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View Photo Gallery from Session I View Photo Gallery from Session II Heard Around the Table during Session I: What Participants Said Heard Around the Table during Session II: What Participants Said
Session I: December 5-7, 2006 Labor-Management Relationship Building
The Big Picture: Levels of Committee Development and Committee Assessment Participants were given the opportunity to conduct an assessment of their own labor-management committees. Each co-chair pair answered a 25-question survey instrument to determine generally where their committee is on the three levels of committee development. Groups for each of the levels then determined things to work on between December and March. Those lists included: Level 1 – Forming
Level 2 – Operating
Level 3 – Strategic
Stories from the Field This session consisted of a panel of labor-management committee co-chairs who shared experiences and successes of their individual committees. The session included a slide show from the DOT Region 4 committee on an employee recognition program. December 6 Co-Chairs as Facilitators: Optimizing Your Committee’s Meeting Time Institute participants learned how to make the most of the time they have available for committee meetings. Using the “roadmap” format of an agenda helps clarify the outcomes desired for a particular topic. Using a flip chart to record decisions, and their rationale, along with action items helps everyone focus and know what they have to do after the meeting. Developing ground rules for meetings provides committees with an agreed upon set of guidelines for behavior in meetings. Using group techniques such as “I Time,” “Brainstorming,” “Go-Around,” and/or “List Reduction” helps focus discussion and equalize participation. Lastly, having someone facilitate, record, and keep track of time on each agenda topic optimizes the meeting time available. Labor and Management Caucuses: What Is In It For Us? Labor and management met in caucus groups to discuss five questions about why collaboration is important for each side and then shared their answers with each other. Based on the responses to the five caucus questions, both labor and management found the following:
Conflict Resolution for Labor-Management Committees Everyone knows that conflicts are inevitable, not only for an LMC but in life. In this session, participants learned a process they can use with their LMC when conflicts arise. Understanding conflict and resolution cycles is key to successfully preventing and resolving conflicts that arise. Participants learned that “fight or flight” reactions to conflict are natural evolutionary responses which play out in our modern workplaces as “walk-aways” and “power plays” and are not effective strategies for resolving conflict. The workshop offered an alternative: face-to-face talking about the problem without interruption long enough to find a solution. Learning to give resolution gestures such as “owning responsibility,” “self disclosing,” and “initiating both gain solutions” were discussed as magic ingredients of conflict resolution. December 7 Using Appreciative Inquiry to Move Your LMC Agenda The basic premise of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is that, whatever we focus our attention on (study, inquire into), we will create more of. The AI approach to organizational development views problems as a desire for something else. Therefore, an appreciative inquiry invites participants to identify positive aspects of their workplaces to build on. The purpose of the session was to show co-chairs how to use AI as a way to move their shared agenda forward. Participants at the Institute experienced a “mini” appreciative inquiry. They interviewed each other inquiring into the most exceptional partnerships in their lives, the best times they have had working on a labor-management committee, and what they would like to see preserved from these relationships in the future. Each pair then joined other pairs at tables and the combined groups shared their images of a preferred future for LMCs. In the end, participants had some time to figure out “how they could make this happen back home.” Session II: March 13–15, 2007 Building Our Labor-Management Teams: Where to from Here March 13 Building a Future Together - Marcia Calicchia Labor-management committees are the natural venue to help change organizations. This session focused on the people and process tools that have enabled labor and management committees in a variety of settings to improve services and programs. Some of the takeaways regarding labor and management processes are listed below.
Accessing Partnership Services Joint training programs provide a benefit for all stakeholders involved - labor, management, employees, and the labor-management committee. Through a joint approach, both labor and management can achieve outcomes that each could not have achieved on their own. This joint approach to training can be fostered on both the statewide and local level. Through assessing their workforce development needs and how their agency and/or facility has used Partnership programs, labor and management can then work together to plan a more effective strategy. March 14 It’s All About Relationships - Laree Kiely This session started with an evening exercise (on March 13) where participants learned first-hand the importance of relationships in solving problems. One important takeaway from this exercise was that the only thing that can trump math is relationships. How you build relationships, both inside and outside your organization, has substantial impact on creating change, negotiating successfully, and gaining support. Other important points of the session are listed below.
Some useful tools are listed below.
March 15 Labor-Management Relationships in a Diverse Workplace Whatever your race, whatever your gender, whether you are labor or management, the impact of diversity in the workplace can not be ignored or underestimated. This thought provoking session examined the dynamic of the proactive labor-management committee and workplace diversity. Participants were able to:
Heard Around the Table during Session I: What Participants Said This is what some Institute participants said about . . . Gathering with 49 other co-chairs: “Learning can be provoking and I was provoked into thinking.” It’s all about relationships: “Nah, despite how seemingly harmonious labor-management relations appear, adversarial roles always exist for the good of everyone.” A characteristic of a well run meeting: “People are engaged in the meeting and not doing other stuff.” On prioritizing with vote dots: “An alternative is to influence the important choices by selling your votes for someone else to use.” Personal interaction: “I know we should not take personally what happens in labor-management interactions, but I can’t help it. I’m human.” Tips for facilitating meetings: “Keep participants on the road (process), help the recorder keep track of the mileage, and manage the conversational traffic so there are no hit-n-runs.” The thoroughness of meeting minutes: “Get sign off agreement on how brief is brief. No one has time to read a transcript.” Example of when you need to listen during a disagreement: “That is all of the time.” The rule of “no surprises” for meetings: “That means each committee member receives nothing in their Christmas stocking.” Adhering to jointly developed ground rules: “Get re-agreement on the ground rules at the beginning of each meeting.” Summarizing with short phrases: “It’s a good thing that people don’t speak in bullets . . . or we’d all be full of holes.” Timekeeper responsibilities: “Act like a pre-snooze alarm before telling the group when time is up.” Brainstorming: “It’s more fun to simmer down wild ideas than to cook from a boring recipe that has no seasonings.” Using the small flag to signal readiness to resolve a conflict: “Can I get another flag when I wear this one out?” Understanding the conflict continuum: “I can apply this to my teenager.” [Return to Top] Heard Around the Table during Session II: What Participants Said This is what some Institute participants said about . . . Use of the miniature flag since the first Institute session: “Our meeting ground rules now includes the use of the conflict resolution flag. So far the flag has been used twice when we thought conflict was brewing and we needed to go into simmer down mode.” An aging workforce: “When employees go out the door we loose their valuable knowledge and experience. We should capture that knowledge before their memory fades or they retire.” Problem-Solving Model: “It’s a process that L-M committees can follow to solve problems effectively as long as the committee has people who need to be involved in solving the problem. “ The best tip for overcoming barriers to L-M cooperation: “Remembering that wisdom is the art of knowing what to overlook.” Dr. Kiely provoked participants’ minds enough to make their heads hurt. “Yes. My mind is hurting from the tools I learned – kind the way my head hurts when I try to apply a ‘balcony perspective’ for understanding my teenager.” The illusion of scarce resources: “Over the years we’ve been conditioned to trying to do more with less. What happens when we run out of less?” The Ladder of Inference: “You can better understand another person by trying to walk up their ladder in their shoes.” Balcony perspective: “A new objective viewpoint can always help me find patterns on the dance floor.” Diversity in the workplace: “A diverse workplace is a terrible thing to waste. A workplace would be pretty boring without diverse individuals as employees.” Listen to diverse points of view: “Everyone needs to be represented because they bring valuable information and perspectives to what our agency does.” A vision: “A place where I can be involved with a Statewide L-M Committee as an open meeting to see the process.”
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