Winter suddenly feels behind us as March brings unexpected warmth! It feels a time of rejuvenation, of growth amid and in spite of the economic challenges continuing.
My year has suddenly ramped up this month and in doing so my social media has fallen by the wayside. So moving into April I will be looking to manage my time better so I can keep you all up to date with hints, tips, my personal thoughts and observations, and what’s happening now with Kanyini Consultancy and Kanyini Community.
This happens with every new business, as we find ourselves constantly planning and looking for work months in advance, so that when those months are suddenly upon us, our time vanishes!
I am looking forward to a couple of weeks off from teaching. While it is fulfilling and fun being back in the classroom, I feel the next two weeks provide me with the time to put the next stages of my business into place.
March has certainly been a time of growth for me. New clients, new opportunities, further understanding of the direction in which I am going with Kanyini Community and what I want to achieve with Kanyini Consultancy. Spring is the time of rejuvenation, of fresh starts, of new growth.
I hope you enjoy your Easter Break. Remember to stop and breath. Take time to see the bounty that nature is providing us. English bluebells are appearing everywhere and the hawthorn is in full bloom. If you celebrate it, Happy Easter! If not, enjoy the start of spring!
Inhouse Professional Development tips
There are three vital things new managers need to learn to be successful in their new roles
- Perspective
- Leaders and managers need to be able to move beyond their own prejudices and those of others, to recognise perspectives differ for everyone, and communicate effectively with these in mind. Not easy, but being able to negotiate, to put across viewpoints, recognise the value of other’s thoughts and lead everyone to a mutual decision avoids conflict, enables respect, and provides a psychologically safe environment.
- Organisation
- New managers need to be able to organise their team to ensure all work is fair, that people are positioned and given the correct work, and that they delegate tasks to the right people. Being able to do this requires knowledge and understanding of their team and confidence. It also requires being able to restrain their own natural desire to miromanage, to ensure everything is being done in the way to get the best results and the appropriate time. Reading all the books in the world won’t assist a new manager as much as getting to know and understand their people and what they bring individually to their team.
- Accountability
- New managers need to learn to take accountability for their team, their team’s performance, their team’s quality of work. The manager who blames the team or individuals for poor performance/work, is a manager who will struggle with leadership. It is up to the manager to put in place checks to ensure greater quality is continually strived for, to ensure work is completed on time and to spec, to relay what is required by the business to the team and to do so in a way that the team understand. One way can be through creating user stories. A user story puts the client’s wants across from the user point of view. For example, if you were selling clothes to retailers, you might write the simplified user story as follows when understanding what it is the retailers you sell to what to see to purchase from you.
- As a clothes retailer I want to see the colours and sizes for my region on your website, so I can order the colours and sizes that my customers buy.
- As a clothes retailer I want to use fabrics that are sustainable and know where they come from by looking at the label so my customers are assured they are buying from a sustainable company.
- Using these user stories provides a starting point for the teams involved to start breaking them down into individual tasks that combined will meet the specification required in the story itself.
- New managers need to learn to take accountability for their team, their team’s performance, their team’s quality of work. The manager who blames the team or individuals for poor performance/work, is a manager who will struggle with leadership. It is up to the manager to put in place checks to ensure greater quality is continually strived for, to ensure work is completed on time and to spec, to relay what is required by the business to the team and to do so in a way that the team understand. One way can be through creating user stories. A user story puts the client’s wants across from the user point of view. For example, if you were selling clothes to retailers, you might write the simplified user story as follows when understanding what it is the retailers you sell to what to see to purchase from you.
If you would like more information on any of the points I have made above, or to discuss how you could adopt the user story technique for your company, please contact me at fiona@kanyini.co.uk
Kanyini Community
I learnt an important lesson on the importance of community integration and the maintenance of cultural tradition in March.
I have been teaching a series of session on Wellbeing to pre entry ESOL learners from Romania, Spain, Afghanistan, Kurdistan, Pakistan, Kuwait and Sudan etc… it’s been an amazing mix of learners, supporting each other where languages overlap or where knowledge of second language enable. A generosity of spirit we can all learn from.
Despite best efforts, interpreters were difficult to come by and so it was through mime, my wonderful students themselves and my continuing to modify my delivery that we got through. There were a number of truly beautiful moments during this three week six session course, but two stand out.
The first was my quietest shyest student. J spoke softly, struggled greatly to understand, and quite frankly looked terrified the majority of time… as well I would being put in a group of strangers for three hours a day, with only few of whom spoke my language. But she worked hard. How hard, I didn’t realise until our last session, when (as I had frequently) I cheekily added a little extra english lesson into the end of our session with writing and pronouncing the alphabet on the board, she suddenly shot up her hand and with great excitement said ‘Numbers, numbers!’ and before I could respond came up to the board and took my whiteboard pen from my hand.
I hurriedly wiped the alphabet off and she proceeded to write the digit and the word for every number with perfect spelling and great neatness from 1 until I managed to stop her at 21. I expected her to stop at 10, but no, she continued until I was afraid we would run out of time and protested that she wanted to continue to 100! We compromised by my getting her to write the 10s (30, 40, 50 etc) to 100, upon completion of which the class and I applauded and celebrated her.
J was so incredibly proud, as I was of her and rightly so. She had been working hard on her English, and while painfully shy, overcame it to demonstrate her new learning. This level of application from students makes teaching the most rewarding of careers, and I will never forget quiet J and how she shocked an entire class into silence and left me with tears in my eyes of pride.
The second instance was with my afternoon cohort of students ( I had two each day twice a week for three weeks). We had a session of mindfulness and through some miracle, I was able to get my lovely class to understand I was incorporating a 15 minutes session in which we would all work on crafts, or write or read, to demonstrate the importance of time for ourselves.
This group involved several women from Afghanistan, and as we worked on our different crafts, for the most part, I watched the interaction between a mother and daughter as the former inspected the work of the later as she embroidered a hijab.
The continuance of cultural traditions brings to countries a richness that can be unrealised. Watching these women, the interaction, the gentle correction, the appreciation of each other’s work and how relaxed they felt to work with ease, speed, and with a skill that would be mistaken for machine embroidery was of great appreciation to me. It brought to mind my own family’s creative tradition, what I have practised and what my daughters do.
Please read my blog on Creativity below for my further thoughts.
Working with people from other cultures is providing me with a depth of experience that enriches all I do. It enriches my thoughts, my teaching, my training, and my appreciation of the individual. Keep your mind open and your thoughts free. See what comes of your interactions with others and leave the slightest judgement behind.
Latest Blog posts from Kanyini Consultancy and Community
Supporting new managers to delegate – Kanyini Consultancy
Creativity – Kanyini Community
Until next month!
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