Setting School Teams Up For Success
School leadership teams deal with complex challenges from the very beginning of the academic year and in international schools, this is often with several new staff members, creating what may feel like a completely new team.
How can you set your teams up so that they have the best chance of success when tackling the difficult job of school improvement?
Teamwork is built on trust. In Building Better Teams, George Karseras talks about the concept of swift trust, a term first used by Deborah Meyerson. Swift trust is about establishing trust in teams that need to come together quickly and make an impact. Although the term originated from research into emergency and rescue teams, Karseras argues that many teams in our modern and uncertain times share the features of these extreme teams. Swift trust starts with cognitive trust, supported by respect and assuming the competence of all team members. Then, emotional trust develops as team members show care and support for each other and demonstrate vulnerability.
He goes on to detail the first two stages of team building that foster both these components of trust - Get Set and Get Safe. These phases involve the co-creation and development of a shared understanding of the function and desired behaviours of the team.
Creating these agreements establishes what he calls same page trust, likening it to a contract. In coaching—whether one-on-one, group, or team—this essential phase of agreeing a way of working together takes place before the coaching begins and is often called contracting.
Dr. Amy Edmondson also highlights psychological safety as crucial for innovative teamwork. She defines it as:
“...an interpersonal climate where people feel able to express ideas, ask questions, quickly acknowledge mistakes, and raise concerns…” (2)
Co-creating agreements is a powerful leadership tool for fostering psychological safety. It sets boundaries, invites contributions from team members, and encourages collective learning.
In diverse international school leadership teams, these agreements are essential for surfacing what Amy Edmondson calls the invisible assumptions and mindsets that different groups may hold. With psychological safety in place, diverse perspectives can be shared, unlocking innovative possibilities (2).
Below are a sample of questions and an invitation you may wish to consider when working with your school teams this year.
If you would like to know more about how team coaching can support you in building awareness, improving communication and strengthening psychological safety so that you can solve the complex demands of school leadership, then click the link below.
What is the purpose of our team? (This is a big question itself!)
How will we make decisions as a team?
How will we disagree?
What stakeholders are not present in the team but whose voice needs to be brought into decisions? (This may be obvious such as students but you may want to include some less obvious examples such as the environment or future generations.)
How do we work towards everyone being able to openly share their thoughts and questions?
This invitation is taken from a Linkedin post written by Liz Fosslien on how to avoid groupthink and exploit the opportunities for creative and new thinking within a diverse group:
Write a ‘In this team it is OK to..’ list.
This may include things like ask clarifying questions, or ‘and how….’ or ‘and why…’.
