Ryan’s Question
“In a small organization, how do you select team members for a specific project without minimizing the abilities of the rest of the staff?” (Morrow, 2018)

Ryan, great question! In my experience, I have been the leader selecting the group for a project, a part of the group selected for a project, and witnessed other team members selected for a project over myself. Fortunately, I was able to use that experience of how I felt not being chosen to shape how I would approach being the leader in that same situation to not “minimize the abilities for the rest of the staff” (Morrow, 2018).

To start, before selecting the individual team members for the project I clearly communicate to all staff about the project’s objectives, process implementation and desired outcomes. By giving everyone the opportunity to hear about the project proposal, gave staff awareness. This made them feel informed about what was happening regardless if they were directly involved or not. Secondly, I defined specifically what skills of group members I was looking for. I work with a very intelligent group of nurses that are aware of their strengths and the strengths of their coworkers, so by identifying the representation of the group needed, there was understanding that is was about finding staff that were the best fit for the role for the project and not based on interpersonal preference. Finally, even after selecting the team members for the project, I continued to update the rest of the staff about the project’s progress so they didn’t feel completely disconnected from what we are doing. As a result, this open flow of communication provided the feeling of inclusion for the team members not selected and an opportunity for them to share their insight and feedback towards project delivery, if warranted. I found this strategy particularly beneficial in sustaining team cohesion when you are a member that is not chosen for a project in a small organization. To highlight, this sharing of information of project progress was appropriate in my context, as the focus of the project was implementation of patient care activities to improve specific patient outcomes.

Daneen

Reference
Morrow, R. (2018). Unit 5 Learning Activity 2 – Spears. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://create.twu.ca/principalmorrow/2018/10/25/unit-5-learning-activity-2-spears/