This is blog no. 3 in a special August summer series to help you launch your teacher or leadership team with intention and skill this school year.
“Even if your team has been meeting for years, as soon as you add new teachers to the group, the dynamic changes. You need to reset and connect as a new community of learners.” – Coach
(Photo: Skillful Team Leaders, Dominque Welch and Leinaala Vedder)
Today, in this special edition blog series, I dive into:
Primary Intention 3:
Nurture group culture
To nurture a healthy group culture, I often write and present about trust, but for this blog I thought I'd keep it a little lighter.
Starting your team meetings with short community-building activities, (many which are highlighted in move 3.8) are especially good for newly-formed teams.
But it can be hard to find engaging games for adult learners that have not been over-played.
Here are a few that are always a hit because they connect people, but also bring joy and laughter are:
1. “Shamelessly Brag” (p. 140) where team members gloat about one talent or accomplishment, no matter how small. (One guy bragged he could eat a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's in one sitting. Mad props to him.)
2. “The Best of” a community-sharing game I created that gets teachers sharing best practices, best ideas, best things of all kinds.
3. You can also lead an old game with a new twist. Respected colleagues, Maureen Chapman and James Simons of cor creative partners engaged me and my colleagues in the well-known icebreaker, Two Truths and a Lie, but they had Artificial Intelligence write the lie which brought levity to the game. (Truth: Yes, I was on the TODAY show! And no, I did not invent string cheese! Good one, AI.)
4. If you've taken any of my virtual courses than you know one of my all-time favorite community-builders is a name-storytelling exercise where you share the story behind one of your names (i.e., first name, last name, nickname…) It's a powerful activity that I've even done with groups who have worked together for years, and loved discovering something new about their colleagues. Here is an edited video of me leading this community-builder with leaders. Special thanks to the Skillful Team Leaders in the video who shared their stories!
Whatever game you choose, in order for it to be well-received and achieve what you intended, it's important to use some of the other moves in Primary Intention 3 of the book such as, move 3.5 Level up language so that your colleagues don't feel like you are treating them like students.
Bring in-person or virtual professional learning to your team leaders!
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