How well are you addressing the needs of your team?
How clear is your team’s purpose? Are your team members working interdependently to achieve shared goals? At the end of this article, I have a free assessment for team leaders to assess how well they are aligning their team members to work interdependently to achieve a shared purpose. But first, let’s explore the why and what of having a shared purpose and how to set goals that will achieve that purpose.
“COMPANIES THAT ENJOY ENDURING SUCCESS HAVE CORE VALUES AND A CORE PURPOSE THAT REMAIN FIXED WHILE THEIR BUSINESS STRATEGIES AND PRACTICES ENDLESSLY ADAPT TO A CHANGING WORLD. . . . A PRIMARY ROLE OF CORE PURPOSE IS TO GUIDE AND INSPIRE.”
— JAMES C. COLLINS AND JERRY I. PORRAS
The importance of a team having a stated purpose can’t be stressed enough. A team getting derailed three to six months into the school year is highly probable. The cause for derailment can either be the inability to mitigate conflict or member divergence in pursuing the team goal. No matter the reason for derailment, if the team does not have a shared purpose to remind them of what they are working to achieve, they will eventually retreat to their classrooms, where they can focus on and achieve personal goals. I warn against the use of broad statements, such as “We will improve student learning,” because individual interpretations of how to achieve that purpose can be vastly different. In contrast, this statement is much more vivid and defines the work of the team: “To meet the needs of all learners, we will work interdependently to observe and provide feedback in our exploration of various differentiated learning strategies.” This is not a goal, though. The goals that result from this statement should be more specific in terms of outputs, measurement, and time.
The three types of goals every team should have are 1) a team goal, 2) personal goals, and 3) a leadership goal. The team goal is something no one team member can achieve on their own. It is the most significant output that contributes to the team’s purpose. Team member personal goals are intended to connect an individual’s interests and professional inquiries with the work of the team. Fulfilling the personal goal should be an output that contributes to the team goal. The leadership goal is more than just a personal goal for the team leader. A leadership goal addresses the prospective challenges the team will face to work interdependently toward its purpose.
Let’s use this grade-level team purpose statement as an example: To develop the dispositions and skills in grade 6 students that will support more effective agents of learning. First, our desired outcome is for students to take greater ownership in their learning. When establishing a team goal that contributes to this purpose it needs to be inclusive of all team members and should be written to explicitly state how the team will achieve the goal. Here is an example: We will use 20% of our common planning time to learn how to observe and provide feedback to one another to inform teaching practices as they relate to the team's purpose. The difference between the team purpose and the goal is that the purpose is outcomes-focused, encouraging students to take more ownership of their learning. Goals are output-focused; a significant goal, in this case, is capacity-building the team to be able to observe instances of agency (students taking ownership of learning) and being able to report that to team members in a constructive manner.
As for personal goals, these could relate to the various instances of agency that team members will observe; for example I will ensure that once per week, students devise and pursue one relevant inquiry into unit content. Other team members may want to work with specialist subject teachers to understand how they can integrate music, arts, or even physical education into their lesson planning, provided the goal is written in such a way that it supports agency.
Taking into account that the purpose of the team will require a high degree of interdependency, in particular giving and receiving feedback, an appropriate leadership goal would be: I will study various strategies and tools for evaluating team performance so that I can objectively inform the team once per month about how we are performing relative to our goal, and be able to constructively give feedback to individual team members regarding their goals.
So, how clear is your team on its purpose? Do the team and individual goals support that purpose?
