I currently work on a professional learning team with six other sixth grade middle school teachers. Our team is made up of a variety of personalities, experience, specialties, etc. Despite our many differences, our team functions like a well-oiled machine. We are productive, successful and each member experiences professional (and even at times personal) growth from his experience in the group. When I reflect on this and other teams I’ve been on in the past, some successful and some unsuccessful, I continually ask:
“What makes or breaks a team?”
As I was having this conversation with a colleague, he recommended that I read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. In the book, Lencioni explains the different points of breakdown, or “dysfunctions,” in a team. When a team overcomes the obstacles of these dysfunctions, they are able to become a successful, cohesive, productive group. Lencioni sets up a pyramid diagram that places the “Absence of Trust” as the first dysfunction of a team. Essentially, without trust you can not have a functional team. He dives further into the idea that a person’s willingness to be vulnerable is what allows this trust to be built.
For me, there was no one defining moment where I felt “trust happened” on our team. Instead it was a collection of many interactions. Informal conversations in the hall, regular meetings where we shared instructional practices that we believed in and working out a shared vision for our direction together all contributed to our team’s solid foundation.
During these times, we were able “expose” ourselves as professionals and as people. When we saw that our ideas were received by others without judgment (regardless of whether they were good, bad, or ugly), we made the decision to open up a little more. It was kind of like a leap of faith. Being open and willing to accept criticism can be intimidating—and for some people it’s down right scary.
So how do you get people to be vulnerable? Does vulnerability look different for different people? Is a team destined for doom without vulnerability? Can a team still be successful if some members are willing to be open up and others aren’t?
How much vulnerability does it take to build trust?
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8 comments:
In my experience, these are absolutely key questions, because trust lays the foundation for later growth.
From what I've experienced and read, PLCs can be very successful models for teacher and school improvement because they create an environment in which teachers learn from each other. By collaboratively developing curriculum and assessments, by discussing instructional practices, by sharing ideas and perspectives, teachers gain knowledge and skills from each other. But an inherent piece of the collaborative process is disagreement and conflict; that is, as teachers work in really substantive ways with colleagues, they will inevitably have differences of opinion that must be addressed. When high-functioning teams are able to see and use conflict as a productive resource, treating differences of opinion as exciting opportunities to explore and understand different perspectives, individual growth increases and students benefit from continually improving practices.
But before a team can use conflict productively, team members have to trust each other. Without trust, nothing else can follow.
Corinna asked:
Can a team still be successful if some members are willing to be open up and others aren’t?
I would argue that the answer to this question is no! By their very nature, learning teams are most productive when working together...and that is impossible if one member refuses the opportunity to join the process.
Another interesting question becomes what can collaborating members of a team do to draw resistant members into the fold?
Or should you cut your losses and isolate that person, focusing your energies where they are likely to bring change?
Interesting thoughts...
Bill
I worked on a middle level team that had some players that didn't want to go along with what the majority of us did. We respected that this person had their own style and asked only that we present as united a front as possible in front of the students. She eventually came around - not from anything we said or did, but from the pressure the students put on her to conform. They simply asked why she didn't do it the way the rest of the team did and expressed how those structures helped them. I think eventually she realized that it was helping her as well - change just takes time. BTW - we didn't isolate her, just let her change in her own time.
Teresa wrote:
She eventually came around - not from anything we said or did, but from the pressure the students put on her to conform.
Neat, Teresa....
Do you think that this "pressure to conform" can come from other teachers too? How about administrators?
Another thought: Do you think that the real resistors would end up leaving because of the discomfort of not conforming?
Interesting ideas....
Bill
While a certain level of conformity within teams is necessary and positive (especially when members are conforming to recognized best practices), conformity can also be a real danger for teacher teams.
As I said earlier, I believe that productive conflict is the driving force behind teacher improvement in PLC teams. But when there is an emphasis on conformity within a team, this can lessen or even eliminate those differences of opinion and practice that create the opportunity for substantive conversations.
So where is the boundary where conformity goes from a positive to a negative practice? How do you maintain trust within a team, set certain standards to which everyone is expected to conform, and also allow room for individual innovation and flexibility? And how does administration play into this -- should administrators be expecting teachers to conform to certain practices or standards?
Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word "conform" without some context. The pressure from the students came in having the teacher adhere to similar policies and classroom procedures as the rest of the team, i.e. notebooks, homework late policies, what a paragraph meant, etc. In other words -those things that a team should stand together on in the best interest of middle level kids. We absolutely, positively learned to live with what we called our "creative differences" (a certain argument over the ending to The Giver comes to mind!).
I think the real trust building on our team began with trying to negotiate those differences. Philosophically we may not have always agreed - but we always respected the opinions of one another. We were put together by an administrator - with her own reasons we found out later - and it took a good two years to really have the level of trust and relationships that we needed to be highly functioning - but it was worth the wait!
Teresa wrote:
We were put together by an administrator - with her own reasons we found out later - and it took a good two years to really have the level of trust and relationships that we needed to be highly functioning - but it was worth the wait!
What an interesting question, Teresa....How long does it take for a team to be highly functioning, and is this timeframe somewhat standard, or does it vary because of the personalities of the people on the team?
Better yet, if it takes 2-3 years for a team to develop the trust necessary to be highly functioning, does that mean that PLCs are not a strategy that will work in many schools because of high rates of turnover?
I'm thinking particularly of high needs schools where turnover rates hover near 50%....PLCs would be powerful in those schools, but not possible because teams will never stay consistent enough to develop the trust necessary to succeed.
Now my mind is charged!
Any thoughts?
Bill
I wonder if there is a chicken-and-egg situation here. Are PLTs more difficult to build in high-need schools because there is such high turnover, or is high turnover in high-need schools partially a result of the lack of PLTs (or, more broadly, a lack of the types of positive working conditions that PLTs help to produce)?
Is there any research that suggests that, in high needs schools in which working conditions have improved as a result of higher levels of collaboration and organizational commitment, teacher turnover rates have gone down? Could PLCs/PLTs be just what the doctor ordered in high needs schools?
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