Category: Unit 5

Spears identifies ten characteristics of servant leadership. Three of these, commitment to the growth of people, building community, and the ideas of stewardship are especially important to me (Spears, 2010).

I have been in leadership for long enough at the same school that I have hired a majority of the employees, both teachers and support staff.  For this reason I feel a responsibility to them both personally and professionally. This means that I not only need to work to support them professionally but also walk through life with them as they both celebrate their victories and struggle through their challenges.  While at work I support them as they seek to pursue professional interests or take risks as they try something new in their classrooms.  I see myself as a coach, providing guidance and direction to help them become the best at what they do. As they come to work each day, it is important that I provide opportunities for the staff to connect on a personal level. It is my desire that they not spend nine hours a day near each other but rather with each other.  As we work together, I focus on the long approach of influence through relationship and trust we will become increasingly aligned in our work.

With these thoughts in mind the first thing I would seek to do while coordinating a group project would be to develop a caring atmosphere where it was safe to share and exchange ideas. This would happen by giving the team an opportunity to do a team building activity where they needed to depend on each other and therefore learn to trust and appreciate the strengths and abilities of the others. This culture does not always naturally develop and must be curated by the leader.  As each team was given their roles and began their work toward achieving their objective, I would want to check in with each of them to see if they had everything they needed in the way of resources, time and information.  A team will work more effectively with the knowledge that the leader is committed to them as a team as well as individuals.  It would be important for me to communicate to the team that I had confidence in them and that they were chosen for the team for a reason. As a servant leader, I must relinquish control of the details and serve the group members as they set out to accomplish the goal they have been tasked with.

In a small organization, how do you select team members for a specific project without minimizing the abilities of the rest of the staff?

Reference

Spears, Larry C. (2010) Character and Servant Leadership: Ten Characteristics of Effective, Caring Leaders. The Journal of Virtues & Leadership, Vol. 1 Iss. 1, 2010, 25-30. Retrieved from https://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/jvl/vol1_iss1/Spears_Final.pdf

Teams are a way of organizing a group of interdependent individuals who are working to achieve common goals (Northouse, 2016). Two critical functions of team effectiveness are performance (task accomplishment) – quality of outcomes or accomplishing goals in a quality manner. Development (team maintenance) – cohesiveness of the team and the ability for the members to satisfy their own needs while working effectively with one another. Conditions which must be in place for a team to both develop and perform include the following:

1. A real team
2. A compelling purpose
3. The right people – (personal example: Forming a school board committee for a specific purpose ie. rebranding)
4. Clear norms of conduct which are expectations regarding how members are to behave
5. Team focused coaching
6. Supportive organizational-context

Characteristics to promote team effectiveness:

1. Clear, Elevating Goal – It is important that a team has a clear goal. This keeps the team focused, it allows measurement to determine whether objectives are being met. Effective leaders will keep a team focused on the clear goal. (Personal example: teachers redesigning a report card template and reporting process)
2. Results-Driven Structure – Depending on the purpose of the team, one structure may be more appropriate than another. Some structural features include task design, team composition, and core norms of conduct.Whatever the structure it is important that team members understand their roles, communicate well, evaluate how they are reaching their objective base on fact-based analysis.
3. Competent Team Members – A team must have enough people to be effective. Members must demonstrate competencies or skills to be able to do the job and be able to solve problems. Members must also be able to function within a team environment, they must be open, positive and make contribution to the work of the team.
4. Unified Commitment – A team is more than a collection of individual workers. They have unity of purpose, team spirit and common identity. (Personal example: starting a new school with a committed teaching staff)
5. Collaborative Climate – A collaborative climate is developed as members build a relationship based on trust, give and take, open communication, and a tolerance for risk taking. The team leader plays a significant role in cultivating this climate.
6. Standards of Excellence – Clear concrete expectations established by either the team or the leader.  These expectations are used to determine how the individuals members and the team collectively are performing. With these in place, members will know what is required in order to put forward their best work.
7. External Support and Recognition — In order to be successful, a team must have external support from the rest of the organization.  This support may be in the form of space, equipment, or financial resources.  Once a team is working successfully and meeting the goals with which they were tasked, it is important that they are recognized and rewarded.  It is important that this recognition is given to the team and not to individual accomplishment.
8. Principled Leadership- Four processes: cognitive – understanding the problem, motivational – helps the team become cohesive and capable of setting and achieving high standards, affective– handle stress by providing clear goals, assignments and strategies, coordination – matching members skills with roles, provide clear performance strategies, monitoring feedback and adapting to environmental changes.

One of the only places I have worked with a work group which is described as a team is with a school-based team which meets to determine a support pathway for a student.  The affective process is important at this time.  There are times when these teams come together when there has been a level of frustration, dysfunction or insufficient strategy applied in aiding a student to be successful.  As a leader it is important to help resolve the stress levels of the team members.  This is done by laying out a goals for the team to work toward, tasking each person with specific assignments which need to be completed and then determining the correct strategy to address the questions raised by the team members.

I have found the exploration of a formal team based structures to be relatively challenging.  In a small school setting where people are often working within the silo of their own assignments, teams have not been a regular part of my leadership strategy. While I often establish smaller work groups, I have not formally conceived them as a team.  I am intrigued at the possibility of exploring this further.

How can a team concept be applied to staff members who have a common overarching goal of educating children and carrying out the vision of the school but very different day to day objectives?

Reference

Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and Practice, Eighth Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.