MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Managing action - leadership
To try to get them to open up and talk and to be positive about
the merger and working in the team. So it was giving them the
time. Certainly I worked on the basis that they would suggest
how they wanted to work and that in a way was how it
happened. So, for example, when they came together after a
year, when they came together to work they had been used to
working in certain offices. And it was asking them "how do you
want to work." (Interviewee O)
In the end, the key was to make team meetings important
because of getting information that they would not get otherwise.
One other thing I did was to say that I will tell you what I know
and I will be open and honest with you and if it is confidential, I
will still tell you but you have to respect that confidentiality. And
the first time you don't I will stop telling you. And we decided that
we might as well have a gossip at the team meetings, which is
often much more fun anyway. So you will hear the gossip and
hear the information. And the attendance has got better.
(Interviewee B)
Team meetings were seen in this case as an important part of
managerial communication, something which, it was suggested earlier,
had not been effective throughout the union.
The language of teams was used positively and easily by managers in
PCS, both in formal and informal ways. At senior level, the lack of an
adequate strategic team, no doubt for reasons rehearsed earlier, was
something to be regretted, even if there was criticism of some team
meetings for poor management and lack of relevance:-
There is again the pretence of teams and structures. We get
together with H. There are eight of us. And the meetings are
appalling. There is no benefit. We get nothing out of it. I do not
come away with a list of things to do. There has been no
discussion about projects. It is the political nature of the
managers and with how H operates. He actually operates on a
one-to-one basis but does the team meeting thing. All the real
work is in a one-to-one with H where he sets out his ideas and
your views and we discuss them and that works find. But then
there are these team meetings that go on all day - the Head
Office management team. (Interviewee F)
Managing action
6.16. In PCS, as in many parts of many organisations and particularly in
trade unions, there are debates about the difference between
leadership and management (in Mintzberg’s (1994) terms between
‘controlling’ and ‘doing’. At the highest level, this can be seen as
ensuring that the union reflects some of his objectives:-
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