Working with Others

A set of learning exercises for leaders and managers.

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Consider your working relationships. How well do you motivate, engage and empower your team? How effective are your communication skills? Where and when do you demonstrate accountability and active listening in your work with others? 

Take a look at the following elements and exercises and build your skills and confidence in these areas. 

 

In most work settings, the quality of relationships has a huge impact on how well work gets done or how quickly decisions are made. Effective relationships are based on mutual respect, trust, clarity of roles and consistent expectations of what needs to be done and how people behave, along with effective communications. Managers need to consider how to nurture relationships, where to put their energy and also pay attention to the relationships within the team.

Please now complete one or two activities to further develop your skills and confidence and find ideas for reflecting on and building your practice in the selected area.

  • Relationships at work - What's really going on! - Exercise A
  • Trust - A three-legged stool - Exercise B

Developing your team means identifying current areas for development and new areas for development related to new team goals and plans, and working with your team members to identify opportunities to learn and develop on the job (and if appropriate from formal training). People that continue to learn are more likely to retain a flexibility of thinking which fosters innovation. Knowing what motivates each team member will help ensure they are able to deliver their best. A team that feels supported is more resilient and more likely to support each other.

Please now complete one or two activities to further develop your skills and confidence and find ideas for reflecting on and building your practice in the selected area.

  • Motivation and support - Giving informal feedback - Exercise A
  • Personal development planning - Exercise B

Managers need to ensure that planning and decision-making processes are clear and transparent, and that wherever possible all staff impacted are kept in the loop. Managers need to put in place structures to facilitate openness and ensure diverse voices can be heard, and need to demonstrate that this is valued.

Please now complete one or two activities to further develop your skills and confidence and find ideas for reflecting on and building your practice in the selected area.

Feedback is a useful source of information and different perspectives mean different ideas are available to you. Do you consistently ask for and act on feedback, whilst managing your own sensitivities? Do you ensure a range of opportunities for colleagues to contribute to planning and decision making, and acknowledge contributions?

Please now complete one or two activities to further develop your skills and confidence and find ideas for reflecting on and building your practice in the selected area.

  • Facilitating a feedback culture - Exercise A
  • How to obtain, receive and make use of feedback - Exercise B

Empowering is creating the conditions for another to be successful, often a complex mix of support, learning and letting go, it starts from a position of respect and valuing others, and recognises that each individual will bring different strengths and require different conditions.

Please now complete one or two activities to further develop your skills and confidence and find ideas for reflecting on and building your practice in the selected area.

Managers need to acknowledge their own role when things go wrong and be ready and open to learn and change; they need to model this to their team. Managers need to pay attention to developing a no-blame culture, so that the focus when things go wrong, is not about who was at fault, but about learning from experience so that the same thing doesn’t happen again. This develops a team who are confident to be honest if something has gone wrong and to explore options and identify learning. Accountability can help a team to hold continuous improvement at its heart.

Please now complete one or two activities to further develop your skills and confidence and find ideas for reflecting on and building your practice in the selected area.

After completing an exercise use this reflection exercise to enhance your learning. You may wish to complete this straight away, or at a later point after you have tried out new approaches etc.

Self Diagnostic Tool

To help identify priority areas for development download the diagnostic tool 

DOWNLOAD

Contact us

If you have any feedback or questions about the toolkit please email us at pod@admin.ox.ac.uk.

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