Just Another Manic Monday

Team meetings first thing on a Monday morning?

I’m not going to lie, when I first heard this would be happening every single week I was suddenly filled with dread. I mean who likes Monday mornings at the best of times but to then add a meeting into the mix?! All I had to go on was previous employers and their version of team meetings – all being herded into a room, normally once a month, being talked at and usually about information that was in no way relevant to me or the role I was in. I found that by the time these meetings had finished, my colleagues felt demoralised and negative and it set the tone for the rest of the day….or week in some cases.

Fast forward to November 2017 and I’m now a good few Monday meetings in. It was clear straight away these weren’t going to be any ordinary team meetings. First of all we – all 15 Linksters, Programme Director, Manager, Learning & Evaluation Officer and Co-ordinator – have the chance to be in the one place at the one time. In my short time in the role it’s already clear to me that this in itself is invaluable. With all of us based in a different practice team, or teams in my case, the opportunity to spend time together as the Links Team doesn’t happen often.

There is time for each Linkster to inform everyone about any new and noteworthy people or organisations they have met that week and open space gives us a chance to talk about any difficult situations, receive support, share information and be able to seek advice from each other; something that has been tried in different guises in my previous roles but they never seemed to get it quite right.

Then there is the Programme Director’s update which keeps us all in the loop with any formal information we need to know and, last but not least, we have a guest speaker, or two! This means that we are constantly being given relevant, I repeat RELEVANT, information about services that may be useful to us in practice. It also lets us get our message across about the aims of our role and the Links programme. So it’s win win!

In addition to all of this, we get to know each other. As people.  To build up relationships that are so very important when you find yourself in a role such as ours.  There can be very testing and emotional times and if we don’t have each other to lean on then who do we have?  I can be open and honest without fear of being judged or chastised for not knowing something.

Would all this be possible without a Monday meeting…..? Not in my opinion.

Being in a split practice, it has become very apparent the difference having these meetings can make to a team. We don’t all work in the same building and we don’t all work in exactly the same way in our daily practice and I’m very aware that there are constraints on the Practice both time-wise and financially, but it is my hope to try and use the positive example of how the links’ team benefits from our Monday meetings and how some of these could be transferred to the practice setting.

The benefit of feeling truly supported on a personal and professional level by everyone in your team is second to none and I think this will be one of the main contributing factors to me being able to carry out my role as the role was intended.

And I have no doubt that it will make me the very best I can be because I sure won’t be able to do that on my own.

So to sum it up with another song…… Monday Monday…….so good to me!

End of page.