What just happened?

My staff and I participated in this "Improv Training" study. Basically, it was all about using the ideas behind improv (attitude of acceptance, no negativing, for the good of the group) to improv how we work together as a team. The training was long (3 hrs.) but the staff, in spite of not having been excited about going to it at first, actually enjoyed it and said they got something out of it.

The following staff meeting, I decided to talk about staff expectations. I felt that, as a staff, we had hit the "spring slump" where overall everything's still going okay but little things are starting to slide and staff members are losing motivation and drive. I had also heard some concerns from staff members about other staff members not following through on some tasks (e.g. collecting lock-out money, doing rounds when on duty).

The discussion started off pretty good. My grads and I challenged the staff to dig deeper into what their expectations were. For example, we didn't want them to just say that they wanted "respect," we wanted them to elaborate on what it means to show respect, what would be some actions that would show one staff member that another staff member is respecting them.
We started and I was happy with people's comments and how they were questioning and challenging each other. Of course, there were a few who said things like "why don't we just say 'open-minded'...it's all the same anyway" but I didn't feel like that was the overall attitude.
One of the staff members brough up the issue of "tolerance" vs. "acceptance" in an attempt to challenge us to move more toward acceptance. Some were having a hard time understanding the difference. There were some very obvious non-verbal cues showing that people didn't care or weren't paying attention anymore. The staff (and I was so proud of her for that!) pointed this out and from there on, it all went downhill.
Two days later, I still can't really explain what happened.
One staff member questioned why we were even talking about this. How would staff expectations affect our residents?
I tried to explain that some of us not living up to the expectations of the staff did have a negative affect on residents. I gave some examples - and maybe, in the heat of the moment, didn't pick the most significant examples. But we've been having problems with collecting lock-out money. Some staff members have been slacking, which is why we spent the past two weeks hunting down lock-out money (it costs $7.00 here if you lock yourself out) from September and October. Residents were frustrated with us; I spent hours trying to figure out what was even going on with the lock-out money. Granted, I could have paid more attention to it as well. But I guess what really frustrated me was that after I had asked them to start knocking on people's doors (which had been an expectations all along but had not happened), many of them just didn't do it. And they didn't even feel bad about it.
Well, from there everything got out of control. Staff members got defensive. They said things like, "if we are making an impact on someone's life and changing their life, why are we being evaluated on administrative tasks"...I tried to point out that watching football with a group of male residents isn't changing their life. Obviously I appreciate them having positive relationships with their residents, but in the end, we are here to be educators and to teach our residents something...and I know that's not always happening. Some of the RAs have done an amazing job incorporating our learning outcomes into their educational programs and following the curriculum, others have done the bare minimum (e.g. if the task was to organize a team builder with a reflection aspect, some played capture the flag without any follow-up conversation or debriefing).
I know what I just wrote may sound pretty harsh. I don't think I worded at as strongly during the meeting. I know, for a fact, I even said that I was proud of them and what we had accomplished so far and that we could have those conversations of how we could bring it to the next level - but that I wanted to bring it to the next level. That I didn't want to get complacent.
Oooo, that didn't sit well with them. Several staff members said it "hurt their feelings" that I suggested if they were just doing what they'd been doing all along was being complacent.
It was like they thought they were the best RAs on the face of the earth. The ironic part, of course, was that the RAs who thought that were the ones who were the ones slacking off and not taking things seriously.
I guess I got more frustrated than I should have. I probably should have stopped the conversation earlier and continued it in 1-on-1 conversation.
But I still don't understand how they could get offended at me saying that I wanted to take it to the next level?

I think we have accomplished a lot this year. And I'm much more satisfied with how we incorporated the living learning community into daily interactions, events and initiatives. But I think we still have a LONG way to go. I don't think corridor meetings are as effective as they could be - I think they are solely a way of information dissemination and when I tried to include experiential learning activities, not all of the RAs did them with their corridors (some having the dumbest excuses ever...like, 'oh i lost the handout you gave us and forgot that we were supposed to do that....hmmm, and that after we had talked about it for like 10 minutes at a staff meeting).

Anyway, I'm just getting more frustrated again. I think the challenge is how you get that feedback across to RAs, who think they're perfect. There are some, whom I give feedback, and they just shrug it off and I know they're not even going to consider it.
We have invented this "job jar"...if you're late or you miss a deadline, we will ask you to pick up some administrative task. Nobody loves having to pick a task from the job jar, but most of them do it. One of my RAs even, when she forgot something, came running into my office and was like, "okay, where the job jar? Let me pick something," before I could even say something to her. Others have very different reactions, ranging from annoyence to getting defensive when I remind them to pick up a job jar task.

I guess what it comes down to is just their attitude about the position. They've done a pretty good job all year and I just didn't expect several of them to "just not care" and I didn't expect them to be so full of themselves. Maybe I should have seen it coming...already during training, other staffs looked at us and said, "Oh, that staff thinks they're better than everyone else." I just saw the excitement my staff brought to the position and loved it. Somehow, that excitement and passion turned into arrogance.

On a positive note though, at least some of the staff members understood where I was coming from and agreed with my perspectives. Interestingly enough, those were the staff members who had been doing an outstanding job all year.

Okay, enough rambling. I will have to continue to do some damage-control over the next few days and I should probably get some sleep so I'm ready for it.