A Team in a Government Department

We recently completed a piece of work with a client in a Government Department. The client was a new, small professional team working internationally at arms length from the central organisation. The nature of the organisation, and the task they were charged with, meant that the team leader organised the team around the professional task. Not much attention had been paid to leadership and management structures and role. This left team members feeling unclear and unsupported in their work. 

A small team that, on the surface, could give the impression of working well together masked some fundamental issues of lack of role clarity, a lack of clear structure for team meetings, a lack of boundaries between roles and tasks.  The professional staff were working long and hard – but just not that effectively.  Whilst relationships were good, one could see them straining at the edges.  The pressure of the long hours, being away from home combined with overexposure to one another in the small team, we felt it was not going to be long before the cracks would start to appear.

With our client we discussed the idea of putting in some ‘containing structures’. Providing structure alone was not what was needed – it was too stark. Adding in the concept of ‘containing’ gave a far greater understanding at a deeper level of what was required. Containing structures add richness and an insight into human needs and behaviour that is far more effective.

The lack of clarity around role and the boundaries between roles led to a ‘working all hours’ culture and unrecognised doubling up of work and this, in turn, you could see leading to resentment amongst professionals. Having a discussion where it was possible to think about “what’s mine, what’s yours, what’s ours” and establish a clear, public description of roles and responsibilities allowed the structure (professional team, organised by task) to become a containing structure (professional team, organised by task with clear, public roles and responsibilities).

Some months later these containing structures are now in place and the team is working more effectively as a result.

Developing a clear understanding at a leadership level about the role of anxiety in organisations - and especially the positive role that holding and containment can have on that anxiety – can help leaders impact on the way people feel about work. Thinking about organisational work in this way frees leaders to see that they are not personally responsible for everything that is happening in the workforce. In all groups there are things going on at a level that cannot be rationally understood, or easily measured. However, the anxieties that arise from these forces can be contained.  It’s another skill for the leader to acquire in the complex task of leading organisations and one that we, at Consultancy Works, are very interested in helping them develop.