• You will hear five different people talking about workshops they have recently attended. • For each extract there are two task

Speaker One
Woman: This was a workshop for department heads, and it was supposed to make us more effective and flexible in dealing with staff. We worked in teams of four, and simulated various situations, taking it in turn to be the manager and the employee, and after each activity the rest of the team gave feedback on our style and performance. That was really demanding, and, after a while, people began to get quite critical towards each other, and actually some people got irritable, but it was very worthwhile. We agreed we were all pretty bad at doing staff appraisals, so we arranged for the next session to deal with this. Actually it was some people’s first experience of looking in depth at their own behaviour and reactions.
Speaker Two
Man: The Chief Executive was there, and all the senior managers and department heads, and the idea was that we’d plan how to introduce the new structure that’s going to be put in place next year. First, the CE presented the company’s objectives and the new organisation, then we broke up into small groups to discuss how to implement it all. After that, each group gave their comments to the whole seminar. Some very sensible criticisms were made, which the boss clearly wasn’t expecting, but he did agree not to split up the marketing department after all. Anyway, we ended up by agreeing on a timetable for a meeting to brief the workforce and for the various moves, so we’re probably quite well prepared now.
Speaker Three
Woman: I went to something called a ’team role laboratory’, which was for the manager, supervisors and all the staff of my department. The idea was to focus on everyone’s behaviour and working relationships. It was a very powerful experience, as you can imagine, because it brought up all sorts of feelings. There’s a lot of resentment at some people never being around when there’s an emergency, and at the way one of the supervisors lets people get away with anything. In fact, this made him realise he’s not cut out for the job, and he’s since resigned. We also tried to establish what the department’s objectives were, and it was an eye- opener to some people to discover what we’re actually supposed to be doing, and how we fit in with the rest of the company.
Speaker Four
Man: They’d invited the managers of a different- sized store in each division, together with some of the higher-level managers, and we were grouped in vertical lines. So, I was with my area manager and her division manager. We had to brainstorm how to cut costs and improve margins in the light of last year’s poor figures. At first, I was afraid of disagreeing with my boss in case it was held against me in the future, but, after a while, we felt more like equals. It made me realise how little I’m told about the big issues in the company: some of my suggestions couldn’t be implemented for reasons I didn’t know anything about. So, one good thing that came out of it was that my boss agreed to meet me and the other store managers once a month to tell us what’s going on in the company.
Speaker Five
Woman: Mine was a workshop on horizontal team effectiveness, which means that Production and Sales met to see how we could work better together. First, Sales said how they saw us, and we gave our opinion of them, then we each explained how we organise our work, how we’re affected by other parts of the company, and so on. That gave us all a much more accurate picture of what was actually going on. And that led on to looking at how we could help each other more, which was very useful. We agreed on more realistic timescales for dealing with orders and on a system for the managers to consult each other on problems. We also decided to get together again in six months’ time, to see how things are going.