A series of guides to some of the basics of Christian schools work.
You can read the guide online or download it as a pdf.
Manage a worker
A good manager…
“... is releasing but supportive.”
“... understands my gifts.”
“... listens to me, knows me well enough to be aware of how I’m feeling.”
“... supports me and does the things they say.”
“... leads but doesn’t control.”
Various schools workers, 2008
Starting points
You’ve been a schools worker for a while now, you’ve developed your strategy, you’re working with a great group of young people and schools see a real value in your role. Your team has begun to grow and suddenly you wake up one morning, no longer just a schools worker, but a manager. How did that happen?
In every walk of life, as soon as you become good at something it seems it’s time to move on. Of course there are some great reasons for this but it can happen without you even noticing it. Being a great schools worker doesn’t necessarily mean you can manage others to do the same, but it does mean you have a lot of experience to pass on. If you find yourself managing other schools workers and interns, it’s important to think through how to do it.
It’s now irrelevant how you got here, the question is, what do you do now?
Why should I manage?
Everyone needs to be managed. Whether you’re a self starter, an extrovert or a detailed person, everyone needs direction and oversight. It’s a manager’s responsibility to create an environment to enable people to thrive and achieve.
If you value your work then it’s worth investing time in learning how to manage people well. Like many things, management is best learnt from experience, but to think through what you are doing, how you are doing it and to constantly reassess is vital to the health of staff, volunteers, young people and the work. Without effective management, often the quality and quantity of someone’s work suffers, or worse still they experience burn out.
Workers need managers who can
- push them to get on with a task
- give them direction
- talk through issues and problems with them
- support them when they’re finding something hard
- praise them when they’ve done something really well
This guide looks at the basics of managing a schools worker and details some top tips for management. The second looks in more depth at some of the issues around management and encourages the reader to think through their own and their organisational policies.
Who should manage?
One of the problems in the Christian sector is that our managers are not always specialists in our field nor are they trained in management. Youth and schools workers are often managed by church leaders or a support group of volunteers, this is not an easy position to manage from.
The Youthwork Partnership and Amaze have launched a Youthworker Charter to help churches value their workers. It encourages leaders to be accountable in the way they manage their staff and adhere to some basic principles. This is a great way for non specialists to start to understand the issues and think about the needs of their worker.
If you are a non specialist manager of a schools worker, consider signing up to the Charter, alongside which, this guide should give you some starters on general management skills. For more guidance on schools work, you could spend time with another schools worker to get a gauge on some of the major issues or read up some of the articles or other posts on the schoolswork.co.uk website. Of course, the best thing you can do as a manager is to listen, challenge and support your worker and learn about schools work in that way.
Many schools workers do not make the best managers and it may be a play off between specific knowledge and management skills. Only you can decide who the appropriate person is to manage a worker. For most there won’t be a choice, but if there is, think it through.
However don’t be put off managing someone just because you don’t have the skills at the moment. Many of these can be learnt and tend to be learnt by practice.
How should I manage?
Schools workers, youth workers and volunteers are notoriously difficult to pin down. Try asking some youth workers what they’ve got on for the coming week and you are likely to get an ambiguous general response: “I’ve got a busy week next week, I’m all over the place.” How do you even begin to manage that response?
Managing someone is not about doing everything for them, it’s about enabling them to do the work themselves. Here’s where it gets tricky, we all work differently, so effective management is about helping someone to work in a way that suits them. Some people need to be supported in the detail, some need to be given a task and the flexibility to just get on with it.
