I've got a headache

It’s a tough job being a line manager. The expectations of senior managers hang on you. Your team watch your every move with a critical eye. Like an ace juggler you keep all the balls in the air: your own work commitments, the demanding needs of other corporate teams, keeping your boss up to speed and dealing with the host of concerns that your team throw at you. Sometimes you get all the balls in the air turning effortlessly. Some days, they roll all over the place, slipping and sliding. It is easy at those times to feel overwhelmed and slightly out of control.

The management and leadership programmes we work on are all designed to help you deal with the difficulties, experiment with new ways of managing and leading and help you identify what it is that you are doing well so that you can keep on doing it.

A manager who attended a programme we ran for the Chartered Institute of Housing earlier in the year told me that he was having difficulty motivating his team during a reorganisation. They came to him with their problems, expecting him to have the answer. He spent most of his day dealing with the things they brought to him. Some of those things, he felt he had no control over. Others were things he felt sure they could work out for themselves. Some days, like Matt Scott in the video below, he wanted to give up and say:“I’ve got a headache…..I don’t want to do this…….I want to do something else…….I’m allergic to stuff…….I’d really love to but I can’t!”

During the programme, he began to experiment with pushing back on his team. He began asking more questions, asking people what they thought they could do. He arranged team meetings for people to begin joint problem solving. Over the four months of the programme he began to see a shift in the way his team worked. Not every day, but some days, he found team members answering their own questions, coming to him with suggestions about how the team could move forward, address issues, or deal with what was bothering them differently.On our programme we encourage managers to address questions such as:How do you get the best from people when they are unsettled by change?........How do you get your point of view across without being too aggressive or too compliant?.........How do you play to people’s strengths whilst still giving them powerful feedback?.........How do you lead rather than just manage?........How do you take care of yourself as well as everyone else?

Using a mix of exercises, input and the skill and experience of colleagues on the programme, we make sure you get practical support on how to deal with issues, feedback about which of your actions have the most impressive impact and strategies for making sure that you are in the best possible shape to manage.

So, now watch Matt Scott, an amazing US paraplegic basketball player.