Working Well Together

Written by Pete Sanders

Published

Most of you will be aware of The Oakes Strategic Plan that was put together by the Senior Leadership Team during mid-2020 which covered the mission and vision of The Oakes, the six goals by which these were to be delivered and over 180 specific milestone actions stretching up to ten years into the future. For the Plan to make any difference to the future of The Oakes we have to all start “living and breathing” change and being open to new roles and responsibilities, challenging our current behaviours and rethinking how we interact with each other. We also needed to really deliver on the Goal 4 objective of “Equip, develop and value all the team”.

This thinking was behind a series of training and development events which are planned for the permanent team members. The first of these took place in November 2021 entitled “Principles for Working Well Together”. As Interim Operations Manager, I was asked to lead the session and share some of the excellent training and experiences that I had benefitted from whilst working for nearly 40 years in large blue chip manufacturing businesses.

Subjects covered during this initial event included handling change, effective team working, team roles, conflict resolution, importance of right mindset and attitude, and the principle of “controlling the controllables”. In addition, we covered how habits are formed and those positive ones that we need to focus on developing in order to become more effective leaders and team players. Some of the slides used are shown below to give a taste of the principles we covered.



The hope and expectations are that we will, over time, create a common set of language, behaviours, and practical ways of working so that as individuals and a team we will be able to work more effectively together at The Oakes and to deliver the mission to which we have been called.

  • Praise for the opportunity to equip, develop and value the team in this way, and for the training and experiences that Pete is able to share with us.
  • Pray that the team will retain what they have learnt and put it into practice — to be able work effectively together to deliver the mission of The Oakes.

Oakes News (February 2022)

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