A key challenge as a leader is to develop a high-functioning team.
Twelve months ago my challenge was to create a new teaching team for a newly created department comprising five existing teachers and six new teachers.
As I approach the end of my first year, have we achieved this goal? Have we been successful in becoming a high-functioning, cohesive and motivated team? What does a cohesive team look like? How do we know? Where’s the evidence?
My first reflective action was to determine the behaviours that are indicative of a cohesive team and I drew upon Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (2002) a model as it have been actively promoted across the school prior to my arrival.
Below is the iconic Lencinoni Pyramid:
I also used The Leadership Challenge (Kouzes and Pozner) as a guide for implementing practices and found many similarities with Lencioni. The five key practices are:
The evidence
My main evidence comprised: observations, conversations from our Annual Review Process, informal discussions and through a short survey with a number of team members.
The following is a visualised of the comments and observations in a word cloud. [SIDE NOTE: I use word clouds with students to get them to summarise text and sources and have them write down a prominent emerging sentence which in this case might be: “Group members support team work”.]
The evidence indicates that the team has emerged as high-functioning and when I presented this at our Annual Retreat, there were many comments from the leadership team that supported this claim.
What did I learn?
So how did this happen? What actions did I, as a leader, take to grow this team? What were some of the strategies? Can we replicate this? What will I need to do next year to on-board new team members?
So how did this happen? What actions did I, as a leader, take to grow this team? What were some of the strategies? Can we replicate this? What will I need to do next year to on-board new team members?
The following are some of the actions and comments that outline some of the key actions and strategies that worked this year:
Building a Committed Team through an inspired vision: The department has been provided with clear direction and development. Communication is very open and questions may be asked at any time.
Encouraging Conflict – Challenge the Process
- Lively, entertaining meetings/work place environment make critical issues visible for discussion
- The sustained use of data walls and collective discussions highlight areas for intervention.
- Meetings are practical, useful, collaborative, and provide interesting insight into other subjects within the group.
- Problems are identified quickly due to a free interchange of objective views on approaches being taken
- Colleagues are free to promote, accept, modify, and challenge views on approaches in order to push for continued improvement and problem-solving.
Building trusting relationships by being open and accessible:
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Developing strong insight into the unique characteristics of team members through observing and listening through the formal annual performance process and through informal interactions.
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Following through – making sure that I follow up and get back to individuals. I use a small book that I carry everywhere and make a point of opening writing and referring to my notes in the book,, being accessible and demonstrating credibility
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Encouraging the heart (Kouzes and Posner) by recognising contributions from the team and seeking out individuals to acknowledge their achievements (celebrating small wins is very powerful tool in a long journey).
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Including a good news item in each team meeting & supporting team social events.
Next Steps: Next year, with the introduction of Year 7, MYP and a new DP subject, we will certainly be busy. There will be new challenges as we grow our team and onboard new staff members. I will revisit Kouzes and Posner and Lencioni to refine the processes as we develop our newer and expanded expert teaching team.
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