Is Teaching too big a job for one person?

Teaching today is a huge job and the demands make effective teams in schools crucial

How many of Lencioni's five dysfunctions of a team do you see regularly within the teams you work with?

What about successful teams you work with or have worked with in the past? What made them work? What lessons can we learn?



How many staff are simply complying but not committing? Is this acceptable? If not, what can we do abut it?

Trust is the foundation of a successful team- this is not 'New news' but what about Parker Palmer's Chicago research that found that Professional learning Communities based on a firm foundation of trust had a 1 in 2 chance of improving learning outcomes for students, BUT without this there was only a 1 in 7 chance.

So these are the questions for you and i challenge you all to discuss these in your ICT teams and e-mail them through to me or add your comments to this post

How can we build trust within our Teams, including the e-central Cluster?

How does a lack of commitment from one person affect the rest of the team and those they come into contact with?

How can a fear of conflict, leading to avoidance of it mean that we avoid the 'difficult conversations' or decisions that must take place?

Are we suffering from an avoidance of accountability where we o longer expect people to do what they said they would?

Are we being attentive to our results or are we collecting data or information for no real purpose?

I will be considering this more and uploading additional material to the wiki later next week, including some recommendations established within the workshop, can we reach agreement across the cluster on habits to cultivate to avoid the Team dysfunction described in Lencioni's pyramid?

This has given me a lot of food for thought and as always, I welcome your feedback
K