Terri, you presented your ideas quite well.
In my company as in others, well over 50% of ostensible team work crashed
and burned. The primary, driving reason contained two aspects:
1) Team members, experts at what they do, thought that as adults it was
enough to bring that expertise--that data--to the table. And as adults,
we could handle process.
2) It is not enough to be the expert. Without a knowledge of process,
teams perform poorly and often fail.
The pretty phrase I like to repeat is, "the hard stuff is the soft stuff,
and the soft stuff is the hard stuff." Here, hard stuff means data. Soft
stuff means process orientation, the HOW of team work. High performing
groups in organizations bring the What and the How to the table in
explicit ways. By demystifying process, team sponsors, facilitators,
leaders and members assist themselves toward achieving common goals in an
atmosphere of respect.
Where is the team work in our middle and high schools? Someone wrote in
another posting that teachers and administrators, with too few exceptions,
are adverse to the practical application of team principles to teaching,
let alone to learning. If true, this represents a chasm separating high
value and practical, SOCIAL interaction from self-absorbed, self-centered
social behavior. With the latter our cup overruns.
Enough for now. Thanks for your thoughts, Terri.
Best,
-- Barry Mallis bmallis@markem.comLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>