Let’s start with a question this week.

Have you ever been part of a team or group experience where you’ve thought to yourself: “To heck with it, I’m just going to do everything myself because it’s the only way it’s going to get done right?”

I ask this at the beginning of many of the workshops I facilitate on building effective teams, and without fail, almost every person raises their hand. I then counter with: “What if I told you that at the same time you’re thinking that about your group members they’re thinking the same thing about you.” This is usually met with a number of skeptical looks.

Both reactions point to one definitive fact –

The vast majority of young people are not taught how to collaboratively co-build an effective team or to curate the ongoing factors needed to maintain a strong team environment.

Let’s sit with this for a moment.

In a world where collaboration is more important than ever, where we face some of the biggest challenges in human history, and where we can accomplish so much more working together, our youth are not being taught one of the most important life and employability skills.

As previously mentioned, knowing how to work effectively in teams is an area consistently identified as a gap by colleges, universities and employers.

And so, in my next three posts, I want to introduce a number of ways that we can help youth develop this skill in ways that are effective, fun and engaging. This area of work is a passion for me, and I want to share a number of tips that can help change the narrative of teamwork.

Past Team/Group Experiences
As a starting point, we need to travel to both the Land of Oz and to Hogwarts. Yes, you did read that correctly! If in this very moment, you had to choose to be on a team with the Wicked Witch of the West and her flying monkeys, or Harry Potter and his friends, which would you choose?

Most of the time, people respond with Harry. When asked to elaborate why, I usually hear that Harry and his friends are an example of a strong team because they get things done. For folks who choose the Wicked Witch, they comment they want to be on her team for the same reason. This becomes the surface level of the conversation.

I then go deeper and ask what factors on Harry’s team might lead to problems. This expands into a conversation about how in Harry’s team, there are certain factors that left unchecked would turn into a dysfunctional team environment. To name a few, talking about others behind their backs, passive aggressiveness and ego.

When it comes to the Witch, I ask if we’re talking about the Wicked Witch from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or Elphaba from Wicked? In the first version, she was written as the only character in L. Frank Baum’s book that wasn’t given a voice. Instead, her story is told to us in the words of other people. In Wicked, Elphaba, like many young people is socially conscious and determined to stand up for what she believes in and because of this is labelled as the Wicked Witch.

Now, you might be asking yourself, how does this have anything to do with building effective teams? One word. Interpretation. Every time I ask these questions I can expect as many different answers and opinions to what a good or bad team is or is not. We also answer questions like these, and the one I started today’s post with through the lens of our previous team experiences. Whether we recognize it or not, we bring previous negative experiences working in teams forward, but the same is also true of our great team experiences.

This leads to the first important point of the conservation. Have each team member go around and share their worst and best team experiences, what factors created these previous environments and what presently is most important to them in creating this new team? This in turn creates a shared foundation of understanding and a narrative of what is important to each team member.

Coming Up Next Week on the #WhatsYourSparkBlog
Join me next Tuesday for Changing the Narrative to Build Effective Teams: Part II, where I’ll write about two other points of the conversation – team member contributions and navigating conflict.