More teams I'm on, fewer teams I'm a part of

Just a quick organizational development sort of leadership thought here: The more teams we place any of our employees on, the fewer teams they will be truly a part of. In fact, the more types of teams I create in the organization I lead, the fewer real teams there will be. It’s an ironic expression of what can be an obvious truth, but one which seems to be frequently ignored.

For a relatively large school it could look like this: One teacher is a member of and meets with teams for grade level, subject department, Professional Learning Community (PLC) which often crosses grade and subject lines, division level, leadership team, task group, standing committee, special committee, mentoring partnership, and book study group. We usually try to be sensitive to how many meetings a teacher is scheduled for so our different team identities have a broad range of meeting times and frequencies.

What we are less often sensitive to is how we have completely obliterated any team identity in all this organizational complexity. We can have a meeting for particular purposes. Many needs come up which call for group process. But if we want teamwork to be applied and want real team identity and shared support and creative cross-pollination and strength through connection, we simply can’t pretend that one person can carry in any real or deep way a set of 10 identities which are intended to offer some mutual relationship which goes somewhere beyond broadly planned and coordinated effort.

Certainly with size I can multiply similar teams at the line level to scale my effort. An army’s division has brigades, battalions, companies, platoons and squads. At times, leaders of these teams have to coordinate and do carry some identity shared with others at their similar level of the organization. But do I expect my generals to have the same shared life-giving support for each other as my squad members carry? Do I expect to win real battles assaulting with a force of lieutenants or captains or colonels? Instead, I want soldier to soldier, private to private, private to corporal, private to sergeant, corporal to corporal, sergeant to lieutenant, private to captain, etc. to identify as part of one unit which will fight and die or fight and win together.  

Is my grade level or subject department team fundamental and my PLC consistently supportive and growth-oriented? Is this where I expect the challenges of teaching to be met day to day with the visceral supportive strength of my team? If so, then I had better let other organizational identities recede and not look to them or schedule them as real teams. They are units for organizational purposes which occasionally have shared objectives to address in a coordinated fashion. They are not, however, my teams.

As leader, I want to speak this language and think in these terms for very practical purposes. It may well be easier in my organizational mind to deal with divisions for one thing and grade levels for another and subject departments for yet another and task groups and committees and so on. If, though, I want teachers to have clear identities and support on teams, I have to consider tasks and challenges and meeting schedules and professional growth time and communication line channels and everything I do in ways that build team identity and encourage team support and look for team effort to meet most all of our challenges.