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Team and individual learning in your workplace

The ability to gain insights from experienced professionals in the field via mediacasting is a valuable tool to assist learning from both a team and individual perspective. It provides the option to gain multiple viewpoints and information without having to engage those people directly. This then could be used as discussion points for a team or promote thinking for individuals.

The interview process was valuable in having to interpret the questions to the interviewee and hence promote your own thinking of the question and what your current understanding is. Obtaining the interviewee’s thoughts was then valuable in providing an alternate viewpoint and experience on the issue.

Your role as a team leader

As a team leader I assume it is important to be able to provide information to your staff that is not seen as coming directly from your own perspective at all times, but rather to provide an objective view of the issue. I would see medicasting and interviews as valuable in achieving this goal and hence providing your staff with a broad information base to assist in their collective understanding. Also as the learning needs of staff vary, the ability to source various perspectives and understandings of issues may increase the likelihood of a higher percentage of learning, hence assisting in your role as a team leader to effectively train staff.

Regards

Tim Baker

Supporting team and individual learning in the workplace:

With the increasing availability of the internet through PCs, Laptops with wireless connectivity, PDAs, mobile phones and even gaming consoles such as Nintendo Wii there is a huge potential to utilise this technology more.

 Simple messages that need to be communicated to large groups would be ideally suited as it will stop the message getting lost in translation as it passed along.  Also, this would help overcome the tyranny of distance for individuals having to travel to either attend or deliver a brief or speech.

 For example, an induction program could be developed for new staff using vodcasts to illustrate and explain the structure of the organisation, reporting lines, NOW charter, KRA, OH&S responsibilities etc.  The list is endless.

 The only downsides that I see are:

• Potential to be very resource hungry.
• Content must be simple and easy to digest as the opportunity for raising questions for clarification is lost
• There is a need to have a means of ensuring that your audience has actually opened the file and acknowledges that it is their responsibility to watch it.

 Supporting the role of team leader:

The use of this technology could prove useful to me as a team leader in both receiving messages from my manager and the executive and also for me to disseminate info to my team.

 It would be useful to receive consistent messages from management to all team leaders rather than the piecemeal approach that is largely adopted.  Also, it will save the message be misconstrued.

 Similarly, all team members can be advised of something at one time regardless of whether they are on leave or in the field.  This also helps in portraying openness and trust in that all team members are then privy to the same information and as a result a better informed and more united team may develop.  As they podcast would form a permanent record it is something that can be revisited if the need arises.

Interview between Richard WHEATLEY (NOW) and Richard HICKS (DECCW), for Cert IV.

2 questions were asked:

1.  How useful is it to be aware of different leadership theories?  Do you believe that you can learn to be a leader or is leadership an attribute you either have or you don’t?

2.  What can frontline managers do to promote team effectiveness in geographically dispersed teams?

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Interview between Richard WHEATLEY (Senior Licensing Officer) and Mark SMITH (Compliance Officer) for the purposes of Cert IV assessment Project 3.

Two questions were asked:

1.  In what way is leadership different in Public Sector Organisations?

2.  What can frontline managers do to promote team effectiveness in geographically dispersed teams?

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Now that you’ve found the Network@HarrisBromly site you need to know about how to use it.

Here are the Steps you need to take:

1. Sign up – MAKE SURE you tick the Certificate IV in Frontline Management Group option & upload your avatar  – watch the screencast to see how.
2. Once you are signed up you will receive an email which asks you to verify your email address. If you haven’t received one fairly soon after you sign up check your Junk Mail folder.
3. After this you need to wait to be approved by the site administrator – mmmm, guess who?
4. Then you’re ready to go!

Posted by Bernadette

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