{"id":26,"date":"2022-10-17T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-17T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/smartworking\/?p=26"},"modified":"2022-10-14T14:57:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T13:57:48","slug":"being-a-leader-of-smart-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/smartworking\/being-a-leader-of-smart-working\/","title":{"rendered":"Being a Leader of Smart Working"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The development of the new Smart Working Framework here at Christ Church gives you, our leaders, an opportunity to embrace contemporary and motivating ways of working with your teams: enhancing their effectiveness whilst enabling a more personalised experience of work. Some of you I’m sure can’t wait to get stuck in and take your teams forward: excellent! Others may be apprehensive, confused, terrified….to you I say: that’s fine and very normal too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

We have been pondering all this for a while in our People, Culture and Inclusion team, and have written about it before. Why not dip into our series of blogs of Leadership Circles<\/a><\/strong>? The events have ended but the reflections and resources remain useful, I hope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have brought the learning from those reflections and conversations into my work as the lead for the Smart Leadership pillar in this project. Notably that sense of “how do I enhance or extend my skills so that I do right by my people – be forward focused and agile, whilst compassionate?”<\/p>\n\n\n

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Photo by Katie Smith<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I’d love to present you with an answer, a guide or training course that will tell you exactly what to do, a complete and perfect recipe. As with all things to do with the wonderful variety and complexity of humans…there isn’t one, sorry about that! What I can offer you instead is this. A reassurance that as long as you follow some key principles, you will be doing good right now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Principles<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In my view these are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dialogue<\/strong>: keep lines of conversation open and talk with your teams about what smart working is and how you could work well or better together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inclusion<\/strong>: find ways to listen to all voices and create a strong sense of belonging in your team. Be aware of biases <\/strong><\/a>that are a particular risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compassion<\/strong>: understand what is going on for your people, take action to support their wellbeing, be clear about your expectations for their performance and enable strong boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discovery<\/strong>: have a learning mindset that embraces reflection, adaptation, personal and team growth and change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep Learning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Beyond that, continue to engage in your learning about what it takes to be a brilliant leader of smart teams. We will have ongoing opportunities to do that, starting with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n