Strengthening the Team Relationships with Boots HR Shared Services
After a challenging and enjoyable project building a Customer Focused Culture with Boots HR Shared Services, I was approached by the Department Manager, Sandy Bradley, for an event to build the team. The team of 8 managers had changed 50% over the last 6 months due to; maternity; staff leaving; new staff joining and a freelance project manager made permanent.
Sandy had clear objectives for her team building event: spend quality time building relationships; understand we are a leadership team; believe team can work together to be the best HR Shared Services Centre; personal stretch; come away saying, ‘I learnt something new about myself and my colleagues today’
The team of Managers completed a preparation questionnaire’ Working at My Best’ and attended a 1 day Metaphors event. (held at a wonderful hotel, to add to the ‘treat’)
The first session, 5 Senses, produced an amazing start to the day. This exercise aims to highlight our diversity and how we communicate differently. Many of the Managers started to identify with each other by stating ‘that’s why you do that’ and ‘wow that is just so like me’.
The second session of the day involved exploring metaphors using clean language, and the team members drew their metaphor and shared their meaning to each other. This proved the greatest revelation of the day. As flowers and rockets were drawn and expanded upon, a change in the room dynamics commenced. People started to listen even more intently and identify with each other. Statements of support and praise were flowing around the group. An agreement that ‘we don’t take the time to listen to each other’ was quite unanimous. Sandy herself very quickly identified that her metaphor,(a river, always knowing where it was going), was actually leaving her team not knowing where she was going! She stated openly and clearly that she needed to communicate her plans from her head, to her team. A new team member described her metaphor as ‘the conductor of an orchestra’ with such passion, that Sandy quickly realised the importance of challenge and personal goals for this Manager, and soon they were planning how to operate together in a lively and positive discussion, one which seemed long overdue. A plenary session on ‘how can I support you to work at your best’ produced amazing commitment and a closeness within the team which felt quite euphoric by the end of the day.
3 Months on since their Metaphors event the feedback has been superb. The organizational internal survey for staff showed an increase by 15% for the full HR department, to 71% agreeing it is a great place to work. And indeed some members ofthe management team from M@W scoring as high as 88%.
Sandy measured her own objectives with the team. 1 = did not meet and 5 = completely met, the average score came out as 4.5 proving to her the team had developed as a result of the day. And what does Sandy believe has been the daily impact?
- ‘team managers are far more open and honest with each other’
- ‘team managers come to me less for guidance on how to handle each other with delicate issues’
- ‘changes in where people sit have paid off and people talk more’
The M@W Programme has built relationships and team work for this group, who are now being approached by other head office departments to find out what the excitement is all about! In addition they are now delivering the sessions to their own teams, and we await the results!
Cheryl Winter April 2007 – support by Caitlin Walker of Training Attention