Management

How do you get on with your work colleagues? Do you feel a part of any team? Are you working where you are at present

simply to “bring home the bacon” as it were? Do you have enough confidence to be a part of a working team and be able to bring something to that “table” and be a cog? Do you feel you contribute enough or if not, know how you could contribute more?

Perhaps you entered by a different door and see yourself as something ‘better’ than those around you. Are you a “brown noser”, y’know, a sneak, someone that, should another of your ‘team’ make an error, you run off to tell teacher or matron or whom-so-ever is the designated leader? Are you someone who constantly needs to score points over your colleagues and find any excuse to get them into strife? Do you find you have a generous streak of jealousy that has discarded any scruples or morals that you may once have harboured? The points you “may” score will, in the final analysis, see you outside the window looking back in at the running of a well oiled machine that works just as well whether you were included in the team or not.

If you ticked ‘yes’ to any or all of those boxes, wouldn’t it just be simpler, easier, to dump whatever misguided pride and sense of ephemeral duty you seem to think is important, or, at least, more important in your consequential rise to the top of some imaginary ladder you feel you might be ascending, to join the team. To make yourself a worthy colleague and respected for your input not your constant sniping? Or would you rather ride the precipitation to the bottom of the heap and sacrifice what little you may have gathered to now? If any of this pertains to you in whatever shape or form then I’ve already second guessed you and the guilt you feel hurts and you blame me. So sue me!

This isn’t a vehicle for getting at anyone, it’s simply an exercise to open the doors that remain closed despite being able to see past them, and never reaching that other side. To do that, it’s better done as a collective and a being part of a collective means being part of a team and if you cannot adjudge to be just a team member then you need to be in employment that will pay you to do a job, to encourage spying on colleagues and be single minded about usurping any guv’nor you have and sitting in their seat!

The purpose of my involvement here is to maybe help negotiate a tricky path that mayhap you might have missed or taken a wrong fork. To perhaps point out the benefits of working in close proximity with others and be an integral part of the team with a good working mentality. Remember, you chose this job or profession, it wasn’t forced upon you. If you feel nonvocational, perhaps you should look where your talents are better suited but naturally and, as a matter of course, this isn’t my intention in writing this. I don’t know you, any of you so it could be my view is warped. However, as a person with managerial experience and shop floor working practices, including unions, I know how it feels on both tiers. But even as a manager, I never delegated a task I would not have readily done myself or had already done. I had people working for me. We worked together and were successful. That’s teamwork.

It doesn’t mean stepping down a level, it means bringing others up to a level but without patronisation. Teamwork is about everyone bringing to the table, their particular form, brand or skill or experience or sense that will endeavour to benefit all who come under that ‘umbrella’ of teamwork.

Being IN a team has its own benefits. Maybe you are a shy person, someone who finds it hard to mix. You’re new and don’t know anyone, or because it’s a new job, you’re not quite aux fait with all the working practices. You won’t be blamed for that, at least, so long as you confront it and ask. It doesn’t demean you if you don’t know and if you are prepared to ask, you will be learning. But you MUST be prepared to take that step. Overall, that in itself will win both respect and friends. Overall, you will have helped and be helping, the team. That’s teamwork.

Teamwork also means depending on each other to ensure good results. If one of the team decides to go AWOL at a crucial time, the entire team will either fail or be reprimanded for some reason or another. So that implies ‘pulling your own weight’. A team can only succeed on the strength of its entire team. But by usurping the team by some of the aforementioned reasons, doesn’t do your team any good and you don’t do yourself any favours in the long run. This is because of the ‘crying wolf’ tactic. You probably know the story of the girl who cried wolf too many times and when the wolf really came, no-one believed her.

That tale highlights the simplistic criterion of being honest giving your colleagues the option of supporting you and you applying reciprocation. Teamwork will only succeed if all involved are prepared to fulfill their part in the scheme. It matters little which industry you are in, the same factor can be applied across the entire spectrum but I’d like to draw attention in particular, to one section a societal factor, healthcare.

I choose healthcare as an example in this exercise because my wife works in a care/nursing home. Nothing is more dangerous in such a place when a member of a team fails to do their duty to full capacity because it is the team that is let down, but moreover, the “product”, the people in their care. So for this purpose I shall attempt to cover this particular field of healthcare and people. And the care thereof.

In the healthcare profession, teamwork is important because it saves lives. Firstly and ultimately, lives are at stake and any indiscretion can lead to someone’s demise, more especially in such an environment and remember also, in this day and age, when several diseases are so virulent, it could be so easy to cross that line and bring about problems. Don’t forget also, that one day, you might well depend on a team working together that may have your own life in their hands, albeit at different stages and degree of importance, you might well be depending on teamwork. Be the catalyst now and maybe you could be helping yourself by whatever precedent you set now.

So, you’ve taken a job. In healthcare. You are learning, studying too, to further your qualifications. Did you apply for the job because there was nothing else you felt you could do? Did you take the job because you felt you had something to offer the professions, that you see yourself as someone with a caring nature and you want to pass that on? Or did you sign up because it seems like easy money and doesn’t seem to be too difficult a job? A job! A job?

This kind of work is not just a job. You have to have mettle and I’ll be honest, I couldn’t do it. Not for any particular reason or that I don’t care, I do, but this kind of work doesn’t appeal to me. And that’s why it is vocational. One cannot do this job simply for money, if that’s the case, then you are a wee bit on the callous side. Employment of this nature requires, demands even , an attitude of calm and caring. Remember, if you will, the elderly, or some of them, are babies in decline. They make the same demands but are at the opposite end of the spectrum. You certainly wouldn’t lose patience with a baby, a baby doesn’t know what it’s all about. They are unable help themselves.

Members of the older generation have reverted to that aeon. As their lives near the end, their faculties are derided. They find it difficult to help themselves. That’s why they have been put in your charge. Just as if they were a baby.

I know you see an older person and your sense of logic narrates constantly that these people have done their life and should be able to help themselves, they know more about life than you. But, it’s not so simple, but moreover, just like children, these elderly folk are still people, they comprehend everything you say, every action is logged into those fading memory banks. They should be treated with absolute kindness and the utmost level of care. You have become their surrogate parents. You must act accordingly.

Every so often we read of physical abuse against members of the elder generation, both outside and within the confines of places where these people lay their trust, usually carried out by singular persons who are just ‘doing a job’.

I cannot reiterate enough that this kind of employment is not just a job, you need to want it. You need some kind of vocational attitude, a sense of caring and a real desire to want to help those who are, for whatever reason, now unable to help themselves. You have been charged with that request. As have your colleagues. Your teammates.

If there happens to be an error, don’t run off to matron to spill the beans, roll your sleeves up and get on in and help. The opposite person would most probably do the same for you if you found yourself in a similar situation, whether they like you or not, it is their sense of fairness and determination to see their charges (or yours) are treated with the utmost levels of care.

In most cases in these situations (i.e. care/nursing homes) the general workforce will all know their places and tasks. If one person decides to call time on someone else and makes it difficult to work with them , the equilibrium will be warped out of shape and the whole side gets let down. But more importantly, the resident is let down and as the residents are the basic quotient of this form of industry, you’ve lost already.

These ‘jobs’ are hands on, full attention always and demands a high level of care. It doesn’t matter if they’ve paid to stay there or not, that isn’t your problem, that’s what management and admin is for. Your task is the ‘shop floor’ and assisting each other to ensure the best possible care for those people who are under your care. That’s what should be upper in your minds at all time. As well as ways of helping each other within your team. Working to the same directive, singing to the same tune as it were. The elderly folks deserve that. The elderly deserve respect.

These people may and some, will have been involved in a war. They will have worked for most of their lives to ensure that your country is free and sensible and can endure a proper sense of camaraderie. I don’t think that’s too difficult a task.

These people have lived and seen all that life can either have thrown at them or in the interim, enjoyed. These people DESERVE to be cared for in their twilight years. If you are in the charge of such persons, don’t have an overview that seems to dictate “must we”, see it as a privilege. OK, some of them might well be cantankerous and sometimes obscenely rude. ‘getting back’ at them creates only more problems, for you both. Be patient, it isn’t always their own fault these people have such an attitude. They haven’t lived through the permissive or outgoing society you will have been raised in. Rules, and attitude, were so much different when these people were young. Bear that in mind. It might be difficult. THEY might be difficult. But, if it were a child, would you get angry and ‘throw a wobbly’? course not. You would be understanding, one would hope at least, and try to discover the problem or cause for such behaviour.

Older persons may have afflictions that deny them the personal freedoms they once had, the mind to think, the comprehension to understand. Diseases and conditions that greatly affect older people do NOT show that person in a real light, as you might have been led to believe. It means their normal faculties and functions have been warped out of synch’ and frustration is the result, simply because, they know they could ‘do it’ before but do not understand why they cannot now.

That’s where your care and understanding comes in. You can play a huge part in the ongoing life and endurance of these persons. But you cannot do it alone. So you have to be a team player and no team is about one person, no matter who tells you it might be. If you have a leader, they will be leader for a reason. Experience. If you are willing to learn, experience will help. But you cannot teach UNTIL you have the same level of experience, and, all in all, competence to carry out duties that are second nature to those in the profession because they have the qualities to do so and want to
be.

You won’t learn it all from a book. You cannot learn HOW to care, that is something you must already have and are willing to expand on it. If you don’t have that care I’m afraid you are in the wrong profession.

Ask yourself a question; if asked, would any of you answer a plea and travel to Africa or India or China or any disaster zone an help care for victims? It’s a big ask but it is NOT an adventure! Do you care enough? Could you care enough?

If you answered no, it isn’t a problem. It doesn’t lessen your character but when thinking of that then reviewing what you are currently doing, do you have any of those caring qualities necessary to do the job you are currently employed to do?

And back to the profession you are in now, caring, that’s CARING for the elderly and/or sick. I reiterate, the elderly will have lived full lives. They will have worked very hard in their younger days. Many may have endured, suffered or served in a war. You can NEVER imagine what that feels like although for those of you from various parts of the world, may have been involved and/or seen conflicts that have occurred in modern days. But for the people you currently care for in what is, primarily THEIR home, you are so able because of and not in spite of, the sacrifices THEIR generation will have made. Or the personal attributions they themselves endured in order to secure YOU the freedom to complain about them, if that is the case.

In tribal outlets, throughout history, the elders were ALWAYS seen as the ‘sages’, the wise ones. Nothing happened unless the ‘elders’ approved it. Society has forgotten how that works. People are not aware of such criterion. How do you think the elderly feel when they constantly disrespected by the younger generation. And, when you yourself reach such an age, should you be lucky enough to do so, how will YOU feel if the next young generation rain insult upon you, filling your world with trepidation and fear.

Should you have to live the remainder of your years in an institution such as the one you are employed by, how would you like to be treated?

Treat others as you would like to be treated. It’s a lesson worth learning. And then you will have the experience, to teach.

This is not an attack on any person or persons or department or section of society. It’s an overview. If you feel bad after reading, maybe you should be looking deeper within yourself. Deep inside you have the capability to care. Everyone does.

It’s how we choose to conduct ourselves that make all the difference. Not just to oneself but to the entire spectrum of society.

Thank you reading.

© tcmoon 2011