Richard,
Great observation, Richard. Getting feedback from a variety of individuals allows you to hear what they perceive as strengths and opportunities. This can provide you with a wealth of information for making improvements based on your student's needs. Keep it up!
Shannon Gormley
For my particular team the characteristics of effective teams that are present are, teamworkers and finishers. The parts that are missing are shapers, plants and specialists.
This was a very interesting theme to learn about coming from such a specific, specialized group within our college. We are very good at what we do here in Admissions, but I believe that some of our "team" skills suffer as a result. I definitely recognize the importance of having a team player in each department now as a way of maintaing the highest amount of productivity possible.
Innovative ideas, thinking outside the box
Hi Mitch,
Are these the characteristics that are currently present on your team? Or lacking? How are these or could these characteristics help your team succeed?
I'm a part of the safety committee on my campus and the team is fairly cohesive. We have shared puroses and goals. We have some team members that are action oriented, others that are thought oriented. I tend to be the only one on the committee that is people oriented. We collaborate well, but sometimes we have difficulty with a couple of members who are "shapers" that both have valid ideas on how to fix issues. Either of them can get disappointed if we don't "go with" their idea when it comes to solving a problem. That is the only thing that I see lacking that we need to work on for this committee.
Having a team with a mix of talents can better accomplish the shared goals because everyone can utilize their strengths; however, as you noted, sometimes there are challenges in working with the different personalities and understanding the best ways to communicate with each other. What do you think you can do to facilitate better teamwork with your safety committee, especially the shapers?
The shapers enjoy getting things delegated to them. I need to take advantage of this willingness to take on more responsibility and just offer them support as they take on that responsibility.
Great Tim! Let us know how it works for your team.
We also lack a finisher some of the time. Our team is great at recognizing and implimenting new ideas and then they seem to fall by the wayside after a few trys. We have all recognized this and have put a "team leader" in place whenever we are implementing something new with our students. The team leader is responsible for assigning specific tasks to other team members ( classroom visits, etc) and then following up with the entire team. So far, it is working well
It sounds like a great plan. What other tips and tricks can others offer when you don't have a finisher on your team?
The characteristics that are present in my team so far are Action Oriented and thought oriented. The one that we can improve upon is Procees oriented. It seems my team moves to quickly through the process. While they understand the process, they get the process done quckly even though i point out mistakes, they seem to fix it for a short moment and then at times go back to the way it was.
This is a terrific observation Helmi and provides you with an opportunity for your team. Since your team is thought oriented perhaps you can bring your observations to the team and allow them to think of potential long-term solutions for improving process. I suspect that having their buy-in on the process will help them take the right action moving forward. Thank you for your post.
In looking at the leadership team for my campus (executive team) I think we are lacking a resource investigator. sometimes we struggle with looking outside of the box.
Now that you have an understanding of your leadership team, how can you adapt to accommodate your lack of a resource investigator?
Dr. Jean Norris
We can try to look to other members of the campus to see if this fits their style. Or, we can each work to take an active role in this part to help make us well rounded.
My current team has more positives than negatives, but I realize that these negatives must be minimized quickly so that they do not leak into the positives. The biggest “positive†is that all team members are willing to help and are open to suggestions. Perhaps the biggest “negative†is that the team members do not have clearly defined goals and, therefore, do not know which task needs priority. This leads to a lack of initiative due to not having clear responsibilities.
I'm a fan of setting clear goals and expectations for the team. In the absence of shared goals, people may not be working in the same direction or get into trouble for "assuming" expectations. What might you do to help establish clearly defined goals in the future?
Dr. Jean Norris
I think the best approach is to always take time to repeat information back to the speaker(s) so as to tell others what you've understood to be a specific goal. After most meetings that include more than 2-3 individuals, I always put together an email, stating how I understood the topics that were discussed and I ask others to confirm the same.
The follow up email is a great practice Natasa. I know I certainly appreciate when I receive a summary email after a meeting to make sure we are all on the same page. Thank you for sharing!
Dr. Jean Norris
