Marshalling his troops - Pitchcare

spend more time doing it. The more you
do the more widespread will be your
legacy of good practice in
groundsmanship or greenkeeping.
On the days when you take someone to a
higher level, or stop someone doing
something wrong or dangerous, you are
‘changing’ the future for that person.
Indeed, it might be said that you are
changing the future - one person at a
time.
Mentoring
Let’s move on now to mentoring.
Speaking personally, I can only coach
people in my areas of experience and
expertise, e.g. management skills,
negotiating skills, presentation skills etc.
However, over the years, I seem to have
acquired more and more ‘mentoring’
clients, i.e. people working in the
turfcare sector who want the magic of
one-to-one learning sessions as well as,
or instead of, the classroom experience.
I am usually a mentor to groundsmen,
greenkeepers, club managers, stadium
managers etc., because I cannot really
coach them to perform their individual
calling. I am not on the premises, like
you might be, to coach them, to run
behind them or sit alongside the
individual who wants to cut the grass
better, sell more memberships or inspire
a group of disgruntled people at a
meeting.
What you and I can do, in the mentoring
role, is listen carefully to the individual’s
concerns, and then bring a lot of good
experience into play in a discussion
about a problem that is really vexing an
benefits. One guy freely admitted he
would need to earn £550 per week in take
home pay (£700 gross) just to maintain
the standard of living he currently enjoys
courtesy of the benefits he receives.
Have we all gone stark staring bonkers
to pay these sort of payments that
encourage people not to work?
So, here come the cuts but, with the
benefits bill running out of control, where
is there room to cut?
We all know that local authorities have
certain legal requirements, pensions for
former employees, housing the homeless,
looking after the aged, poor, child
protection and social services etc. and
these cannot, and should not, be cut -
except where blatant inefficiencies can be
rooted out.
However, this means that the cuts will be
concentrated on discretionary spending,
which will disappear as the first thing to
lop off. I have been on site for several
local authorities recently and, without
exception, the grounds managers are
looking at widespread redundancies
amongst the ground staff, and they are
also looking to cut higher up backroom
staff.
I find it rather sad that many of the
parks staff, who have worked so hard to
return their charges to their former glory,
will now lose their jobs as the parks are
deprived of the funds needed to maintain
individual or his/her employer.
Problems and work situations I have
helped people tackle successfully,
through mentoring, include career issues
at junior and senior levels; dealing with
demanding people, performance issues
at junior and senior levels, and a wide
range of other thorny management
questions.
How is this done? Typically, the
mentoring I do is face-to-face at a
convenient location, or on the telephone
(in an emergency). I increasingly mentor
on-line with e-mail messages going back
and forth.
Results
Results seem to have all been positive to
date. This is, in no small part, down to
the honesty and realism that comes from
a one-to-one session. For example, an
irritated Golf Course Manager at a top
club, seeking a substantial pay rise
immediately, became more realistic,
following our telephone mentoring
session he was able to quickly secure an
close to the amount he was after - with
the increase spread over three years.
In recent times, I spent a day mentoring
a public school Head Groundsman who
had reading and writing difficulties of his
own. He confided that he would never
attend conventional management
training courses because of the
(continuing) pain and embarrassment he
had suffered since his school days.
However, one to one mentoring sessions,
that involved a lot of walking around his
sports pitches and talking about his job,
helped him to transform his
them.
Unfortunately, the next few years look
very black for all of us who work for local
authorities in areas such as leisure facility
provision and maintenance, that are
almost entirely funded by discretionary
spending
Once finished with cutting, the only
alternative is to raise yet more tax - VAT
up to 20% will further stoke fuel price
inflation that is already running at 25%
year on year.
It would seem that the business rate is
also to be used to plug some of the gap in
the local authority budgets. The latest rate
revaluation - the third in three years at my
workshop - now includes charges for the
number of car parking spaces available at
the workplace, and the extra fittings,
fixtures and/or systems that I have paid to
install in the unit.
I work out of a rented farm building
surrounded by at least two acres of
concrete hard standing. Should I declare
this area as available parking space or just
the three spaces immediately adjacent to
my unit? Of course, the farmer pays zero
for having all this available parking space,
simply because agriculture has exemptions
from almost all planning and rating
legislation.
How British Industry PLC is to drag
itself out of the recession when every
investment that improves the workplace,
performance, and his employer now
recommends mentoring wholeheartedly.
Again, in recent times, an outgoing
Turfcare Manager sent his replacement
(his deputy) for a series of half day
mentoring sessions. After each session,
workplace goals were set for the coming
week and the individual would then
report on his results at our next half day
session. The outgoing fellow was able to
monitor results, which exceeded
everyone’s expectations and, by using the
quieter half days, disruption to normal
working was minimised.
So, if you are looking to add even more
satisfaction to your role, then think about
mentoring as a way to boost the
performance and confidence of your
people. It is cost-effective use of your
time, and you can customise it to the
needs of the individual and the
requirements of your employer.
Good luck with changing the future - one
person at a time. In the second part of
this article, I will look at how you can
change the future by making
presentations to people - yes you,
speaking in public, standing up and
speaking up!
Frank Newberry has been helping people in the
turfcare sector to get better results for over
twenty years. If you are interested in doing
some coaching or mentoring and, if you think it
might help to speak to someone, you can
contact Frank by e-mail or by telephone via the
contact tab of his personal website which is
www.franknewberry.com
in my case up rated electrical and
compressed air supply, attracts extra
business rates, I do not know. I do know
that business rate payers have no votes,
are seen as cash rich, are easy targets and
can do nothing but furnish the relevant
information - penalty £100 just for being
late with the return - and pay whatever is
demanded. I now pay more rates for my
workshop than I do for my house, yet I
have to dispose of my own business waste
and I am actually present on site for less
than 100 days per year.
It is not only the local authority that is
on the make. I, like many hundreds of
others, have a radio in my workshop. Last
week I received a demand that I pay a
performing arts licence fee, one month in
advance, because I was playing music in
my workshop that could be heard by my
employees. It appears that my workshop is
now classified as a public space, despite
being over a kilometre from the nearest
public road, in the heart of a privately
owned farm and privately rented for the
sole use of Terrain Aeration Services, my
privately owned company! How this was
determined when I was the only person in
my unit and I own the only radio, I do not
know. So, now I have removed the radio
from my workshop and, instead, I simply
leave my vehicle radio playing loudly with
the window open!
Only in Great Britain!