Staff development day 13 October

Today was a staff development day. How could you dread such a thing when the walk there was so glorious. Always good to have a positive approach. Did this thing which facilitator called a Road map - which didn't make sense to me, but what we did was create a picture of our journey for the last year - which once they got started was OK, apart from the whole drawing thing - not so good on the pictures not words side yet. I think it was meant as a bonding exercise - I managed to get ridiculed for one piece of imagery, and 4 people managed to avoid doing much contributing. I forced one to do a bit at the end but I think the facilitators should have done a bit more prodding.

We did a SWOT on the organisation. I like that - SWOTs are so often navel gazing tools that this was good. I notice the list on a lot of peoples paper for S was a bit short... Shame, but hey that'll be why we need today! I think that is a weakness that was missed - too many people are unwilling to spend time on praising what is good. Gives more grist to AA and my plan for "Positive Wednesdays in the Admin office" We didn't get to the O and T as the rest of the day was spent looking at the W and how we could address them.
All our Ws were listed, then we all had a shot at prioritising them. The understanding of others roles came out as the one most in need of addressing (not, surprisingly, the whole thing that others called lack of communication but I still think is a lack of effective communication as we all do lots of attempts at communication). We all shared our perceptions of our own role, how others help, what could be improved, and how this could be done. I found my perception of some peoples roles was way off (I thought it was part of the tutor/organisers job to recruit students to the courses not everyone else's, she felt otherwise. This could explain a lot) this section also put a lie to the stuff from last nights case study where there had been an assumption that all extroverts were not reflectors because there was plenty indication this is not the case here. Must not forget that. Also I discovered that I need to not tell so much stuff to the boss - he does the "how can I fix this" response to what I say apparently where I have said most things in an information exchange kind of way. More venting of frustration here, less verbal expression of it may be the way forward, after all writing it down makes it as real as saying it for an Iola.

Finished with a 10 minute group work - each group had to say nice stuff about every other member of staff. Lets hope people take on board what was said. I don't think our staff absorb the complements as well as they should. I like being described as a "miracle worker" (not quite, but I try very hard), "always has time for you" (perhaps this explains my backlog, but it is the persona I have worked to have at work) and "highly organised" (there's room for improvement but I do my best). Tomorrow I will have to be assertive at JA and say "stats first newsletter 2nd" and try to start building on what we did today.