Guiding Questions
Building a Collaborative Team

Activators initiate action. While an activator may say, “I can do this better and easier myself.” In reality, the investment of collaborative team members in designing and implementing a project is more likely to result in sustainable and even scalable change. However, it will take time, effort, and skillfulness to bring together a functional team capable of taking action to achieve goals and innovate for needed and important change. 

Consider these guiding questions to help you think through the qualities and skills of the team members you need to maximize potential to move through change processes necessary to a successful launch and implementation of a project. 
 

• What are the key skills and expertise needed to successfully complete this project?

  • You want to ensure the team has the necessary technical skills and knowledge to achieve the project goals.
     

• How can I bring together a diverse mix of perspectives to enhance creativity and problem-solving?

  • By focusing on diversity in skills, backgrounds, and thought, you will increase the likelihood that the team is equipped to handle challenges from multiple angles.
     

• How can I inspire commitment to the project’s goals and ensure everyone understands the shared vision?

  • You know the importance of alignment and motivation of project work to a vision like that of a Portrait of a Learner and must support team members to feel invested in the project’s success.
     

• What roles and responsibilities will each team member have, and how will we ensure accountability and collaboration?

  • You will need to clarify roles early on to promote ownership of the team’s work and to set clear expectations for how the team will work together and measure progress.

Project Idea 
Building a High Performance Team

Putting together a team begins with reflecting on your organization. You may have more people who you would like to be on the core team than you have “seats at the table.” The rule of thumb for an optimal team size is 7-12. However, you can make room for more team members if you think about each core team member building a network of 5-10 other participants in the school, district, or community who become an extended team. This extended team brings additional perspectives, insights, ideas, and feedback to the core team. 

The extended team is just as important if not more important than the core team for this network provides a shared ear to the ground that informs the core team’s understanding of perceived challenges, diverse perceptions, and potential solutions. Like the best hockey players, the core and extended team members are constantly watching where the puck is going, observing who may impede its motion toward the goal and why, and identifying the source of communication breakdowns that may create dysfunction within the team and across the community. 

Team Norms 

How Does a Core Team Create Norms for working together? I do. You do. We do. 

I DO. Creating team norms is the first outcome you will facilitate with the core design team. You don’t need a laundry list of team norms. We suggest you begin the first convening of the core design team by describing the purpose for everyone being in the room together and why that purpose is important enough to need team support. Is the purpose to create a local Portrait of a Learner? To align the work of the school with an already created Portrait? To assess progress toward Portrait implementation? Know the purpose. Share the purpose. Be ready to answer questions about the purpose. This sets the tone for the kind of work the team will need to accomplish.  

YOU DO. After sharing the purpose, ask team members to notemake, sketch, or list 3-4 team norms that they believe are important and necessary so that the team can be high functioning, timely, empathetic, collaborative, and respectful. You haven’t built a team of “clones’ but rather a team grounded in diversity. Conflicts will occur. Agreed upon team norms sustain the functionality of team members working together even when they disagree. (see example 1 for a set of team norms.)

WE DO. Ask each team member to share one norm from their list and everyone in the room to put a check on their notes if they also have identified that norm. Allow each team member to identify a different norm from their list until all norms have been shared with the group. Then, engage the core team in creating the 4-5 most critical norms from the list. Ask the team to discuss how the norms align with accomplishing their core purpose.  

Team Representation 

How do I build a spirited, 7-12 person core school design team? 

Consider who the influencers are in your school – not just those with positional authority but the people who when they speak, others listen. 

Analyze the different experience levels and diverse backgrounds of colleagues, especially those who bring a track record of positive collaboration, commitment to doing the hard work, are open to learning, live their efficacy, and have a tolerance for ambiguity and constructive tension? 

Reflect on the different roles you need on the team — who will bring analytical thinking, creative ideas, bridge-building skills, gatekeeper responses, organizational follow through? 

Who are your must-have team members and why? Who would you like if space is available and why? Who might be a better fit on the extended team and why?  

What demographics should be represented on the core team to gain the perspective of different voices? Students? Parents? Professional Staff? Classified Staff? What’s the balance that makes sense for the core team? Extended team? 

Ask people whose opinions you trust about the composition of the team. Seek out people who will give you different points of view, not just validate group thinking. 

Touch base face-to-face with potential core school design team members, share the purpose of convening the team, and why you would like them to serve. Give them time to ask questions or consider the invitation before they join the team.  

Ensure the team has a unified understanding of the mission, purpose, and goals. Clarity of direction keeps everyone aligned and focused on common objectives, avoiding confusion and inefficiency.

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Honing the skills below and using suggested strategies is a first step to developing robust activator skills for your toolbelt. 

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1. Observing
    

   1. Practice Seeing Everything
      What do you see when you walk into a room full of people? Most people build certain expectations and focus on whether or not what they’re seeing confirms what they expect to see.
      It takes some practice to get good at learning to observe what’s in the room without prediction. Practice, whether in a classroom, a restaurant, the grocery store, or a park:
       

      • What shoes are people wearing?

      • Who looks happy? Who is not?

      • Who is comfortable? Who is uncomfortable?

      • Who is bored?

      • Who is fidgeting? Who is tapping out a rhythm? Who moves with their hands when they talk?

      • How many are left-handers?
         

   2. The goal is to break your observation routines and begin to take in the whole of the space and the actions within it.
       

   3. Reading a Room… this is essential when working in or with any group. What is the mood? What is the readiness? Think - is this a morning meeting with people eager to be involved? Or is it an afternoon faculty meeting where everyone just wants to go home?

      • Reading the Room allows you to adjust every part of your plan, so you are meeting the needs of the participants.

      • Reading the Room is a continuous project: If the group is getting bored, or confused, or angry, or frustrated, a strong activator knows how to respond in real time.
         

   4. Shadowing. Can you really walk in someone else’s shoes? If you hope to change education you must be able to see the learner experience from the learners’ perspectives. Shadowing a Student is strongly suggested at least a few times a year, choosing very different students each time. (see Stanford d.school https://dschool.stanford.edu/shadow-a-student-k12) 
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      • Do everything the student does, and dress appropriately. If the student has physical education, participate and at least visit any locker room. If the student eats a school lunch, eat a school lunch wherever the student eats. If there’s an assignment in class, do the assignment.
         

      • Keep track of your own emotions and reactions, as well as what is happening around you. Are you happy? bored? inspired, frustrated? angry? challenged? Those emotions are the creation of the learner experience, and the learner experience is largely created by the learner interface students in your school face every minute of every day.
         

2. Listening
    

   1. Interviewing. The best interviews - group or individual - happen when the interviewer does two things: first, they speak very little, and second, they react neutrally. (see CASEL) https://schoolguide.casel.org/resource/empathy-interview-protocol/) 

      • Ask questions that can’t be answered with just “yes” or “no.” Keep the questions as open-ended as possible.

      • Say upfront that there are “no right answers.” Students expect that every question they’re asked in school has a “right” answer that the adult already knows. Former students - everyone who has been in school - expect the same.

      • Choose your environment carefully. For many, an office setting is intimidating. For some students and former students, the school building itself is intimidating. Outside is a great solution, but a room with comfortable furniture and natural light will work.
         

   2. Overhearing. The goal of overhearing, whether students, parents, or professional peers, is not to discipline or control. Rather it is an opportunity to gather unvarnished truths about the emotions and beliefs of others.
       

      • A second purpose of overhearing conversations is the opportunity to learn how people truly communicate - the words, phrases, and concepts that occur will help you with every other listening task.
         

   3. Perceptions of Silence. In the novel Borderliners (Høeg 1995), a character says, “When I speak, you should listen, first and foremost, to my pauses. They speak louder than my words.” Silence often says as much, or more, than words. Observing a school, consider the role of silence and pay careful attention to who is silenced and who is heard.
       

   4. Defusing Resistance and Anger. When you encounter resistance and anger, take the time to collect the language and emotions being expressed. Let the rants go on because they offer you important information about what a person fears. Next ask, “What frightens you about this?” “What most concerns you?” When you know the fears you can develop strategies to help allay them.
       

3. Imagining
    

   • Let new ideas run free in your head.

   • Zero-Based Thinking - what might school be like if you could design it from scratch? If you hadn’t ever seen a school?

   • Dreaming - Think big. Look for your ultimate destination, even if it seems unattainable.

   • Always ask, “What If?’ This is the question that catalyzes change.
      

4. Involving
    

   • Team Building. There is no exact formula for forming a team. Every group is filled with differing personalities, capabilities, and skills. Make people comfortable enough that they can both discuss what they can do and what they need help with.
      

   • Finding Influencers. Positional power is one thing, but those with social networking (the old face-to-face kind) often have more influence for and against transformation. Who are the influential people in your building or system? How will you identify them? Involve them? Win them over?
      

   • Opening Access. Closed groups, groups that operate behind closed doors, typically generate mistrust, misinformation, and anger. You may have a rule that “people can say anything” in your meetings or online conversations, but maintaining openness, a willingness to discuss your process, and an invitation for others to participate in some way makes a big difference.
      

5. Communicating
    

   • Within Your Team: Consider a Shared Document - Google or Microsoft - that allows the team to assemble thoughts. Take turns summarizing what’s new daily or weekly. Be careful with email threads, which can be lost in our daily flood.
      

   • Without: Update your school, your district, and your leadership weekly. Even if nothing has happened that week, let people know what will happen. Invite feedback and stay in front of any rumors.
      

   • Every Day: Be ready to answer questions from colleagues, parents, students, and people at the grocery store. Build a set of talking points you can use so information is consistent.
      

   • Social Media: Be careful with your wording, and don’t make promises, but find ways to promote the learning you want to see when you see it. Use kid voices when you can, but never names or images with faces.
      

   • Media: Consider a YouTube channel showing your successes. Ask your school communications person for assistance in answering questions and developing press releases when public events are in progress. Ask any neighborhood conversation sites if there is a moderator you can keep informed. Don’t miss those who don’t have children in school - consider offering very short articles to a Senior Housing newsletter, as an example.
      

   • UDL. Universally-designed communication not only increases your engagement with the very people who need you most - our vulnerable populations - it also builds the Universally-Designed Learning skills of the entire organization. Are all your communications accessible by all? Those who struggle with vision, hearing, speaking, attention, reading, writing, or in-room events all have voices that need to be heard, and all need to be kept informed. Everything from language to colors, typefaces, online formats, in-room participation, and contact forms must be easy for all to adapt.