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[Greenfingers]

This is not well written and I write in haste

In my five years with HCT at Fujairah Women's College, I have worked within many teams. Many of them show characteristics which are the antitheses of common traits of effective teams. I have been dwelling on why that may be; Around 75% of the teams I have been in show symptoms of non-effectiveness. Part of this issue is the 'Fujairah effect'. Americans working with Canadians, Australians, Brits, etc in a goldfish bowl environment where some felt the need to know the business of others. Personal lives and grievances brought into the workplace.

Recently, I was part of a team called the Year 1 Gen Ed team at Fujairah Women's and I believe that there was great dissatisfaction within the group for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, I have not conducted a scientific study of this and have only anecdotal evidence. I believe that one particular member of the team was leading to growing dissatisfaction amongst members; several members of the team had asked to be moved to another part of the college after experiencing workplace bullying such as Chinese whispers, ganging up at meetings, etc. over the previous 4 years. All of the previous 3 Heads of the Dept were aware of the problem; the individual who appeared to cause many of the problems appeared to have a deep seated insecurity which manifested itself in discrete bullying and in time spent in attempting to groom the supervisor of the Dept. The current supervisor does appear susceptible to this. Up to this point I am not aware of the supervisor's knowledge of any of this.

I might add that previous to Fujiarah Women's, I had worked in two other schools and experienced great satisfaction in being part of two excellent teams.

I have listed some of the traits of effective teams below and a brief description of some of the problems within the Gen Ed team.

Individuals are self starters;
experienced teachers don't need supervising; it has a negative affect when they are asked to perform tasks that are an innate aspect of a teachers role. They don't, for example need to be told to provide revision materials for students at the end of a block of teaching and approaching examinations; this is typical of the emails received by those teachers in the ?Gen Ed group. The huge number of emails sent by managers at the college are seen as something of a joke by the faculty.

Leadership within the team is shared;
autocratic, micromanagers don't appear to function well in an education setting; one reason that teachers enter teaching because they desire autonomy. It is unclear whether the supervisor of the Gen Ed team is leaned on from above to manage in this manner; at times the leader appears very human whereas on occasion, curt and bossy. The point is, leadership is not shared.

Team members are mutually supportive;
missing at Fujairah women's since the individual described earlier promoted bullying herself and by those in her clique.

Member's value diversity and take pride in each other's contributions;
it seems strange to me that the same individual did not take any pride nor give credit to the contributions of others within the team; this gave rise to feelings of low self esteem to some of those within the group and silence withing meetings for fear of workplace bullying and or criticisms later. Many of those within the group have experienced workplace bullying from the faction led by the individual described above. I myself have experienced it, but not within the past year. When I experienced it, I informed my supervisor and it was stopped. The supervisor told me that others had complained about similar practices, but the bullying remains years later. It manifests itself in subtle and unpleasant ways, such as ignoring, whispering in the tearoom, rambunctious behaviour such as kissing and hugging, grooming and touching within the faction when alone with the person they sought to intimidate; shouting down of good ideas at meetings by one or more of the faction. Emails sent by the faction in support of one another's ideas or in criticism of someone's ideas from outside of the faction. Recently a colleague called an important meeting at 8:00 am and the individual arrived late and then asked why the meeting was at this time; the individual seems to relish disruption of the good ideas of others.

Loyalty is taken for granted;
there is a deep seated lack of trust within the team and this has formed and been strengthened over the past 4 years

Is the leader to blame?
No, I think not, but I do believe that the leader may be unaware of the situation. However, I feel unable to share with the leader as I have a lack of trust in many of the people at the college including supervisors - the best way to keep your job is to maintain a low profile at the college.

The pay is good, but many people don't live life to the full at the College and therefore feel a need for gossip and intimidation of others. I write this not to put people off Fujairah and the College, but in the hope that management read it and put a stop to the behaviour of this individual and her clan.

[veiledsentiments]

Have you now left? If not, some of your previous posts would make you easy to identify if you care.

I agree that the gossip problem has more chance to become a problem in the smaller places. I doubt that much can be done to change that even with the best intentions of any management. But, they should be looking at how their teams are functioning or not. The best team situations are those where it is mainly to share materials and ideas... as informally as possible. IMHO... HCT does tend to thrive on too much structure.

VS

[shimmeringsands]

VS

I am amazed that you have so much time to write all these posts. I know you are retired but I think you need a hobby. Are you a native speaker?
You have written in nearly every ME forum and you had the audacity to call my posts "novels".

I know that you ll write something back. Like most children you always need the last word so Ill let you have it. Bla Bla Bla Utter nonsense

[veiledsentiments]

NOYFB really, is it...

VS