As a special education teacher, there are many variations of the teams that I work on in the school. Each student has a primary team which we call the IEP team, this includes the parents, teachers, administrators, and specialists. On a day to day basis, the other teams that come into play are other special education teachers, reading specialists, grade level teams, and paraprofessionals. The goal and moral purpose of each team is to do what is best for the child and meet his or her needs.
When addressing the statement “Get the right people on your team, and get the wrong ones off,” there are many factors to consider. Some people in a team are essentials and must be on the team no matter what, for example, parents. For these team members, it is nonnegotiable to make the relationships as positive as possible. When thinking about other team members and getting the right people on your team and the wrong ones off, we need to know who the right ones are. The right people aren’t necessarily the ones that all agree on the same ideas. Fullan (2001) states, “By supporting the like-minded, leaders trade off early smoothness for later greif. If you include and value naysayers, noise in the early stages will yield later, greater implementation” (p. 75). In a sense, getting the right people on your team is getting a diversity of people and ideas. However, I don’t necessarily think that to get the right people on a team, the wrong ones must be pushed off. If we think of the “wrong” people as ones that disagree with us, they are actually bringing diversity. If we think of them as the people that agree with us too much, they also don’t deserve to be removed from the team. The “wrong” people may be those who don’t have a common moral purpose and create damage to the team, they may need to get removed. It is important to remember that, “the absence of conflict can be a sign of decay” (Fullan, 2001, p. 74), so we need to know how to work with a wide array of people. Grant (2016) says that diverse teams tend to focus more on facts, process the facts more carefully, and are more innovative. His reasoning for all of these is that a diverse team allows you to “dodge the costly pitfalls of conformity.” He does caution that the team must be organized to have inclusive practices so that every person feels heard. As a 23 year old, I was a new graduate that was put into a role of managing people who were twice my age. This was a very intimidating task! I have learned quite a bit, but still have so many areas to grow in. The more I read about emotional intelligence (EI), the more I realize how instrumental it is for a leader to have. I took a quiz on mindtools.com to find my strengths and weaknesses of my EI and it seemed to come back pretty accurate. It gave me ⅘ stars on self-regulation as my strongest category and ⅖ stars on social skills, definitely an area that I need to work on! The times I have felt the most flustered in a leadership position are when someone reacts angrily to a decision that I made that was not intended to make them feel that way. Knowing how to deal with conflict is an area that I struggle with and need to strengthen to become a better leader. Alguilar (2015) lists many indicators of weak and strong EI in a group and she says that, “Emotionally intelligent teams have ways of managing the moods that one member is experiencing as well as their moods as a team.” Knowing that EI can play a huge role in the culture of change in a team can help us focus on relationships and clear communication and expectations. I know I need to work on my social skills in the areas of conflict and difficult situations. Luckily, EI can be learned, developed, and practiced. Conflict helps a team come up with new, innovating ideas and allowing everyone to be and feel heard requires relationships with each member of the team. Aguilar, E. (2015, June 29). The Key to Effective Teams in Schools: Emotional Intelligence. Retrieved March 29, 2017, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/key-effective-teams-schools-emotional-intelligence-elena-aguilar Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Grant, D. R. (2016, November 04). Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter. Retrieved March 29, 2017, from https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter Manktelow, J., Eyre, E., Jackson, K., Cook, L., Edwards, S., Bishop, L., . . . Moss, I. (n.d.). Building Great Work Relationships: Making Work Enjoyable and Productive. Retrieved March 29, 2017, from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/good-relationships.htm
4 Comments
Jule
4/1/2017 10:24:11 am
I'll have to check out the quiz you mentioned! I always like seeing visually where my strengths are (or lack of). Can we also bring up that in a small town it's especially intimidating to lead and not step on the wrong toes?! You are doing a great job-- our "newer" educational perspective can conflict with other teachers, but I think it's important to keep our beliefs at the forefront of what we do.
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Sara Lucas
4/2/2017 01:04:08 pm
I love this: "we need to know how to work with a wide array of people." Isn't this what we are teaching our students? We definitely have to have high EI to work with everyone and this can certainly be challenging. I think a big step is just recognizing that a decision you made makes others mad. Some people don't even realize this part. You will never make everyone happy, but working with them will help them to feel included and could lessen the anger as a result.
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4/2/2017 05:45:53 pm
Andrea,
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Larissa
4/2/2017 09:47:27 pm
I agree, parent involvement is an especially important relationship in order to support student success. Often times parents can be the most challenging aspect of our job, but it's important to keep the relationship positive. I've never actually had any issues with parents, but I've heard of horror stories. Our school puts on a lot of great activities for parents and guardians to be with their child at their school. We do movie nights, muffins with mom/dad/grands, Dr. Seuss hunts, open house, and socials.
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