Leading & Managing Educational Technology
Maximising the success of your team
By Terry Freedman
Fri, 12 Sep 2008, 14:01

Introduction

A couple of weeks ago I looked at the question of how to maximise the success of individual team members. That is certainly necessary for the success of the team as a whole, but is it sufficient?

In this article I consider 7 ways to maximise the success of the team itself.

Define success

It seems so obvious as to be almost not worth saying, but unless you know where you want to end up, you'll have a hard time getting there. "Success" can be defined in several ways, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

For example, you may wish to increase the number of students taking your course, and the percentage who obtain a grade C or above. You may wish to improve the use of educational technology throughout the school, Local Authority or school district.

Clearly, the plans required to enjoy success in each case will be very different, but the key thing here is to start by defining what the success criteria actually are.

Agree with each other...

Again, it's a cliché, but all members of the team need to be singing from the same hymn sheet. Does that mean everyone has to agree? Well, there are two answers to this.

Firstly, there is nothing wrong with disagreement. In fact, it can give the department a creative edge. You don't want a team full of people who agree with everything you say for the sake of a quiet life and being able to get the 4.50 train. But I think it is quite important to not air such disagreements in public.

For example, it is not good if the Principal says to you, "I don't understand why you did X", for one of the team to say, "Yes, that's exactly what I thought." The same applies when you and the team member are switched around in that scenario. These sorts of public disagreements make everyone concerned look disjointed, and reduces the credibility of the team as a whole.

Secondly, though, I think it's a matter of degree. For example, if you think that 70% of students should obtain a grade A, and another member of the team is concerned that that target would encourage everyone to ignore the lower ability students, and that the figure should there be 60%, that's a disagreement that can lead to some really good debate within the department.

If, on the other hand, that team member thinks the figure is ludicrously high, because the students, coming from a poor neighbourhood, are hardly likely to get more than the lowest grade, that is quite a serious difference in outlook. It can still lead to debate, but it can also lead to your efforts being undermined. To avoid that happening, the team needs to...

... Agree to differ

This is surprisingly easy to do most of the time. My approach to a difference in opinion within my team as to whether we should be teaching the students problem-solving or pure skills was to say let's agree to differ for now, and come back in a term's time to evaluate how we're doing. If at that time people wanted to, I said, we could discuss the skills idea then.

In the event, nobody wanted to discuss the skills idea when it came to it, because they were all enjoying teaching the problem-solving. All, that is, except for the person who was desperately in favour of teaching skills: he obtained a job in another school.

Have discussions

The key to the success of the agreeing-to-differ strategy is the fact that team members were genuinely listened to. In my experience, most people will get on with something even if they don't particularly like it, if they feel that they have had a chance to have their voice heard.

Also in my experience, school departments that don't have meetings, or have meetings in which there are no discussions, do not make as much progress as those that do.

Give acknowledgement to people

If, in the course of your discussions, someone comes up with a great idea, make sure you give them credit for it. If you don't, I think that most people will react in the same way I do when that happens, which is to never voice a suggestion directly to that person again. It's a very short-sighted policy to try and give the impression to people outside your team that you are the sole fount of all ideas in your department, because very soon you will be.

Have ambition

I touched on the issue of expectations before, in relation to students. But it also applies to adults. The higher your ambition, the higher you are likely to reach. There are all sorts of practical factors to explain it, but it is undoubtedly true that most people rise or fall to the level they're expected to.

Have standards

It may seem paradoxical, but if one of your success criteria is to increase the number of students taking a course in educational ICT, a good thing to do is raise the game by introducing a harder course. Does that mean that you will only attract the brightest students? Is it, in other words, a form of selection by the back door?

Not at all. Most young people want to do well at school, and most are also savvy enough to know when they are being hoodwinked. Run a course where the qualification actually means something in terms of achievement. Putting on a course called "Computer Graphics" which entails spending a year playing with Microsoft Paint isn't going to fool anybody.

© Terry Freedman Fri, 12 Sep 2008