MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Teams
life changing, fantastic -- I'm not rejecting the notion of outside
training. It can be good. But it is expensive when it is provided
by professional organisations -- indeed, when we have
professional trainers coming here. To meet the experience of
having somebody working with me a one-to-one has helped me
make a much bigger shift in terms of how I do things, how I feel.
…One of my values in all that I try to do, and my consultant is
helping me a lot with this, is about being authentically me. Not
wearing a shell, not posturing, owning when it is difficult, not
pretending that I have all the answers, not being defensive when
people are critical, not taking it personally when people get
angry, being a real human being, that sort of thing (Interviewee
G).
It is the case, however, that managers in PCS are having the
opportunities provided to undertake some training for their managerial
roles. In the event that there is now in place a training and development
strategy and that training and development needs are identified as part
of a development reviewing scheme – or even an appraisal scheme if
the objective of the 2002 seminar has been picked up, then it would be
interesting to look again not only at the development of managers’ skills
but also at the extent to which, if at all, these have impacted on the
experiences of their staff.
Teams
At various times in this case study, managers have used the language
of teams. It has been suggested elsewhere that in some areas of the
trade union movement, the idea of teams is counter cultural. One
manager implied that this could have been the case in some areas:-
We set up the structure of team meetings which was unknown in
the CPSA. We always had team meetings but people from the
ex CPSA were very agnostic towards the whole question of
team meetings. But I had to be fairly firm, particularly with the
officers, in making it clear to them that they were required to
attend team meetings, because they saw them as something
they could opt out of. I told them that they had to be there.
Actually that helped people then to realise that they were having
a discussion amongst each other. We also, in order to help the
process, set up a team building event which the Industrial
Society ran for us. It was in a hotel so it took people away from
the office for two days, all of us, and stayed there and that
worked very well. People came back from that even better in
the team then when they went there. (Interviewee M)
Furthermore, senior managers do not seem to have operated
coherently as a team:-
It doesn’t work particularly well as a team. We’re not particularly
joined up at present. We tried to instigate a series of fortnightly
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