able to say we would do differently but all too often little is done to get that accomplished, the author feels here however that this was done in a short period of time with the information being absorbed like a sponge with a feeling of longevity to it.
To work as an effective team there is much to take into consideration, differing personalities abilities, and goals, are all too often apparent and the skill for the team is to turn each one of these into a unilateral strength allowing progression free from negative conflict.
It should be noted that positive conflict within a group was found to be healthy provided it was presented in a thoughtful and constructive manner, this of course should took into account an equal opportunity for all the team to have a say allowing the team to build on the respect they brought to the table and maintain its cohesion.
Did the team enjoy what they achieved yes the author believes this to be the case would the team like to do this again yes the author believes they would, did the team achieve the goal to the best of their ability yes the author believes they did 100%.