In my post on March 17, I wrote that 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. This led to tips on how to lay the foundation of a team by creating a shared understanding of each member’s past team experiences – both good and bad.

In my post on March 23, I wrote about the roles people take in teams, looking at teamwork and tasks through a strengths-based lens and one of the most important aspects of teamwork – learning how to navigate conflict.

This brings us to three additional areas of discussion: stress, feedback and appreciation.

How do we show up when we’re stressed, not at our best or having a bad day? When we’re having a day like this how can our team members best support us and do they know how? Do you need some time to yourself, someone to check in, or maybe a few minutes to just be able to sit and process out loud with a team member? When we help youth form teams, dive into this topic. It helps them articulate “this is how I am feeling, and this is what I need.”

It’s inevitable when working with others that there will be moments where team members disagree, annoy someone without realizing it and need to give each other feedback. Along with conflict, it’s essential that we learn how to engage our team members in dialogue like this. Help youth build their team by having each team member share “how” they would like feedback delivered and coach them on the delivery. For example: “I’m really upset that you keep talking over me in meetings and wish you could just be quiet sometimes” sends a very different message than: “I notice in meetings we both get really excited about the impact of our work and want to share this. Because of this I notice we don’t always listen to each other. Can we have a conversation about how to create a space where we better support each other?” Same idea, but two very different ways of saying it.

Appreciating each other is just as important as the other points of the conversation. For some of us, appreciation in public in front of our teams and other people makes us feel valued. For others, a “thank you for a great job” privately or in an email works equally as well. In helping youth build teams, help them understand that celebrating team accomplishments is a very important aspect of teamwork.

Alright, so all of these conversation points are important, but how do help teams put all of this into practice? These conversations give youth the opportunity to develop their communication skills through articulating their experiences, how they approach these topics and what they need when they do.

Once you lead a team through these conversations the next step is to have them develop a team contract – essentially a number of statements they collaboratively come up with together. These statements are informed by their learning about each other and become their roadmap for how they’re going to work together. What commitments do they make to each other, how will they hold each other accountable if/when challenges arise and what are their next steps if they are unable to solve a team challenge?

Coming Up Next on the #WhatsYourSparkBlog
Over the next two weeks I’m excited to feature two guest bloggers. On April 6, Stephen Johns will write about his learning on keeping up motivation during a pandemic and on April 13, Joanne Fung will write about vulnerability in the professional workplace and embracing empathy.