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discussed in Tutor Group Forum, allowed me to think through my own strengths and weaknesses (reluctance to say no, acting impulsively, impatient and failing to let things go) and I realised how this could impact on my performance in the workplace. I applied the same analysis to my work experiences and noted the weaknesses to be poor delegation and failing to organise my workload effectively. The threats were predominantly, the high level of work, staff absences, office distractions and interruptions. Each of these posed a risk to the opportunities - developing training materials for a new IT system and to gain enjoyment from coaching staff through the process. I want to work on addressing these issues to allow me to participate in the training project successfully. The Learning Contract Time Management Main frustration at work is being unable to achieve all of the daily tasks I have set out to do. What I want to achieve :- I would really like to become much more organised at work – achieve all of daily tasks without these spilling over into the following day. Frequently distracted from my tasks – e-mail interruptions also distracting -some of these are wasteful use of time. Postponing meetings to deal with urgent casework is frustrating Agreeing to additional tasks without appreciating realistic timeframe (working late & weekend to finish) Lots of discussion with HQ re what is happening in the future - need to know more about what is happening in the present - constantly racing against the time. Work relations and communications What I want to achieve: – Need to keep on top of supervision sessions Team meetings have slipped – last meeting was held in September! Inconsistencies in team that are addressed at the time but nothing noted formally to staff. Need to be clearer in my communication to others – sometimes misinterpreted, being able to say ‘no’ to additional tasks and getting to the point! Focusing on my time management skills will allow me to improve my communication skills in the process Reading through the posts in the Tutor Group Forum where to students applied SMART objectives to identify achievable tasks that they wanted to work towards to improve time management were actually quite inspiring and gave me some ideas relating to achievable goals within my own workplace. Creating more structure to my day and getting some projects off the ground was essential if I wanted to gain greater job satisfaction. Using the Time Log (Hughes, 2011) Completing a weekly time highlighted how much I had underestimated time taken for some of my tasks. Preparing a task list the day before to allow me to keep focused on what I want to work on that day but the level of interruptions affected my ability to finish off what I was working on and it took me some time to pick up where I left off before I could proceed with the task again. Using Reflective Frameworks Working on my cycles of inquiry. Found the reflective framework of Pedlar et al. (2001) beneficial - reflecting on how my action-tendencies were affecting my contribution towards a project that I had agreed to work on with the training team. My action-tendencies highlighted that I can find it difficult to 'let go' of certain tasks that I feel responsible for and had a tendency to take on work to avoid burdening someone else with the task. Changing my behaviour and reminding myself to avoid being caught up with trying to do everything. Importantly, asking for help when necessary. Now working towards planning time to discuss issues with colleagues and allowing work to be shared fairly amongst the team. Communicating this to my own line manager and setting this as an objective in my appraisal will ensure that I am committed to the task and will allow us to review my progress over the coming year. Further Topic Guide resources refer to effective goal setting and delegating tasks and to consider that other staff might actually gain enjoyment from the task. Decided to meet with staff the following morning to discuss whether they would like to have the opportunity to handle the petty cash or take the lead on some of the projects that we were working on. Pleasantly surprised to learn that they were so willing to help – they wanted a change. A member of staff even agreed to coach a newer member of staff through court work having recently worked on a similar task herself. Agreed to rota the petty cash every couple of months and feeling more confident about delegating tasks to others. Have been reading through two time management technique books, I would like to focus on the smaller goals that eventually help me work towards my long-term ones and more importantly, be realistic about the time it would take to achieve each. Also using different daily and weekly task lists with the principal being that I can subconsciously work on ideas of achieving the task ahead and increase productivity as a result. I have already noticed some improvements and feel a sense of accomplishment as tasks are being ‘ticked off’ although finding it easier to keep focused on the daily tasks for now and hope that I can practice this skill to work towards achieving more long-term goals for the future. Working relations and communications Communication skills Working through the exercises in Reading 1 in Topic Guide 6 (Hughes, 2011), I gained some ideas relating to body language and using open questions to encourage contributions from staff. I was very conscious of this in the next team meeting – I consciously made an effort to gain views from all staff as I worked through the agenda at the meeting. Some of the responses were brief but I will continue doing this at forthcoming meetings to help to engage staff and improve interactions in the office. Managing conflict I worked through an exercise after reading the information from the Topic Guides ‘How to… manage conflict’ which highlighted five essential things that you needed to follow when dealing with issues of conflict (EBSCO, 2004) This approach by (Couzins and Beagrie, 2004) does provide more clarity when dealing with a particular situation, allowing you to focus on each matter separately to steer towards a more successful resolution. It’s early stages and I feel that I would like to monitor the situation closely to avoid their behaviour impacting on the rest of the team. I think that I do have a tendency to become personally involved if I can identify what part I could have played to avoid this happening, however, it is clearly more constructive to allow the individual to be involved in shaping their own solution and dealing with this appropriately to avoid problems reoccurring. Working on the reflective frameworks I wanted to focus on improving my communication with staff by way of formalising more meetings and to manage conflict effectively. I felt that using Kolb’s learning cycle was useful and more suited to gaining the decisive action that was needed to facilitate meetings and encourage staff input. Having reflected on how I had dealt with an incident of conflict and the outcome of my meeting with the staff, I felt that I could have handled the situation differently to help mend the tensions between the two staff. I initially worked through the two attentional disciplines of Judi Marshall (2001) which I found helpful to reflect on how I responded to the situation at the time, however, I decided to use the framework of Pedlar et al. (2001) to determine how I responded to the incident and to help develop thoughts and ideas on how the situation arose then reflect on ideas for action. I will continue to review progress in the follow up meetings and apply cycles of inquiry after each meeting to work towards continuing to improve relationships in the workplace. 1339 words