CALIBRATING COLLABORATING - GETTING THE BEST FROM EVERY MEMBER OF A TEAM

I don’t know about you, but I feel a bit awkward talking about leading teams in a school setting.

I know, we are all used to having teams in schools – but generally school teams are teams of students. Sporting teams. Debating teams. Athletics teams. Swimming teams.

We sometimes use the word teams in speaking about staff. We have teaching teams – and team teaching. But do Heads of academic departments really lead teams?? Do your senior staff really see themselves as members of a team?

And yet, team is a word that some leaders find useful – it has a warm fuzziness about it that elicits positive responses; its connotations of being ‘all in it together’ appeal to many.

Mike Michalowicz is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and speaker. In his new book, All In: How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams, Michalowicz shares some key insights (in A Proven Formula for Building Unstoppable Teams, in Next Big Idea, 17 January, 2024).You might find his insights useful as you lead your own team, or encourage your executive team to lead their own teams.

There! I have used the t-word. Three times!

But I still prefer the notion of collaboration to describe what happens when a disparate group of teachers and senior staff take on a project to the accomplishment of which each will make his or her own contribution, drawing on their talents, their experience, their expertise and their own best thoughts and ideas. We are all well aware of the strength of collaborative decision-making and problem-solving in schools, and of the benefits that flow from a successful, well-led, well-structured collaboration.

Michalowicz’s first insight is that:

A leader’s goal is to match individuals’ talents to tasks, not their titles

Most of us as leaders try to fill our institutional roles (or titles) with appropriate talent.

But the reality is, Michalowicz asserts, if people are given the opportunity to do what they’re best at, they will excel, he adds, they will excel not only in areas defined or ?confined neatly within their title but across a range of titles, or tasks. Your Director of Teaching and Learning, for example, might have a great deal to contribute in the area of student wellbeing, and rarely in a meeting of senior school staff members do senior teachers only speak to or contribute in areas defined by their titles. Just as students are wholistic beings, so too senior teachers are wholistic professionals – able to draw on their experience and capabilities in classroom learning, student welfare and character development as they focus on a joint task or project.

If you match up people’s talent to those individual tasks, you’ll find they morph outside the traditional pyramid structure of a title-oriented organisation and flow into a more web-like structure, Michalawicz affirms.

Inevitably his examples are drawn from the commercial world, but are illustrative of what he wishes to point out.

I hired an individual to work for my organisation as our CFO. He had certain talents that were perfect for that role, but he also had talents beyond those which were necessary for execution of the role. Sure enough, after a few months, it was clear he couldn’t fill that role successfully, and I knew I had made a big mistake. I was calling him the CFO, and he saw opportunities to work for other organisations as CFO and pointed out how woeful his salary was compared to what he deserved to earn. While I tried to point out that he didn’t have certain talents that we needed, he confined himself to his title and ultimately left our organisation.

We tried a different strategy, Michalowicz goes on. For our receptionist role, we needed someone who could greet walk-ins and answer the phone while also doing some data entry and light accounting. Our salesperson had to close opportunities, farm opportunities, and track data. We found that our salesperson was great at closing and data tracking but not so good at the farming component.

Over time, we noticed our receptionist was great at greeting customers and building these really organic, healthy relationships with our prospects, but was not good at the data entry. So, we blurred the titles and matched the task to talent.

We found that the person filling the receptionist role was best at doing the farming task and also for greeting customers coming in the door. Our salesperson, who was great at the data, took over some of the invoicing and the light accounting, and the other data entry. Both people flourished because they were doing what they were talented at, and we had matched talent to task.

These examples do not necessarily resemble our experience in schools, but your take-away is that when you are setting up a group of teachers to collaborate on a specific project or task, forget about whether they are the Deputy Principal or a beginning teacher; a Head of Department or a rank-and-file mid-career staff member; identify the skills and experience the group needs, and fit the talents and experiences of your staff members to the task you are asking them to undertake.

And this segues neatly into Michalowicz’s second insight:

Everyone has potential, they simply need to be put in the right role to exploit that potential

Everyone has potential, Michalowicz attests; they simply need to be put in the right role to exploit that potential. Everyone has a fit somewhere, and it is our job as leaders to find and draw out that potential.

Most schools appoint staff based on experiential skills and abilities, what they say about themselves in their resume. But, Michalowicz avers, we do not all look at potential ability and what someone can become.

Michalowicz suggests you can do this by running workshops. Think about how you engage your staff on Staff Professional development days. You engage striking speakers; they sit and listen. But you are not able to assess their potential by watching them sit listening to a talk. ?

Have you ever heard of Home Depot, and their birdhouse workshops where you can go with some family members to build a birdhouse? Michalowicz asks.

During that process, they’re simply watching people’s participation because potential always reveals itself in the same three stages. First, they show curiosity, then genuine interest, then desire. The Home Depot employee running the Birdhouse workshop is watching to see the most engaged people. They then tap them on the shoulder and offer them a job at Home Depot.

This is a concept that’s been around forever, according to Michalowicz. The sports industry is already exploiting this near trillion-dollar industry. We have an opportunity as business leaders to deploy it. Professional and college sports recruit their athletes through workshops and camps. You go to a camp to improve your skills. As you improve your skills, they’re observing who is participating the most and who has the most desire and thirst. Then they tap you on the shoulder and invite you to other fields where you can demonstrate new talents and learn more. Then, ultimately, they can pick the people who are the best fit for them.

The beauty of the workshop is that everyone gets better and everyone improves in the process, Michalowicz claims. Everyone now knows how to make a birdhouse from the Home Depot workshop. Everyone that went on the field got better at the sport and the best people, the best fitted people for the organisation had the opportunity to work for that organisation.

By way of illustration – Michalowicz describes what this approach might look like in a hospital setting, recounting an interview with Jewel, a retired University of Chicago Medical Center recruitment director. Jewel ran ‘workstations’ to evaluate people’s skills and abilities.

Specifically, they had candidates who were interviewed in the traditional process, Michalowicz explains. They were asked questions, and based on their answers, they were prioritised. Then they ran those same candidates through skill assessment workstations.

One station that was managed by Jewel herself was specifically for the process of checking in a new patient. Jewel emulated someone with cerebral palsy — she was familiar with the symptoms of cerebral palsy because her roommate had it; tiny motor skills are difficult, and something as simple as taking out your identification could take a full minute.

What Jewel found is that some of the candidates were abrupt and curt. One person ripped the ID out of her hand and did it for her. Other candidates showed patience in offering assistance. The candidates who were best in the skills assessment were not necessarily the people who were best in the interview. The dominant person crushed the interview but failed to cater to the customer’s needs. The person who was qualified as the number one candidate in traditional interviews did not perform the best in the skills assessment.

Through the skills assessment, where people demonstrated their abilities, the right people were selected. Sure enough, the University of Chicago Medical Center had its best recruitment ever. By running workshops, you can do the same, Michalowicz suggests.

And you can. How many of you actually watch an applicant for any role in your school actually teach a lesson? How can you know how effective they are at the craft of teaching if you yourself haver never observed them?

The third insight has a different focus:

Great leaders provide a safe environment for all levels

All people, regardless of their work, have a need for physical safety, financial security, and emotional security, Michalowicz reminds you, adding, perhaps unnecessarily, that great leaders provide a safe environment for all levels. He uses the example of the Ghost Girls to illustrate the point. These women worked in a factory that made watches for soldiers in World War I. They used a material called radium. If you remember, old watches had dots on the dials that would glow in the dark. That was because of radium. These women would take a paintbrush, dip it in radium, and drop droplets on the watch, but then they’d use their mouth and lips to pinpoint the brush. In a matter of time, these women started to glow, hence the name Ghost Girls. Their skin would, in fact, glow. Soon after, a tumour or other ailments started to appear. The radium dial company back in the 1920s denied any culpability and said this wasn’t hazardous.

This case is what ultimately created OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Association, Michalowicz notes. With the unfortunate suffering of so many workers at that plant, it became apparent that workspaces had to be safe.

In modern times, it’s clear we need to have physical safety. But I didn’t even know that my own organisation didn’t have it, Michalowicz shares. Through an anonymous survey, I asked my colleagues how safe they felt around our environment at the office. Multiple people answered that the alleyway that leads to the parking lot was pitch black at night. When leaving the office, people felt uncomfortable walking down the alleyway. What I realized as a leader of our team was that for the second half of the day, my team, consciously or subconsciously, was worried about their safety. The solution was simple: add lights or park our cars elsewhere.

Setting up an environment where people feel safe mitigates the cascade of negative effects, Michalowicz states, continuing, and an organisation can also provide financial safety and emotional safety. Financial safety is giving people appropriate compensation for the work they do, but it’s also providing open books so they understand where the organisation is headed. Financial safety comes through financial education, and emotional safety comes through human connection. Great leaders lead with humanness, with authenticity. Put yourself out there, and other people will do the same for you, he urges.

When we’re forced to comply, we will seek to defy

With your team, great leaders assign psychological ownership, Michalowicz argues, indicating that they give people a sense of personalisation that a task is something that they can make their own. They give that person control, the authority to take it in a specific direction, and the ability to gain intimate and deep knowledge about it.

Think about a rental car that you’ve had, Michalowicz invites. How often do you take that rental car to a car wash? Probably never. In a car you own, you probably take it in more frequently or take better care of it. This is the concept of psychological ownership, which is different than legal ownership. But we have psychological ownership when we have a sense of control, the ability to personalise, and hold intimate knowledge about the subject.

Remember this about human nature, Michalowicz advises: when we’re forced to comply, we will seek to defy. With that rental car, you’re told you must return with a full tank, with no scratches and a clean interior. So, what do you do when you leave the parking lot? You do donuts in the parking lot, or you peel out when the light turns green. While you probably don’t actually do that when you leave the parking lot, you are aware of the imposition of the rental car company’s will. When we’re forced to comply, Michalowicz alleges we will seek to defy, or we might be tempted to. What great leaders do is give their team members control, the ability to personalise, and the ability to gain intimate knowledge about something. The authority over that thing gives the person a sense of ownership. When people have ownership, they will say it’s mine or ours. That’s when you know it’s working. That’s when they’re showing ownership.

My experience of the best collaborations that I have participated in or created among my staff is that they are the ones where I have clearly and unequivocally given them the ownership of their process and the outcomes they have received. Even in classrooms, students engaged in a collaborative learning ask learn more, remember more and achieve more, when they have been given control, given the opportunity to personalise their learning, and given them the chance to discover and gain intimate knowledge of their topic. In short, they are most successful when I have given the ownership of their own success.

And it is the same with their teachers working on a collaborative task.

You can’t really do it wrong.

When you are all-in as a leader for and with your colleagues, Michalawicz assures you, they will be all-in for your organisation, even if you don’t do it perfectly.

You probably won’t do this, but Michalowicz shares something that did not work anyway:

I had an idea here where I set up a target in my office. When one of my colleagues did something successfully, they could grab a dart gun and they could shoot at the target board. Wherever they hit, they would win a prize. It was cumbersome and odd, to say the least, and no one really liked it. In fact, they started making fun of this little target board. I took it down, and lamented to my colleague, Jenna, about my disappointment, assuming it was a big failure.

But, he says, her response was, “No, people care more?that?you care than?how?you care.”

That’s the key to great leadership, Michalowicz concludes. You don’t need to get it right all the time; you just need to get going.

So, to calibrate your collaborative tasks and projects to achieve the optimal level of performance:

Match the talents and experience of the staff members you chose to the focus and expertise the task requires;

Allow each staff member to demonstrate their potential through the collaboration;

Ensure the project is being executed in a psychologically safe place -one in which each participant can contribute what they have to offer with confidence and as sense of high acceptance - presumably in accordance with your School's culture;

Give the group control over the project so that they can personalise their contribution and sense a high degree of ownership both of the process and of its outcomes; and

Demonstrate - authentically and genuinely - that you care for your staff members, and that you value and appreciate all of their contributions to their collaborative effort.

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