Leadership training for youth workforce managers

Tony Taylor - 16 February 2009

Is this quite such a taken-for-granted good thing? Leadership skills and management skills training have been around in Youth Work for many a good day. Indeed it is tired cliché to argue that folk in Youth Work are especially lacking in this respect. And the purveyors of management training have a pretty dodgy track record in terms of influencing for the better services to young people. Whilst, for what it's worth, in my experience those with the most diplomas in management, who could with a straight face talk about 'out-of-the box thinking', had the most negative relationships with workers.

Perhaps it doesn't matter as it will be good to get so many people together and they will learn from each other. On the other hand, as the outcomes business-led philosophy of the last 20 years and more is in crisis, isn't this a great opportunity to think otherwise - to revive a debate about workers' and young people's management and control?

As for FPM Training, you can but wonder at the credentials of an outfit, who embrace without a flicker of doubt the Myers- Brigg Type Indicator assessment as a way of improving 'relationships, productivity and efficiency in the work environment'? This inventory based on Jung's speculative theory of personality proposes that there are 16 personality types. It is seductive when folk like easy answers to the complexity of why we are who we are. It fits the tick box mentality of the day, but it's generalised, unsound and dangerous [ see their web site at http://www.fordpartnership.co.uk/RVEe22a2a76f0094089b58469072ecc5779,,.aspx]