Acting up

Today I start 'acting up' as Head of Student Development. Maria Graal, the previous Head of Student Development, has left for Bangor University to be their Director of Student Experience. She's going to be a tough act to follow but I'm looking forward to working with a great team. There's going to be a review of Student Development's activities starting in September which will report in December. We hope to be able to show the review panel what a great job we do, as well as receive some useful suggestions. I guess I'll be acting up (it's a great phrase, isn't it?) until at least Easter, and then who knows...

So if you have any tips or suggestions about managing a big team, strategic planning, dealing with budgets and anything acting up related, I'd be very pleased to hear them.

Team building day

By Alesa Dam

My boss is good at organising team building days, not least because she doesn't take them too seriously. Her approach is to find something we can all do, that's off site, that's a bit different and is a bit of fun. Last year we had a drumming workshop, the year before that we did something on creativity, and the year before that we did an art workshop. Each time it's been relaxed and enjoyable with no contrived analogies to work situations - like I said, just a bit of fun. But in my opinion they really work, and I've been wondering why.

Years ago I read a book called The R Factor (looks like it's out of print and funny that you can buy '20 used from £0.01'!). It was written for a very specific audience and I seem to remember it had a rather contrived ending, but the thing I remember most, and thought seemed useful, was what it called the 'dimensions of relational proximity'. They said that the factors influencing the closeness of a relationship (in any context) could be assessed in terms of:

• directness - the quality of communication
• continuity - the frequency, regularity and amount of contact, and length of relationship
• multiplexity - the variety of context of meetings
• parity - mutual respect and fairness in the relationship
• commonality - shared goals, values and experience

I think the authors have given fancy names to something that is essentially common sense but I do think that it's a useful framework. The reason I think our team building days have worked in the past is because I think they enable many of these things to take place - certainly multiplexity (we see each other in a different context), parity (everyone's on a level playing field) and commonality (we work on something together to achieve a shared goal).

Well, it's that time of year again and tomorrow we're doing a community project at All Saint's Primary School in Wigston - you can read more about the project in this news article, but in brief Student Development will be:

swapping their pens for shovels to spend the day at All Saints Primary School in Wigston on Wednesday 30th June 2010 to give the school a well deserved garden make-over

which not only should help facilitate the building of relationships in our team, but will also make a valuable contribution to the community: win, win! And probably be a good laugh too: win, win, win!

I'll let you know how we get on...