Are you part of a team at your school? Is there an administrative team, an office team, a 3rd grade team, or a team of social studies teachers? Is your custodian on a team? What about the people who work in the kitchen or supervise students on the playground? How do you define a team?
These questions arise from my reading of the book Team of Teams, written by retired U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal. He looks at how society has changed and the implications of these changes for leadership and teamwork. McChrystal writes, "The great successes—the creation of the computer, transistor, microchip, Internet—come from a 'team of teams,' working together in pursuit of a common goal." He offers examples from the military, sports, and airline disasters (or near misses) to illustrate the power of teams. Schools are certainly among the many organizations where success requires collaboration. We know that students learn best when faculty collegiality is the norm and when teachers and administrators learn with and from one another. Conversely, everyone loses when schools are classroom silos with teachers engaging in parallel play.
McChrystal notes that the leader's job is to inspire teams and ensure accountability: "An organization must be constantly led or, if necessary, pushed uphill toward what it must be. Stop pushing and it doesn't continue, or even rest in place; it rolls backward." And "There's likely a place in paradise for people who tried hard, but what really matters is succeeding." He sure sounds like a general!
But McChrystal also recognizes that the role of the leader must change radically in order to develop and support the kind of teamwork that is needed today. Creating teams that will collaborate with other teams to solve problems is his goal. He talks about pushing the decision making to those who are closest to the situation. Recognizing that we own the decisions we make ourselves, he says, "I communicated across my command my thought process on decisions like air strikes, and told them to make the call. Whoever made the decision, I was always ultimately responsible, and more often than not those below me reached the same conclusion I would have, but this way our team would be empowered to do what was needed."
Principals don't order air strikes (fortunately), but we do make decisions that frame staff behaviors and affect student outcomes. Our decisions will be better if our school teams work together to solve problems.
As leaders, we need to determine what collaborations can help students learn. Do your teachers meet to share strategies for student growth? Do math and art teachers gather to talk about how students learn in different situations? Do 1st and 5th grade teachers come together to share how children have grown over time? Talking about students' progress and trajectory—what has and hasn't worked—is beneficial for everyone. The more teachers appreciate that all of us are responsible for each child every year, the more ownership they will display in brainstorming strategies and supervising students in common areas.
What about your nonteaching staff—secretaries, maintenance, food service, teachers' aides, and so on? It doesn't make sense for support staff to be in all meetings, but it also doesn't make sense for them to be excluded from every meeting. Too often, we fail to share information that will be helpful to them, and sometimes they see this as a lack of respect or appreciation. Their smiles, attitudes, and efforts are important in setting a tone for your school, so they need to feel like part of the team.
Sharing information is one way to support teams. "Most organizations are more concerned with how best to control information than how best to share it," McChrystal says. If we want everyone to be charging toward the same goal, we need to give them information that will help them succeed. What do you share and with whom? For example, do you share the results from your parent surveys with your faculty? Teachers need to know the community's perceptions. Similarly, each year you set professional goals for yourself, but have you shared some of them with your staff? I believe that you should use staff input when determining your goals and that periodically sharing your successes and frustrations is a way to model the focus and grit in professional learning that you hope to see in your staff. It's what team members do.
Often the most unyielding silo is the principal's office. Believe me, I know that taking the time to meet with others and hear their opinions—especially if they are different from yours—isn't easy. But if we want everyone to grow, including ourselves, we must create opportunities to collaborate with others. That doesn't mean abdicating our responsibility. It does mean empowering others with information and recognizing that even if we think our answer is the right one, the truly best solution is one that everyone owns. So, who is on your team?
