SP Danny Lawley and the team

Busy preparing for the second part of the Living-the-Values Workshops Wave III? Don't know how to make it more enjoyable and fruitful? To give you some inspiration, OffBeat recently spoke with participants of the first phase.

Station Sergeant William Poon Chi-ming, Sergeants Chan Tak-kee and Yau Chi-kwong, and Police Constables Cheng Wai-sum and Hon Yan-chak, participated in a workshop organised by the Police Tactical Unit in January with Superintendent Danny Lawley as their facilitator.

With a well-prepared reference pack from Service Quality Wing, SP Lawley said although they did not share the same mother tongue, no major communication difficulties arose with the Junior Police Officers.

"For expatriate colleagues who wish to do the workshops themselves, I strongly advise they get a Chinese officer to assist just like I did. SSGT Poon's excellent translation work and SQW's bilingual reference pack helped me overcome any language barriers," he said, adding that a relaxing environment helped untie participants' tongues.

"To separate officers from the working environment, we went to Tai Mei Tuk for a day. Wearing plain clothes and eating snacks, we enjoyed ourselves at the workshop and came up with tonnes of ideas."

SGT Chan and PC Cheng said the relationship between the facilitator and participants played a pivotal role in the workshop's success.

"We feel very comfortable raising our concerns with SP Lawley because we frequently have close contact with him. It takes time to build such a close relationship, and mutual trust and respect among officers are the basic elements for good internal communication," SGT Chan said.

Impressed by his colleagues' overwhelming reaction, PC Hon said: "The enthusiastic responses surprised me a lot - it was so different to the previous workshops I attended."

SGT Yau said good preparation was essential to a smooth workshop.

"We were briefed on the discussion's format and topics well beforehand which helped us fully prepare for it," he said.

Assisting SP Lawley in organising the workshop, SSGT Poon said to make dialogue more comprehensive and effective, they put officers of different ranks and teams into the same discussion group.

He added that measures implemented by Force Management to deal with concerns raised by officers participating in Waves I and II, encouraged officers to speak this time around.

"Knowing their views will be seriously considered by the management, officers are more willing to give their views in the workshops."

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