In 1965 a psychologist called Bruce Tuckman was working for the U.S. Navy. He was a member of a small group of researchers at the Naval Medical Research Institute. Their job was to study small group behaviour.
Tag: collaboration
How to Design Better Teamwork
Research into what motivates teams
In today’s issue, we explore recent research into what motivates teams. This research can help us design better teamwork by understanding team dynamics and what motivates different people.
It got me thinking about a group or teamwork in a school or academic setting, so I have shared some guidance and thoughts about that.
An essential affirmation I had was the critical nature of the design of teams and what they do.
Together, everyone achieves more — or less?
A team at TU Dortmund University in Germany have published an interdisciplinary meta-analysis on effort gains and losses in teams.
You can access either the academic paper or a summary blog post from the researchers on Aeon.
From the beginning, the authors highlight the importance of intentional design.
Our analysis of the data shows that whether teamwork boosts motivation or saps it strongly depends on how the work is designed.
And it looks like one of the keys to boosting motivation is how we perceive our contribution. As educators, facilitators, and designers, we need to ensure each team member can make a meaningful contribution to their team’s performance.
when people perceive their contribution to the team’s outcome as indispensable, they tend to show greater effort than they would when working alone. These ‘effort gains’ can be due to team members aiming to be prosocial: they care about others and want to make a difference to the team.
You might apply dispensability in a range of ways, such as:
- What roles do people take on in a meeting?
- What do people do during a breakout in a workshop?
- What specific tasks are assigned during a discussion session in a class?
- Do people understand how their workshop contribution is integral to our collective success?
On reflection, the level of dispensability is a proxy for what we value. You would hope anything we design is worthy of the learner’s time.
Social Comparison
One of the critical factors that impact motivation for team members is social comparison.
The desire to evaluate oneself is a basic one, and when working in a team, individuals commonly compare their own performance with their teammates’ performances.
The researchers discovered this comparison could go in different directions. If a team member displays significantly superior abilities, it leads to demotivation, frustration and feelings of failure.
Team membership is most beneficial when it creates a visible, proximal, and relative advantage.
People often strive to match or exceed the performance of others, which makes working with slightly better teammates a very motivating experience…it is advisable to compose a team such that members are similar in their abilities, but with some of them being somewhat superior to boost the others’ motivation.
Some thoughts from a different direction.
I struggle identifying the ‘slightly superior’ teammate — how do we measure this?
We are also assuming we have an accurate understanding of our ability. The Dunning-Kruger effect often masks this. This cognitive bias leads us to mistakenly assess our abilities as being much higher than they are.
I am also thinking about mixed ability grouping in schools, but I need to read further into the collision of that strategy with these ideas.
Collaborative Learning
When we consider these findings in relation to schools and student learning, it is clear that collaborative learning is an essential part of the educational process.
The Evidence for Learning summary on Collaborative Learning is an excellent overview. It explains that collaborative approaches have a consistently positive effect on learning.
I noticed the emphasis on intentional design, which aligns with the research analysis from the team at TU Dortmund University. Here’s a further passage from the Evidence for Learning summary:
[Collaborative learning] requires much more than just sitting students together and asking them to work in a group; structured approaches with well-designed tasks lead to the greatest learning gains.
Some other key considerations are:
- Students need support and practice to work together; it does not happen automatically.
- Tasks need to be designed carefully so that working together is effective and efficient, otherwise some students will try to work on their own.
- Competition between groups can be used to support students in working together more effectively. However, overemphasis on competition can cause learners to focus on winning rather than succeeding in their learning.
- It is particularly important to encourage lower-achieving students to talk and articulate their thinking in collaborative tasks to ensure they benefit fully.
Your Talking Points
Here is a range of key takeaways and provocations from today’s issue:
- Design teams that create a visible, proximal, and relative advantage.
- How intentional are we in the design of our group or team activities?
- How dispensable is their contribution? Is this worthy of their time?
🕳🐇 Down the Rabbit Hole
Complement this issue with Create Safety and Togetherness #249, Willful Blindness — Medium article, If You Are The 1st Responder To New Ideas, You Have A Critical Job #243, The Three Pillars of Powerful Team Collaboration — blog, Successful Teams Are More Open About Their Mistakes — blog
Create the Ideal Conditions for Coaching and Professional Growth
In this post, I want to share some reflections about coaching and how we create the best possible conditions for professional growth.
Below I have shared nine different aspects of successful coaching that play a critical role. Many of these ideas also apply to quality learning experiences and might serve as powerful provocations to consider.
If you are after a planning guide to support your coaching programme – download a copy of my resource. All of the provocations and ideas in the post are included.
[joli-toc]
Choice
One of the downsides of the “roll out” of coaching or large scale implementations in schools and organisations are that it forces people to participate when they are not ready. When people make an active choice to participate, they signal they are ready for the challenge that coaching has to offer.
Our advocacy for coaching might mean we want everyone to have access to it. Which is entirely understandable; it can have a high impact. But, that does not mean it needs to be forced on anyone.
I imagine that many of you have had bad coaching experiences simply because it was something you had to do.
When you remove the choice, you also remove a fundamental aspect of self-awareness. This awareness is something everyone I coach has in common. Do you have similar reflections?
You reach a point where you want the challenge. The benefit from the accountability from coaching is clear.
Critically you choose to continue their professional learning, growth and development with coaching, nobody else.
Are you ready for the challenge of coaching? What dispositions signal you are ready?
Commitment to Coaching
In my opinion, coaching is different when it is short term. Long term commitment changes the dynamic of the experience. We work together to grapple with some of your most significant professional development challenges. This problem solving takes time.
Longer commitments also allow for trusting relationships to form and develop. I commit to you and your professional growth; you commit to coaching, the process and the regular sessions. We commit to the partnership needed for success.
Contracting
An extension to the idea of commitment, contracting is all about establishing the appropriate expectations and what coaching means for us both. During my coaching, this is done in a few simple ways.
Below I have listed some examples:
- We establish a medium-term or long-term commitment within the coaching partnership.
- It is all agreed within a formal written contract.
- Regular time is set aside every fortnight for coaching sessions. These are organised in advance.
- We agree to a set of protocols and expectations for each session which focuses on high-quality dialogue and collaboration.
- In the first session, we share ideas about the roles and responsibilities we have in our coaching partnership.
The Challenge of Coaching
In the first coaching session with me, we spend some time reflecting on a set of provocations I put to you in advance. One of the questions is, “What do you hope coaching will be?”. The most common response I have received is the hope that coaching ‘challenges me”.
Challenge is unique to everyone. You might be seeking an alternative perspective on the challenges you face in your leadership team. Or perhaps you want to increase your self-awareness to help you see your strengths and those traits that need your attention. The challenge might come from the mirror I hold up and the behaviours that I observe.
Whatever it is for you, coaching needs to be challenging. Yes, you want the safety of a trusting professional relationship. Of course, you want psychological safety to be able to share emerging ideas or perspectives. But you also will gain from an independent viewpoint and calm, honesty about your professional growth. You don’t need more platitudes about your success; you need supportive coaching to strive for your next step.
Sometimes that honesty can be uncomfortable and a little jarring, but you will know it is coming from a place of genuine support and commitment.
Download a copy of my planning guide to support your coaching programme. All of the provocations and ideas in the post are included.
Coaching Consistency
New positive habits and behaviours are an essential outcome of coaching. We want to identify negative assumptions we are making, detrimental behaviours that we should reduce, and seek positive change. Consistency is key. Regular sessions that we both rely upon offer a safe and reliable structure to your professional growth.
I often look to regular one-hour coaching sessions every fortnight, which is an effective, consistent pattern for education clients. It allows enough time to apply the new ideas and mental models. Or to reflect and observe our regular daily practise as part of our coaching cycle.
It is not just about timing, though. We also rely upon the consistent expectations and the level of accountability that each coaching session has. I hold you to what you said you would act upon. Those small steps between each session are essential. That is, you get better, and they accumulate over six months or a year to significant change. We celebrate, debrief and explore those actions in a consistent way every session.
Coaching Conditions
We both play a role in creating the right conditions for quality dialogue to flourish. It is not just my job, and it is not just yours. There is a collective responsibility to contribute to the conditions for professional growth and dialogue that supports you.
Collective responsibility means different things for different people. For some of us, it is about focus and being present. To ensure a coaching session is not interrupted or compromised by competing agendas. For others, it is about remaining open to the challenge of learning and hearing another perspective. We both play a role in creating the ideal conditions for coaching dialogue and collaboration.
I often think of it as creating a space for you to step into. Step out of your daily routine into a world that operates under different conditions, an environment intentionally tuned to your needs. A space that is safe yet challenges you. A space that is trusting yet honest and direct. A coaching space that holds you accountable but also provokes new thinking and generates inspiration.
Cognitive Toolkit
Coaching creates the space to explore new cognitive tools. One of the main ways we do this is by focusing on a range of mental models and thinking structures during each session. These mental models provoke thinking and offer different perspectives to the challenges we explore together.
A key goal of my coaching is to help you develop your cognitive toolkit. I am equipping you with a more diverse set of mental models you can use to navigate your face challenges. At the end of each session, we stop and reflect on the mental models we have referenced or used together.
Collaborate
If we are in a coaching partnership, it is highly collaborative. We create something together. That “something” is new ideas, new thinking, perspectives, solutions and potential paths that support your professional growth.
That is an excellent question. I have some ideas already, but before I share them, what do you think?
I use an expectation that we are both ready to generate, share, and explore new ideas without judgment. When we lose track of where the ideas come from or start a train of thought, we know we are exploring in a dialogic way – a collaboration.
Dialogue and Coaching
Ultimately everything contributes to the quality of dialogue that we share. [I also wanted to break the “everything starts with a C”] This is something I actively pursue when coaching. I strive to create the conditions where we share ideas, questions, thoughts and ponderings – where we make new meaning together through talk.
Dialogue aligns with creativity. Through our talk, we create new, original ideas that have value to your professional practice. When we are free to express ourselves in this way, we move away from analysing the problem or feeling isolated to resolve it, we collaborate and develop new ideas.
I coach teachers and school leaders across Australia. It is always a privilege to be a coach and a vital member of a professional support network.
If you are interested in finding out more about how I could support your professional growth with coaching, I have a few places available; please email me at tom@dialogiclearning.com.
Download a free Coaching Planner
To conclude this article on the Conditions for effective coaching, download my planning template and kickstart your programme design. Simply use the form below.
Extending The Spaces You Need To Innovate (Further considerations)
In my previous post about the Spaces You Need to Innovate I explored a range of specific domains of thinking and practice that impact on your ability to innovate.
Each space contributes to the culture and in particular the conditions for innovation. Some spaces are more prominent and noticeable than others, whereas some have a more significant influence than others but cannot be seen.
The ‘spaces‘ I referenced were
- Physical
- Temporal
- Agentic
- Cognitive
- Emotional
In this follow up post,
Digital Space
Technology has always been part of my work as a teacher and as a consultant. I have seen how students can work together on ideas from the the very earliest days of collaborative docs to blogging.
More recently there are a whole plethora of tools that allow remote teams to operate and innovate together. Without such a Digital Space remote teams would not exist.
I wonder if a complimentary Digital Space has become a default arena which helps innovation projects. When digital spaces operate effectively, they improve communication (outside of email), facilitate collaboration and allow for improved project management.
I am still not completely convinced you need a Digital Space for creative, innovative work. Although it has become a standard space for us to operate it in, a Digital Space seems a “nice to have” not a “must have”.
That said, asynchronous work needs to occur somewhere and digital spaces offer us great opportunities for staying connected and organised. What do you think?
Relational Space
“I prefer to bounce ideas of other people.” How
A strong contender for a fundamental space for innovation is the opportunity to share the innovative work with others. Encased within this effort is, of course, the process of collaboration which defines many projects. It is rare for us to have to implement creative projects alone.
The Relational Space for Innovation not only refers to the level of collaboration that fundamental but also to the quality of the relationships that exist.
We might consider these relationships as being central to the work taking place: colleagues you are working with, teams and others you consult directly regarding the project.
Relationships exist obliquely too. These might be the fundamental relationships
Whichever type the Relational Space for Innovation is a key component; the quality of the relationships at the heart of the innovation process is directly proportional to the likelihood of success.
Developmental Space
My final contender, in this blog post, is the Developmental Space to Innovate. I define this space as the room you have developmentally to explore new projects, programmes or opportunities.
In a previous article (Innovation Compression) I explored the situation when new programmes and initiatives pile up. Despite the best of intentions we need to clear the way for new developmental work.
How much is on your plate right now? Are those who bought the crockery removing stuff as well as piling things on?
Innovation compression might be when good ideas or innovative programmes are introduced [forced] into
a space still occupied by previous innovations. Programmes get compacted as nothing is removed, nothing is freed up. This is about new and old(er) innovations attempting to co-exist and it typically leads to a reduction in efficacy
of the newer innovation. I suppose the incumbent might hold existing ground and resources.
If the Developmental Space is not available we will be fighting for attention, resources and energy at every turn. The Developmental Space for our new thinking, renewal projects and creative ideas is key.
FREE Bonus Innovation Resource
My innovation resource explores the conditions for innovation at different levels of an organisation and offers some great prompts for improving your innovation culture.
The PDF resource includes
- Question and Dialogue Prompt Cards
- Explores the common emotional blocks to creativity
- Extends the ideas through various levels of an organisation
- Builds on known innovation models
Download your copy of the resource by subscribing to my small but perfectly formed newsletter, the Dialogic Learning Weekly – ideas and insight about Innovation, Leadership and Learning,
The Three Pillars of Powerful Team Collaboration
One of the perennial challenges I come across in my work in schools and other organisations is the ability of a team to collaborate well. Put simply: to create something together.
This piece from Harvard Business Review highlights a number of issues related to the success of a group working together. They drew upon a range of research meta-analysis and raise some good questions about group creativity.
I thought I would spend a short while exploring my take on those most related to learning.
A Compelling Vision
Teams are more innovative when members have a common understanding of team objectives and are also committed to them.
Most schools have the trifecta of a Vision, Mission and Values. They may also have the Whole School Pedagogy statement thrown in there too. But admittedly I have rarely come across a vision that is Compelling.
They shouldn’t be trophy statements that only provide us with useful brochure-ware. A vision statement is a chance to compel a group of people forwards in terms of innovation. An opportunity to challenge and create excitement about what the future might hold.
When we are excited about that future direction and we share it with others innovation and creativity is more likely to flourish. I suppose it helps us all understand ‘the why’.
Support for Innovation
Teams are more innovative when managers expect and approve of innovation, support members when their attempts to innovate are not successful, and recognize and reward new ideas and their implementation. This means encouraging risk and expecting failures.
The interesting part here is the support team members receive when things go wrong and when ideas are not successful. At first, I thought this might just relate to the work of teachers as they develop new ideas for their work, but it is also an issue for students too.
Generating a bunch of ideas is one step but trying them out is another. When leaders and managers give us agency and license to mess stuff up we are much more likely to create and implement more ideas. This is linked to how high or low stakes the learning environment is. You might ponder on that for a second and try to settle on an aggregate sense of what the wider school or organisation environment is.
When a school has a generally high stakes environment students and staff don’t feel safe enough to try things out. Failing is not seen as part of the learning process and it is likely that there is an emphasis on the end product or outcome and not the path a student takes.
As you probably can tell when we start talking about “stakes” we quickly bump up against the assessment system, process and environment in a school. If you really want to have a creative, innovative school start by looking closely at your assessment culture.
A Cohesive Team
Cohesion represents commitment to the team and a desire to be part of the team. Researchers see cohesion as creating a psychologically safe environment that enables members to challenge each other and the status quo.
Related to my previous point about creating a safe enough culture for taking a risk is this interesting definition of “cohesion”. When we are united together behind a common goal there is a degree of comfort, that comfort stems from the acceptance of others around us. It is this acceptance that creates a desire to be together in a team and commitment to work successfully together.
When we have this sort of team baseline in effect we are much more likely to challenge the world around us. This includes our propensity, within that team, to provide critique or feedback to each other. We know that feedback is a key element of the process of learning that has a significant impact. But the success of any feedback interaction relies on the cohesion of the people who create that interaction.
No surprise that cohesion is synonymous with relationships. This is especially true in the classroom and in terms of learning. A useful reminder for us all that building stronger relationships with our colleagues and students will help feedback to be more successful.
The other element referenced here by HBR is the ability of a team to challenge the status quo. I often say that “assumptions lead to mediocrity”. I have worked with teams where challenging long-held beliefs within an industry is a bridge too far. It loops back to the relationships we have with those working around us and of course vertically throughout an organisation. When there is little cohesion or support for change the well-worn path is a safe and predictable choice.
If we want to develop the creative capacity of our teams, our students or those we are leading we must challenge the status quo. We all did this well as 6-year-olds. It would help if we enabled those around us to ask more questions and challenge the long-held practices of our industries.
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Re-build our individual capacity to challenge assumptions, within a culture of “yeah let’s try it!”, under a compelling banner for what might lie ahead, and we all may be on to something.