Last week, I went to one of LUL's 'Time for Action' workshops for Station Supervisors. Every Supervisor on the Underground will be going to one of these events.

So what is it all about? It's all part of management's plan to stop us being 'dinosaurs', make us 'unafraid of change', and get us to supervise station staff more effectively ie. get them to work harder. I came away feeling strongly that the key theme was to change the workers rather than to change the way that work is organised. LUL does not intend to change itself; it intends to change us.

Not surprisingly for those of us who have been to such events before, there were plenty of buzzwords and diagrams - our vision, our strategy, our challenge, our plan, our foundations, and so on. LUL is, apparently, active, accountable, collaborative, fair & consistent and direct - although in most staff's experience, managers are very far from this laudable ideal.

But no, let's not talk about how the company is managed, let's talk about how we can be better supervisors instead, and let's do it in three groups. The first discussed what makes a good supervisor; the second, what makes a bad supervisor; and the third, in which I found myself, what the future supervisor would be like. Our group rapidly concluded that there were two entirely different visions of the future supervisor - ours and management's. So we drew a thick line down the middle of our flipchart paper and wrote two lists instead of one:

• In our vision, the future station supervisor will:
  • have enough staff to supervise
  • have more say in issues such as schematics and rostering
  • be kept informed
  • not be treated like a child
  • have the right equipment and technology to do the job
  • have good reason to feel motivated and enthusiastic
  • be allowed to take the initiative
• The company's vision, though, would have the future station supervisor:
  • supervising several stations at once
  • losing station functions eg. ticket selling, via franchising to outside bodies
  • taking over management roles eg. competence management
  • seeing new technology replacing jobs
  • restricted by a rigid, target-driven management

A self-assessment questionnaire then followed, which tells you to what extent you are oriented to Task, Team or Individual - in my case, not so much to the task, much more to the team and the individual. I dropped points on Task because I wouldn't spy on my workmates, insist that my ideas were best, or crack the whip over the station staff. If that makes me insufficiently task-oriented, then I can live with that.

Looking at the staff around us, we were presented with a model that considered their attitude and energy levels and pigeonholed them accordingly. So,

• poor attitude, low energy = victim
• good attitude, high energy = observer
• poor attitude, high energy = saboteur
• good attitude, high energy = player

Our job, of course, is to try to make everyone a player. Up your energy, sort out your attitude. The hypothetical cases we were given made it clear that the CSA who comes to work and does his/her job perfectly is just not good enough - s/he is an observer, not a player, and needs to jump up and down a bit more. And no doubt I and other union activists would come out as saboteurs, as sticking up for workers against management probably counts as 'poor attitude'.

For us to get the best out of those we manage - sorry, supervise - there is a similar model, based on how much we support and challenge staff:

• high support, low challenge = nurturer
• low support, low challenge = abdicator
• low suppport, high challenge = taskmaster
• high support, high challenge = coach

Yes, you guessed it: we should all aspire to be coaches (none of that soppy nurturing business) - although in LUL, it is pretty clear that managers are rewarded for being taskmasters.

All of us at the workshop repeatedly insisted that we wanted management not just to lecture us but to listen to our concerns and ideas. We were assured that they would. But don't hold your breath - like I said, these workshops are about changing us, not changing LUL.

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There is also an issue about the location, as all the workshops take place at a venue near Angel/Barbican, creating considerable additional travelling time for Supervisors who live or work some distance away. I raised this with management and suggested:

• using a variety of venues, so everyone could attend a local venue
• reducing the duration of the event
• paying overtime for the additional travelling time.

Management refused all three due to this being a 'one-off'. I would encourage reps from groups whose members are most affected by this to get a 'failure to agree' at level one and refer the issue to the functional council. Otherwise, I will put it on the agenda anyway, but a few local referrals would strengthen our hand.

On the day, it was explained that the very reason for the 11:00-18:00 timing was so that the framework agreement would not be breached ie. SSs on late turns would finish at 23:00 the previous day and get (exactly) 12 hours rest before an 11:00 start at the workshop. SSs on early turn the day after the workshop would also get their 12 hours. But, of course, this does not take travelling time into account. And it assumes that every late turn finishes by 23:00 and every early turn starts at 06:00 or later.