My manager is a keen learner and works to maintain healthy working relationships with colleagues.. Well, with me anyway, I can’t say for others as I am not there when they have their 1:1 chats. I reciprocate the same as part of my basic career objectives (regardless of our values in Nursing) are to be productive, efficient, and work meaningfully - our personalities align here.
Chairing one of my department's working groups focusing on preparing students for clinical placements, I have been putting effort into ensuring overarching progress, delegating tasks, and keeping our project on track. My manager is also part of the working group, and have (mostly) been keeping her word to act as a group member rather than offering managerial input.
In a recent progress meeting where we were working towards finalising a presentation for Part 1 (usually first year) student nurses, we did the usual round-the-table to present our own contributions. When it was Colleague A’s (CA*) turn, CA basically told us what CA had was already on the PowerPoint slides - draft bullet points that another colleague had copied over from the session plan a few weeks ago. My heart did sink a little, and I am not sure how well I hid my initial disappointment (I do tend to wear my emotions on my face**). But after making a quick comment that “those there are just the draft points from the lesson plan”, I moved on to state that perhaps CA’s materials were somewhere else, and asked CA if we should review and finalise the materials in the next meeting, which luckily, we still have time for. CA and fellow group members agreed, and we moved on after I checked-in that CA is happy with the task at hand and that I was available to offer any further support needed.
In a later supervision meeting with my manager, I had wanted to seek her thoughts about my occasional initial stubbornness in accepting alternative views, drawing examples from the meeting where the above happened. She didn’t see much of an issue and advised me not to be too hard on myself - there was definitely room for improvement on my part***.
Rather, my manager offered and emphasised praise that I had handled the situation with CA really well, and said to me that she had gotten quite angry at that moment. I don’t know if I was being too forthcoming and transparent, but I let her know that actually, that was the only card I knew to play, since there weren’t alternatives (to my capability) that increased chances of work being done whilst maintaining a healthy working relationship with CA. I would like to think that we could start with a compassionate approach.
I joked that there was no point trying any top down approaches, since I wasn’t my manager, but quickly realised I’d have employed exactly the same approach even if I was in a higher band position - though what followed the meeting might be different. When my manager said she was going to approach CA’s line manager, as she had seen similar behaviour from CA in another working group, I found myself defending CA, that CA probably had too much going on in the last few weeks, and perhaps we could review accountability after the next meeting.
I did ask myself if I was being too kind, but CA was the one that offered wisdom about how we all have really good ideas that are often better than others, but that only apply to our own perspectives. This helped me a lot in my frame of mind working with others.
* In case it’s not obvious enough, CA stands for Colleague A. Even if no one reads my blog, I am not taking chances of accidentally outing anyone here, it’s unprofessional.
** Some see it as a (major) flaw, but it’s the only defensive mechanism I have related to people-reading, since I am vulnerable to people with pokerfaces anyway, so far my approach has helped me in making genuine friends (I’d like to think).
*** This relates to a current flaw where I remain unwilling to change my mind even when presented with pre-agreed statements supporting otherwise for a few minutes. I do manage to turn around and make the necessary changes, but not before a small amount of time gets wasted.
