It’s Not About The Nail

I’m not alone in believing that relationships are at the heart of effective organisations. Everyone, whatever role they are in, can benefit from developing skills that support effective listening, asking questions, empathy and reflection.

When I began my role as Learning & Development Lead at London Borough of Camden I recognised what a great job we were doing to support frontline staff to be ‘relational’, especially in early help and children’s social work. The power of these relationships were at the heart of support change and this was recognised in the recent Outstanding Ofsted report (although we all knew that already!)

Developing Relational Skills and Abilities for everyone in Camden became a key priority for the Learning and Development team. The idea what that all staff, whatever their role could benefit from these skills. Why was it that we helped people develop the skills for outward facing work but we weren’t thinking about how this could help us to work better internally?

It doesn’t matter whether you are a social worker, a planner, an accountant, a project manager or data analyst — the ability to listen effectively, tune into other people’s feelings and reflect are vital to the collaboration required in complex organisations and systems.

Just before lockdown we kicked off a pilot project with a group of managers in planning, to help develop these relational skills. We shared resources around the key ideas for people to engage with, then had people form buddy pairs to discuss their existing practice and areas for improvement. Once a month we came together to talk together and reflect on how what we implemented and areas we wanted to develop further.

Other priorities ended up crowding out the space for this work, which I regret. Then week I got a message from a former colleague, who said the relational skills and abilities were being discussed as part of work on inclusive recruitment. I’m so glad others have picked up the baton to support all staff to become more relational.

I was reminded of this work today as I happened to come across one of the most popular resources I shared to help us think about listening and empathy — It’s Not About The Nail.

If you’re interested in developing these skills in your teams then do get in touch.