Summary
During the 2025/26 Academic Year, I am undertaking an in-house professional development programme called "The Edinburgh Manager". This post is a reflection on the third event in the course, which was called "Line Management Essentials: The Foundations of Management".
This session was delivered by an external provider, and was the first in a series of four workshops. So far, it was the least engaging. This session had the most “buzz words” and least amount of concrete and actionable insight. That saying, there were two things I took away from this session, which I want to incorporate into my management toolkit.
Psychological Safety
Since becoming a line-manager I have been concerned by ensuring my team have input into the decisions which affect them and their ways of working. While I took this approach from the beginning, it has taken time to build trust between us. The discussion about psychological safety gave me an opportunity to reflect on how I might better build trust in the future.
I’m curious to present this to my team and see which stage different members relate to.
Values as Motivators
The other concept I took away from this session was a method for understanding other people’s values. There is nothing overly complicated; the method to understanding is simply to present a list and ask the person/s to select the most relevant 6. While I m aware that I am drive by my values, I had not translated this to my team. Understanding someone’s values can be key to understanding their decision making process, their reactions in different situations, and building trust. This is something I am also looking forward to presenting to my team.
(Bendanec, CC BY-SA 4.0
(Bendanec, CC BY-SA 4.0
