How Healthy Is Your Team? The Importance of a Team Health Check

Written By Michael Iannini, Council of Internationals Schools Affiliated Consultant and ACAMIS Leadership Facilitator and PD Coordinator

We all know the importance of health, in every aspect of our lives. Focusing on the physical, mental and emotional health of individuals, especially over the this past year, is no longer something we can just talk about. And, when you consider that a team of teachers is simply a group of individuals, doesn’t it stand to reason that focusing on good health applies to teams too? In fact, by focusing on the team, you might find it easier to address the wellbeing of more individuals in a shorter period of time and with less resources.

If this is a bit of a foreign concept for you, you’re not alone. Team health is a relatively new phrase, but one that – if given the proper attention – can positively change the way teachers collaborate in your school.

A healthy team is vital for numerous reasons. It holds your teachers accountable, keeps the team focused on what matters by ensuring it stays aligned with the values and mission of the school, and to make sure the team is complying with the myriad of assignments senior leadership throw at them. 

Conducting a Team Health Check

So, what do I mean when I say ‘team health’, and why is assessing it necessary?

To put it in the simplest terms, team health enables you to gauge how well you’re doing in all aspects of teaching and learning; ranging from relationships within the team that impact teaching and learning to decision-making processes and meeting effectiveness. It’s essentially an assessment that helps you identify positives and opportunities for team growth plus identify negatives or potential risks your team is facing – especially with respect to how a team attends to their pedagogical responsibilities and communicates these responsibilities with management – which are two important aspects to an effective teaching team.

A team health check will help your team realise perceived weaknesses, definite strengths, and use this intel to raise standards and improve function. This in turn creates a waterfall effect that better serves the stakeholders of the school – everyone from the community the school resides in to those your team serves directly, the students.

Conducting a team health check will also help you to see how efficient and effective the teaching and learning for the entire organisation is, how engaged teams are with the school development plan, and to ensure it’s meeting all necessary obligations.

You might be thinking, “Okay then, what does a ‘healthy’ team look like?” Well, there’s one very good way to tell.

At the heart of every team, there are four very important themes. They are:

• Interdependence

• Clarity of Purpose

• Intergroup Relationships

• Effective Leadership

If your team is healthy, a health check (otherwise known as an evaluation) will show that the team and school’s progression is tracking in alignment with those themes. But if your team is experiencing unhealthy symptoms, you’ll be able to see a disconnect between the themes and the way the team (and overarching organisation) runs.

Make the Team Health Check a Priority

Often teams are time-starved and don’t dedicate the necessary energy needed to engage in an evaluation process like this. But, the health check should be at the top of your team’s yearly ‘to do’ list. Not doing so will be detrimental to the team and school, because ‘bad’ team health can often lead to things like:

• The dissonance between the actions and aims of the teachers and leadership

• Micro-managing, or alternatively a distinct lack of management

• Mistrust among teachers, and an overall lack of transparency

• Long-winded, seemingly directionless team meetings

• Teachers being unclear about what’s expected of them

• Decisions taking too long to be made, and/or not being followed through adequately

• Inconsistency, and a lack of communication

• Relational challenges, with conflicts arising often

• Lack of effective leadership

• High turnover of team members

So, if your team is exhibiting any of these symptoms, what are some things you can do to improve it?

1. Make sure your team members are intermittently briefed about how they’re expected to contribute to the team. Make their roles clear, to avoid any uncertainties from your teachers. Take every opportunity to remind them of the school’s core values and core purpose.

2. Create a solid structure for team meetings, including the need for decision-making if applicable, and provide enough information to all team members to make sure they can adequately make such a decision when it’s required.

3. If conflicts arise, try to keep discussions on topic and rooted in the core values and purpose of the school. If the conflict is purely personal, does it happen between the same people each time? Perhaps it’s a simple matter of a personality clash, or is it something more in-depth?

4. Make sure you’ve got a great facilitator. Some Team Leaders will need to build their skills through training and external guidance. At a minimum, a good facilitator distances themselves from the topics and is constantly directing discussions to ensure equity in terms of team member input, as well as keeping everyone on topic.

5. If you experience frequent teacher turnover, try to find out why through private exit interviews. This can help pinpoint any unhappiness within the teams, so you can treat it at the team-level. Perhaps the problem results from your recruitment mechanisms. Look into profiling ideal team members and recruit based on that profile.

In conclusion, the health of the team is a direct reflection of the health of the school it operates in, and feedback through a health check is one of the most effective ways to track such metrics. Further, you don’t need to be a large or prestigious school in order to have viable results. Your team can be in tip-top shape, even if your school itself is deemed as ‘small’, so good health is always something to aim for. After all, prevention is better than cure, and conducting a team health check is the best way to do that.

I also have a free tool for Team Leaders to assess their own leadership capacity as it relates to the Objectives and Purpose of the team.