MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Managing action - leadership
I very much took the attitude right from the start that there was
no way I would even have accepted the job or done it without
knowing that I could turn to them the support and help, which I
did. They came up with many other suggestions and ideas
about how we took things forward and I adapted them and
implemented them and put my own staff in as well. It was very
much a team and we used to have regular team get togethers
even though we were not in the same place, we would have
regular get togethers and plan for the national committee
meetings and so on together. It was very much a team -- I could
not have done it the other way because their experience was
vital. (Interviewee H)
There are a number of roles. One is to get a team working
together, which is difficult because they are operating in different
areas and whatever and there are huge pressures on us to
deliver communications generally. But to get a team working.
There was not a team working environment here before.
Everybody was in their little slots and they went home when they
had finished their work, and that sort of stuff. There wasn't any
shared responsibility. So we've been developing that
(Interviewee D)
This is one area where some of the cynicism reported earlier is not
evident and where managers seem to be comfortable with ideas of
working in teams and even, as quoted above, ‘celebrating’ the team.
Managing Action
7.15. We have seen that trade union managers are seen publicly as trade
union ‘leaders’ and there is a debate about the extent to which they
should be seen to be ‘doing’ – managing action – as well as leading.
So the distinction between leadership and management becomes a
relevant issue. The Joint General Secretary offers a summary of the
essential attributes of trade union leadership:-
I believe we can therefore summarise the key issues for the
leadership of modern trade unions as being innovation,
communication and motivation. (Brief for UNiFI fringe meeting at
TUC, Glasgow, September 2000)
Having reached this clarity, the Joint General Secretary uses the word
in interview in what seems to be a rather different way in distinguishing
between ‘leading’ and ‘doing’:-
But I could not let him be the lead officer because he is not a
leader. He is very much a doer and a very competent, excellent
doer. I also wanted to make sure that in the union, in the
merged union, that we had a senior woman in an industrial
position so G was the obvious person to do it. So that little
cameo of change had to be thought through
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