LRNT521 Unit 2 Activity 1
The symposium was an amazing orchestra of talented educators, who were conduits to great dialogue on relevant, relatable and practical topics we face daily in our environments. I had the wonderful privilege of attending several live and recorded sessions, providing me with a learning space to get curious, ask questions and continue those conversations with my colleagues, friends and family.
Of the many exciting tracks and topics, I particularly was drawn into and thrilled about the session facilitated by Trish Dyck, called Key Success Factors for Virtual Teams on Wednesday April 18.
TEAM. As simple as this four letter word may look and sound, the multi-faceted complexities and the power of this noun has so much air time and attention within so many spaces from sports teams to organizational teams and teams within in an educational space.
And the question we are confronted with is ‘What is the DNA makeup of an effective, successful, and high performing team?
There were 4 main dimensions presented that helped support the question on team success which were Outcomes, Relationship, Knowledge, and Task (De Drew Weingart, 2003; Edmondson 2013; Li et al, 2013; Pardy, 2015; Sales et al, 2005; Wenger 1999)
The one that struck me the most was the dimension of relationship process and the tribal sense of how we are hard wired in our brains to flight or fight when threatened and the importance of creating psychological safety. The creation of trust and building relationships is an obvious thread within the DNA of a successful team.
I was anxious to get back to an ongoing and lively group discussion with my leadership and learning team peers that we’ve been relentlessly collaborating on as it related to high performing teams, dysfunctional teams, team effectiveness and successful teams. I wanted to be an advocate of these dimensions, that I just learned of and embed it as part of a discipline, expectation and norm of teams.
It’s not all gloom and doom, as I reflect on some of the things that we are formally doing to move us in the right direction of creating a psychologically safe work environment for our people.
For example Discovery Insights, we have individual’s complete Discovery Insights Personal Profile and Team Effectiveness evaluations. This report and diagnostic helps provide self and team awareness and techniques to help individuals adapt and connect with each other to form stronger and more trusting relationships. The facilitation around this report brings awareness to personal and others communication styles, preferences around decision making and processing information, values, perceptions and blind spots, as well as behaviors on a good day and stresses and characteristics on a bad day. This self awareness and openness to share with each other creates a safe place to learn about each other and show our imperfections and eagerness to develop less inclined behaviors.
So, I ask myself how do we find more ways of influencing all our lines of business, leaders, individuals and our organization to seek formal, as well as unstructured learning opportunities to empower, enable and activate the dimension of relationships, which directly supports and moves us closer to successful teams.
How can we create, advocate and encourage individuals and teams to be open, supportive, courageous, transparent, reflective, respectful, thoughtful, and vulnerable to help build that necessary psychological safety within the team.
References
Dyck, T. (2018, April). Key Success Factors for Virtual Teams Presented in the Virtual Symposium of the 2018 MALAT Program at Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC, Canada.
[Hublinked]. (2015, November 18). 5 Steps to Achieve Trust Within a Team [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE4thYj9SbI