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Lead A Team That Gets Along – Helping Your Practitioners Develop Positive Relationships

It’s not only children who exhibit challenging behaviour, staff do too, and they need to feel valued and supported in order to be productive

Cath Hunter
by Cath Hunter
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A large part of my job involves supporting staff in developing strategies to manage challenging behaviour in children. I also spend a significant amount of time supporting senior staff in managing challenging behaviour from other staff members. In my experience, although the behaviour may differ, challenging children and challenging staff have a lot in common.

The vast majority of people do not choose to present difficult behaviour, and in the same way as children are communicating through their behaviour, so too are adults. When children are challenging adults, refusing to do things and being difficult, they are often feeling scared and anxious, and when adults show similar behaviour, the feelings are often the same.

So, how can we respond to challenging adults and create a positive working environment?

Positive relationships

The importance of a positive working environment cannot be underestimated. Ensuring people feel they belong and are needed and valued, along with dealing with negativity, blame and gossip, so that people feel happy and experience job satisfaction, is crucial if you want an effective workforce.

The quality of staff relationships affects practitioners’ ability to work together effectively and create an emotionally safe environment for the children.

Relationships between staff should incorporate open and honest communication along with mutual respect and appreciation. This can be demonstrated in front of the children so they are able to experience the positive impact of relating to other people in this way.

Conversely, if relationships between staff are characterised by mistrust, resentment and animosity then this may be witnessed by the children through verbal and non-verbal interactions, which can result in them becoming anxious and their behaviour changing.

It’s essential that staff look after and support each other’s emotional wellbeing and are able to identify positive ways to manage their stress. If staff are feeling fragile or vulnerable, this can affect their ability to develop and maintain relationships with the children. So how can this be achieved?

Learn to reflect

The key to maintaining any good relationship is the ability to self-reflect. It’s beneficial for all practitioners to reflect on themselves and their practice in an honest and open manner while also considering how their behaviour may impact on other members of their team in a positive or negative way.

In order to develop this self-awareness, staff need to feel comfortable, and for other members of the team to demonstrate mutual support and a commitment to excellent practice. This creates a positive environment that encourages practitioners to identify and work together on areas that need improving – conducting honest appraisals of what they react to and why, along with listing strengths and areas to improve on, and cultivating a willingness to change.

The quality of relationships and levels of professionalism between staff across a setting can create either a supportive and effective team, or a divided group of people who are all struggling to go to work every day.

Case study

Sonia, a nursery practitioner, loved working with the children in her setting but was often negative and confrontational towards other members of staff. When challenged about this she would get upset, say that no one liked her and found it hard to understand her part in it. Her manager encouraged her to keep a brief journal entry at the end of each day and asked her to list what she enjoyed and didn’t enjoy and why. At the end of the week her manager was able to gently explore with her how she may have contributed to the conflicts and supported her to attend an assertiveness course, which she found invaluable.

Prioritise training

High-quality professional development is of paramount importance for all staff, so opportunities to access additional, relevant training need to be made available to everyone. Good training can impact an entire team by motivating individual staff members and providing opportunities to share good practice and encourage new ideas and initiatives.

Improve morale

Staff need to feel valued and supported in their work in order to be productive, and their morale can impact children in a positive or negative way. While it is a rewarding and enjoyable job, working in a nursery can be demanding and exhausting. To give their best to the children, they need to feel happy and fulfilled.

It is important that staff feel they are making a difference and that they are essential cogs in the wheel of nursery life. A setting needs to be emotionally safe for staff in order to be emotionally safe for children.

Final thoughts

In order for a nursery setting to be successful it’s crucial to nurture, support and empower the staff in the same way as you do the children. When staff feel valued and happy there is less likely to be conflict, and its absence will have a positive impact on staff, parents and children, resulting in a more harmonious place of work.


Improve your staff

Six things to remember when working on your team’s behaviour

Take care of the impact that being a manager has on you; remember to look after yourself so that you can look after and support others.
Remember that challenging staff are often dealing with challenging feelings.
Feeling valued and motivated is an essential ingredient of good practice.
Poor staff relationships can have a negative impact on children and their behaviour.
Self-reflection in a safe environment encourages ownership of behaviour and a willingness to change.
Model good practice to staff and children – all this applies to you too!

Cath Hunter is a play therapist (BAPT), trainer, therapeutic consultant and author specialising in understanding children’s behaviour. Her books include Understanding and Managing Children’s Behaviour through Group Work Ages 3–5 (Routledge). Visit therapeuticfamilyinterventions.co.uk.

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