2.1 team entrance conference agendaweb.mit.edu/collaborationtbox/readings/2016... · 2016-01-26 ·...
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2.1 Team Entrance Conference Agenda Time and Date of Meeting: Basement: 66-‐0006 Duration: 1 hour Attendees: All Team Members, Teaching Assistant, and Project Management Coordinator Key Topic of Meeting: Forming your Team; Project Management Tools Importance: Team must be formed before Individual Proposal is written 1. Socialize 2 minutes 2. Project Information a. Understanding the Project 5 minutes b. Proposal 3 minutes c. Team Culture to Effectively Manage Project 3 minutes d. Expectations 3 minutes 3. Questions about the Course 5 minutes 4. Ground Rules 5 minutes a. Systems for Ground Rules i. Writing the Technical Papers ii. Managing Conflict iii. Meetings iv. Team Role Responsibilities v. Oral Presentation 5. Reporting Activities 5 minutes a. Weekly Progress Reports b. Agendas c. Completion Report d. Activity Lists e. Transition Conferences 6. Team Life Cycle and Rotating Roles 5 minutes 7. Mission Statement 4 minutes 8. Time Management Issues Team will be encountering 5 minutes 9. Thomas Killmann Conflict Mode Inventory and MBTI 10 minutes 10. Summary 5 minutes
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2.2 Instructions for Entrance Conference
Go to the URL sent to you in the e-‐mail and sign up for your Entrance Conference. Entrance conferences are held in the second and third weeks of the course to help the individual teams familiarize themselves with the organization of the course and Project Management activities. Individual teams meet with the project management coordinator once they have accomplished the following:
1. Uploaded Rotation Schedule website 1026/27/29/ Rotation Schedule accessed through the Project Management website Announcements.
2. Set up their Drop Box and invited faculty advisor, project management coordinator, teaching assistant and any other relevant person to view your Dropbox. Don’t forget to allow the team coordinator access to the electronic collaborative Dropbox space.
3. Completed the TKI Survey (may have to cut and paste url) at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDdXLUR2RmVySkF3SEVwUWx4eUc4VGc6MQ
4. Had a team meeting and created Ground Rules Systems (Module 4) as a reference and upload Ground Rules into Dropbox.
5. Met with Faculty Advisor, Teaching Assistant and Industrial Consultant (if your project has one assigned). Had a discussion about the faculty advisor’s, teaching assistant’s expectations of the team and upload expectations you listed in the Entrance Conference Project Management Booklet and expectations you have gathered from interviewing your faculty advisor, teaching assistant and industrial consultant if you have one into the Dropbox.
6. Mission Statement has been created at a team meeting and uploaded into Dropbox.
7. Exchanged schedules and recorded on calendar. 8. Complied the team member’s individual strengths and weaknesses and
uploaded into Dropbox. 9. Read the assigned modules 2-‐6. 10. Completed the Safety Questionnaires on the EHS website. 11. Scheduled a Library Tour. 12. Made an initial appointment with the CIM Instructors. 13. Became familiar with the laboratory space for your project. 14. Decided upon when and where the faculty and team meetings will be held.
Members should be on time for their conferences. If a team member
cannot attend the meeting the team coordinator and other team members should be contacted at least four hours before the conference and an alternative date needs to be planned via e-‐mail. The Project Management Teaching Assistant will send available times for the team for the team to choose from
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regarding the new conference time. Teaching Assistants should come to the Entrance Conferences. If not attending they should notify team and the team coordinator via e-‐mail 24 hours in advance of the conference.
Module 3.1 Team Roles - Project Leader 12.1 Project Leader
As a Project Leader, your most important duty is to ensure the team attends simultaneously to both the task and the team process. The team leader has to commit extra time to effectively manage the team by performing a variety of tasks: In Rotation One: 1. Create Ground Rules 2. Create Mission Statement 3. Collect Expectations of people participating in your project 4. Learn how to manage the team by implementing the Situational Leadership
concepts. 5. Creating the Logical Framework so you can create a scope statement to be used in
the proposal. In Rotation One, Two and Three: 1. Having the team adhere to the ground rules and adapt the ground rules systems to
the team’s actual behavior or to change behavior that is causing problems for the advancement of the project.
2. Having the team refer to your mission statement and logical framework as a guide. 3. Organizing the team and faculty meetings, including preparing the agenda and any
reports that may be assigned for each of the weekly meetings, such as writing outlines, data analyses needed for the meeting.
4. Assigning tasks by creating activity lists for laboratory and outside activities and making sure the team timely follows through on these lists, after discussing whether or not members wish to use their strengths or develop one of their weaknesses during the rotation you lead the team.
5. Meeting milestones of the team. 6. Limiting and expanding the scope of the project when necessary. 7. Building team morale.
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8. Administrating the everyday affairs of the team, including settling conflicts, handling team members’ frustrations, and communicating effectively with the staff and faculty.
9. Setting and maintaining performance standards for the team. 10. Giving advice to the new project leader at the end of your rotation at the Transition
Meeting. The task process is controlled by two factors: 1. What team life cycle stage the team is experiencing 2. The project management plan (proposal)? The tasks are stage dependent for the team and task process. In the Formation Stage the first task is for the project leader to identify what skills are needed for the project and what skills each team members possess that will help to complete the project. Being Directive is important in the Formation Stage.
For example, directing other members during meetings by creating agendas and using activity lists to delineate tasks allows your team to function more autonomously. If a team member does not possess the necessary skills, the project leader challenges and supports team members into functioning properly and develop the necessary skills. Under the guidance of the project leader, the team must articulate and commit to goals and objectives, create activity lists, and carry out its mission.
To further reiterate, the proper formation of the team is critical to high
performance. Many teams resist learning the team process basics and want to go directly to the task work. A competent project leader avoids this narrowing of focus by simultaneously focusing on task process, team process, performance standards, and by guiding the team into individual and mutual accountability. Guiding the team into mutual and individual accountability is accomplished through the construction of the ground rules systems. The organizational climate where the team is being formed can have an important effect upon the team. If an organization believes in supporting team based projects the team will organize more rapidly. If upper management exerts stricter supervisory control over middle management this environment may detract from the rapid and effective formation of teams. The Project Leader is responsible for defining and managing this effect for the team.
Monitoring progress and ensuring that your project plans are completed is
important to becoming high performing. The Project Leader assigns monitoring responsibilities to other team members so that the momentum is maintained and the team is ensured that they are focused on solutions to their problems while each team member takes actions within their direct control. The team does not want to become bogged down with waiting for other members to change their behavior. Remember, as a team, always celebrate your progress and agree to take new steps to ensure that you
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can enjoy the fulfillment that comes from achieving your objectives together.
Project Leaders influence individuals and teams within an organization, help to establish goals, and act as guides toward the achievement of those goals, thereby allowing the team to become effective. Two key leadership behaviors you will want to express during your rotation as leader are initiating structure and consideration. 1. Initiating structure is the degree to which the leader organizes and defines
relationships in the team by assigning specific tasks, specifying procedures to follow, scheduling work, and clarifying expectations of team members. Measures of effective initiating structure activities are creating ground rules, the ability to formulate and suggest new ideas and listening to others’ ideas, encouragement of slow-‐working people to work harder, emphasizing meeting deadlines, scheduling regular team meetings to discuss issues and settle conflict, the ability to maintain the team’s focus on the mission, and effective team maintenance by keeping the team members collaborating and working to capacity.
2. Consideration is the degree to which the leader creates an environment of emotional support, warmth, friendliness, and trust. Measures of consideration are doing personal favors for team members, treating team members equally, being willing to make changes in ground rules when they are not effectively maintaining the team, managing conflict, and supporting the members of your team during difficult times. A key example of good team management is when a project leader creates a team culture where team members do not complain but state problems and brainstorm solutions, thereby avoiding the complaint process.
As a Project Leader you will want to utilize the Criticism Stage by transforming the uncertainty and frustration into a positive for the team. The leader, being highly directive, can have the team explore their problems regarding the scope of the project and resources available so that the team can learn to work within realistic parameters to move the project forward.
To use these key leadership behaviors, initiating and consideration, effectively a project leader encourages all team members to participate in decision-‐making, setting deadlines, supporting each other, open ended discussion, problem-‐solving, time management to maintain active participation. Project leaders are skillful at juggling the two dimensions effectively in interpersonal and task-‐related relationships. An example of good leadership in a 1026 team as described by a Project Leader:
“One problem we had as a team was meeting internal deadlines that were set in
advance of actual class deadlines. The new project leader should be more assertive in making sure that assignments are completed by internal team deadlines so that there is enough time for the team as a whole to review them before they have to be submitted. The new team leader should also try to reschedule faculty and team meetings well in
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advance if necessary in order to accommodate all members’ schedules. In general the team leader should be flexible and courteous and take into account all members’ views before making final decisions. The Leader should maintain a balance of strict deadlines and flexible scheduling understanding. The Leader should also try to maximize lab time by having members work on assignments during our two-‐hour incubation period in lab. The project leader should also consider each team members’ strengths and weaknesses in delegating tasks. All members have good experimental ability, but our analytical and writing abilities differ greatly as described in the individual strengths and weaknesses sections.”
As you already understand, developing a team is different than running a
working group. A working group has a clearly focused leader while a team shares accountability. In a team there is mutual and individual accountability while in a working group there is only individual accountability. A team is characterized by common commitment (Dubrin, 1995). A team generates collective and individual work products. Project Leaders support the development of norms and encourage collaboration. The leader understands that commitment to the task is primary. The leader helps define the mission of the team during all the Team Life Cycle stages.
Module 3.2 Team Roles - Recorder 3.2 Recorder 1. Set up Dropbox 2. The Recorder’s major responsibility is to write and e-‐mail the Weekly Progress
Report and to accurately reflect the agreed upon perspective of the team members. Certain information I obtained from the Project Leader, the completed activity lists and information on how the team is doing should be discussed with the team and reported by the recorder in section 4 of the Weekly Progress Report.
3. The Recorder must check in with the Project Leader and make sure that the Team Section 4 of the Weekly Progress Report is filled out accurately.
4. The Recorder uses active listening, to clarify the points that are being transcribed during the meetings.
5. Is the Time Keeper and is responsible for keeping the team on time during meetings. 6. Responsible for keeping track of the team’s discussions at meetings and during
laboratory time. 7. Recording information in the laboratory notebook. 8. Keeping minutes is optional and can be discussed with the faculty advisor and team
to decide if minutes will be instituted.
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9. The role of Recorder is rotated on the same day your team rotates the Team Leader and Oral Presentation role.
Although optional, preparing minutes and e-‐mailing them to the team or having
them in a file in the Dropbox can help the team prepare the Weekly Progress Report that is distributed to team members, project management coordinator, industrial consultant, teaching assistant, and faculty advisor by uploading onto Stellar. Minutes can include daily and weekly assignments for each lab session and team meeting, name of person doing the task and estimated time to do the tasks, which can then be included in the weekly activity lists updates. It is a good idea to spend five minutes at the end of each meeting to review minutes with the team. Once the Project Leader and the team assigns the tasks for the week and the laboratory period, the Recorder is responsible for keeping the activity list of the daily and weekly task assignments, lab sessions, and team meetings up to date.
Why should the Recorder take notes at a meeting? Minutes are the beginning of a conversation for people attending the meeting and others not present. Minutes help the team to focus their attention on what is important and provide a record of what took place at a meeting. In this way the whole team does not have to take notes and two team members can focus completely on listening and can help the recorder after the meeting to clarify some points he/she may have missed. Minutes help to establish and legitimize all points of view. Taking notes encourages participation. Minutes are a collaborative tool because when they are distributed after a meeting the information can be clarified and further discussions about points that remain unclear or need to be acted upon by the team. Minutes once read by the team can be used to clear up misunderstandings and inaccuracies or unclear concepts the team thought were clearly defined. Learning to record minutes properly is a skill. Tips: Use speaker’s words and don’t interrupt. Ask group to slow down if necessary. Minutes record ideas, data, questions, actions, and agreements. Do not record “Who said what”. Record what was agreed upon, what is to be accomplished by the next meeting, who is responsible for what task, what is the schedule for the next meeting, and assignments in the following week? Using the notes, the Project Leader can prepare an agenda for the next meeting. Minutes can vary in format and level of detail. What needs to be recorded is predicated on what will be used in the next week by the team and what will be needed to prepare a cohesive and clear Weekly Progress Report that follows the guidelines set by your faculty advisor. Minutes should be organized including at the beginning actions and decisions and then detailed explanations. IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT SOME FACULTY ADVISORS FEEL THAT RECORDING MINUTES INTERRUPTS THE FLOW OF A MEETING. PLEASE CHECK WITH YOUR FACULTY ADVISOR ON WHETHER THEY FEEL THAT MINUTES ARE AN INTERRUPTION TO THEIR MEETING. If the team still wishes to take notes, the recorder can spend ten minutes after the meeting transcribing what occurred then sending these notes to the team and others.
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There are different types of recording techniques. E-‐mailing and texting has made many of the initial recording techniques obsolete. Using a laptop or an IPAD at a meeting is the best technique. Here are a few essentials; title with date, team number and number pages if the minutes are longer than one sheet, identify minutes as being part of which sequentially numbered Weekly Progress Report, separate ideas with a line, mark an idea with a bullet, leave margins, maintain minutes on a server or document manager system (Drop Box), via e-‐mail publish timeline changes immediately to the team and have an electronic space where they can be referred to in subsequent meetings.
3.3 Team Roles - Oral Presenter 1. The Oral Presenter is responsible for creating an oral presentation plan with the CI
instructor and other team members at the beginning of each rotation. 2. The team creates an oral presentation system in the ground rules and makes
corrections in the system when necessary so that the system meets the team’s needs.
3. It is the reasonability of all the team members to create a good oral presentation plan and help the presenter plan the oral presentation.
4. It is the responsibility of the Oral Presenter to execute the collaborative oral presentation.
5. The CIM instructor will conduct an Oral Presentation Session, which will be about 2 weeks before the first presentation, giving your team a chance to chat about your presentation outline and how the team will collaborate on the presentation. The presenter will make the plan more concrete. Then, after the 1st presentation event and during the weekly CI meeting, the team can reflect with the CI instructor on how the oral presentation collaboration was accomplished successfully or what needs to be changed to make it more productive for the team. This reflective time is held for the second rotation as well and the same procedures will be continued.
An example of an oral presentation ground rule system:
1. Oral presenter is in charge of organizing data and communicating changes in the
presentation to the other team members. 2. Prepare slides; team members will make suggestions and act as sounding boards. 3. Practice at least twice with team members. CI instructor, teaching assistants and/or
faculty advisor. 4. Oral Presenter organizes and plans the presentation with the support and help of
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the team members. The oral presenter can assign presentation tasks to the other team members and they should be recorded on the activity lists.
5. Thoroughly understands the material in order to field questions. Team practices a mock question and answer session with presenter.
6. Consults with the team and faculty advisor agreeing upon what information regarding the project's progress, including data and experiment plans, will be presented.
7. The presenter is responsible for accurately presenting the information.
Module 4.1 Ground Rules - Meeting the Team's Expectations Team Formation Model Step 5. Creation of ground rules including expectations of individual team members, faculty and consultants. Assignment Instructions: 1. Ground rules are established during the initial team meeting. 2. Create ground rules for your team in the following areas:
a. Knowledge teams working in laboratories are responsible for six major activities: laboratory duties, writing papers, individual oral presentations, communicating with your faculty advisor and/or industrial advisor, and the team coordinator, team and faculty meetings, and conflict management.
3. A list of past ground rule examples are provided on the Collaboration Toolbox website Module 4.2. Use these rules to create your ground rules.
4. Copies of the ground rules are attached to your first Weekly Progress Report and are uploaded into your Dropbox.
Systems Thinking theory (von Bertalanffy, L) analyzes individuals and organizations
within the context of their environments by comprehending the fundamentals of how a team functions, as a system within a set of larger organizational systems, making it possible to work through the complexity of these interactions and arrive at real, effective solutions to difficult individual, team, business, or organizational problems. Individuals, teams, and an organization do not exist as an island, but as part of a larger matrix of systems that function, more or less independently, yet are interdependent. Systems Thinking theory (von Bertalanffy, L) states that a system maintains its existence over time through the mutual interaction of its parts. Two such systems are collaborative and hierarchal. Hierarchies are developed through the mutual interaction of the power dynamic, while collaborative systems are developed through problem solving and
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agreed upon boundaries. We choose to use a collaborative ground rules system to describe how the team will function.
Viewing a project as a collaborative system of mutual interactions allows a team to create systems that support understanding of the project and allow each individual to contribute to creating successful projects. Often the understanding is an emergent result of trial and error. The ground rules are a tool to help the team develop agreement on how the team will work collaboratively to complete the project. Ground rules are systems of behavior that the team uses to establish boundaries, clarify task implementation, and promote understanding of the project, including creating patterns of behavior that result in successful completion of the tasks involved in reaching the team’s goals. Ground rules support the team members in understanding the framework or structure of the team. Ground rules help to establish, clearly define, and develop mutual understanding about the team's culture. “Norms” (rules which will predicate how you will act as a team member) will need to be established in specific areas. The rules are clear, concise, and are written.
Once the team members commit to the project the project leader manages the
needed underlying structure being created so that all members take responsibility for their behavior in the context of working on a successful project. Being collaboratively interested in successfully completing a project and understanding the underlying structure enable the team to identify the most appropriate rules that define the optimum behavior that will support effective project management. This is the ground rules system. The first step in creating the system of ground rules is to define each situation the team will encounter while doing the project.
1. Are you going to write a collaborative paper or are papers being written
individually? What rules will be needed to make this task run smoothly? 2. Who will be the spokesperson for the team and will the spokesperson be
determined by technical expertise or by appointment. 3. How will tasks be delegated? 4. When, where, and how will the team meet? 5. How will the team meetings be organized and will one person take notes?
The ideal is to have the team learn to anticipate problems they may encounter
while doing the project and incorporate solutions to these problems into the ground rules. Asking the right questions is imperative to success. If initial discussions are data focused then data focused rules will be created. If the discussions are relationship focused, i.e. cause and effect, then the ground rules will seek to establish “cause and effect” relationships. However, if the project leader can promote discussions that find solutions to understanding these patterns responsible for the situations the team will encounter then the ground rules will support knowledge of the project and the individuals performing the tasks associated with the projects. (adapted from http://www.systems-‐thinking.org, Gene Bellinger. Z 2009)
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One of the most important aspects of a ground rules system is a collaborative
feedback loop. In many teams the feedback loop created is a negative rather than collaborative. Project Leaders are responsible for creating positive collaborative feedback loops that are incorporated into the ground rules system. It is essential when deciding what activities need to be clearly defined to determine where to draw boundaries. Limiting and expanding will always create compromises. Excessively limiting what activities need to be clearly articulated may narrow the rules as to omit some of the relevant interactions essential to making the ground rules relevant to managing the team.
For example, we have observed in this course that some teams create cultures with extensive ground rules, which work exemplary, while others create few ground rules ultimately running into problems as behaviors emerge that were not well defined in the ground rule system. Therefore, when we see unarticulated ground rules your team will be asked to have another meeting and transform the rules into more functional rules.
Revisiting the ground rules on a regular basis, especially during times of stress, will initially support the team to question if changes to the ground rules system are needed to make working together more effective and efficient. The ground rules system should include a combination of balancing and reinforcing structures. An example of a balancing and reinforcing ground rules sytems is; Faculty Advisor Meetings: These are guidelines that should be implemented 1. Weekly meetings with the faculty advisor will be held _______; Place________. 2. All participants must have read the Weekly Progress Report before the meeting. 3. If there are any ambiguous statements in the Weekly Progress Report then the recorder
will clear up the ambiguities at the meeting (agenda item) or via e-‐mail before the meeting.
4. The agenda is written by the Project Leader and sent to team members 24 hours in advance.
5. Items on the agenda will be discussed at the meeting. 6. The agenda items are those pre-‐selected from the team meetings and each member can
add to them 24 hours before the faculty meeting. 7. The Project leader facilitates meeting. 8. All participants input will be considered during the meeting. 9. The Project Leader will manage tangential discussions. 10. The faculty advisor in this meeting will give as much input as necessary and will not take
over the meeting. 11. Team members must be punctual to faculty meetings. 12. If a member is going to be absent, that member must inform other team members a day
before the meeting. 13. Minutes are they optional or required or only required when someone is absent or late?
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Bertalanffy's initial premise is that there are fundamental structures interacting across all systems and, if one learns the structures, when transferring from one discipline to another, much of the learning can be transferred. When studying a new discipline, one simply has to learn the labels on the structures in the new discipline. Therefore agreeing upon the definition of ambiguous labels such as respect, being non-‐judgmental, honesty, conflict management, and trust support the system being functional. You can consider the balancing and reinforcing structures as building blocks, which can be combined in numerous ways to describe more intricate interactions. When revisiting the ground rules review the problems that have come up during the project’s execution and ask how the problems can be solved by incorporating changes to the systems already developed. An example from a past team follows:
“The Ground Rules proved to be a very effective way of managing team tasks
and we referred back to them once the Proposal and Oral Presentation deadlines were approaching. Referring back to the rules helped to keep each person on track with their responsibilities to the team and was a good indicator of why things may not have worked. In my opinion, our ground rules were very comprehensive and should be carried forward into the next rotation without any changes. There was one area of the ground rules that was not adhered to which led to some difficulties in the preparation of the oral presentation. Flexibility was allowed in the oral presentation system initially and then the presenter modified the system during the first rotation. However, we realized that this was not an effective means of preparation. So we consulted with our faculty advisor who gave us excellent feedback on how to move forward with our time management and delegation of tasks and the revisions to the system were appropriately made.”
It is important to have a system of follow-‐through involving the team, your industrial consultant, your teaching assistant, project management coordinator, and faculty advisor in the problem-‐solving process. The system’s key elements should build short-‐term momentum by implementing the 10.26 procedures and continuing to deepen people’s understanding about the procedures as changes are made. Whenever possible, project leaders involve all team members by first helping to develop the leader’s own insights about why the team’s systems function as they do, and as time goes by the leader meets with the team and encourages clarification on what the team initially created. Part of your ground rules system will be a procedure for conflict management used when the team encounters internal and external conflicts, which we define as “Differences of Opinion”. The ground rules system when designed appropriately initiates negotiation and consensus building.
Individual behavior not accounted for within the ground rule system can emerge.
By using the Entrance Conference information emergent behaviors can be prevented. Therefore team members should accurately describe their strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and how they behave in regard to lateness to meetings, working collaboratively, and managing their time when supplying their personal information.
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When emergent behavior occurs, the team should clearly define the emergent behavior and decide whether or not to adopt the behavior and change the ground rule system it is affecting or to have the project leader monitor the emergent behavior and extinguish it. An example of a behavior a team may want to extinguish is:
“Our biggest weakness continues to be our tendency to procrastinate, though
there has been an improvement over the course of the semester. The busy schedules of the team members often make it difficult for us to meet our internal deadlines. However, there was a marked improvement from the writing of the original progress report to the revisions of the progress report. The writing process for the original progress report was poorly organized and procrastinated (and rushed through) to the very last minute. The team had a long (voluntary and unofficial) team meeting to work on the progress report revisions together in which the team was able to bond as well as efficiently complete the revisions. We then redesigned our ground rules system for writing collaborative papers so the problems would not be encountered during writing the Final Report.” THE GROUND RULES SYSTEM – INCORPORATING KNOWLEDGE INTO A SYSTEM Setting the Ground Rules – Procedure to follow to formulate ground rules:
1. Choose ground rules from list provided in Module 4.2 on the Collaboration Toolbox website.
2. Develop others that would be unique to your team 3. Make sure to cover all areas of team interaction and plan ahead.
Overall Participation:
1. Discuss team ethics 2. Make an agreement to help each other to meet the team's goals 3. Commit to fulfilling your personal responsibility, sharing ideas and supporting
each other in work 4. Reinforce positive ways to communicate support to each other and utilize the
team's strength to be high performing 5. Commit to being on time. Being on time means when delayed communicating
with the team quickly to manage the problem. 6. Commit to preparing materials in advance 7. Share the work equally. Equally means over the course of the project not daily. 8. System for brainstorming, including how you will present your ideas and narrow your
decision making process. 9. System for decision-‐making 10. System for Identifying, defining, and setting the quality requirements for the team 11. System for reviewing the task assignment process including data analysis, writing
assignments, and oral presentations. 12. System for holding meetings
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a. Decide on regular times for weekly team and faculty meetings. b. Decide how team will conduct short informal meetings, to maintain
communication between the weekly, formalized meetings. c. Plan with the team what evaluation criteria your team will use to assess if the
meeting and how to implement evaluation process. 13. System for conflict management.
10.26/27/29 GROUND RULES FOR BEING TIMELY The following are NOT excuses for not being timely with assignments, showing up for team meetings, labs, or timely E-‐MAILING Weekly Progress Reports, or agendas.
1. Being a Double Major 2. Athletic Practices 3. Extra Curricula Activities 4. Ineffectual Organization of Team or Collaborative Experience in ICE 5. Lack of Organization in ICE by leaving ICE assignments to last minute 6. Having to track you down and get you to do an assessment 7. Other team member has part of assignment and you can not locate them 8. Faculty Advisor says you do not have to do it
Excuses for missing an assignment: (Accepted excuses must be communicated in advance with alternative plan to make up the assignment)
1. Job interviews 2. Graduate School Interviews 3. Confirmed Illness
Examples of Changes in Ground Rules that are effective: “For example, other teams in our CI section held the Oral Presenter responsible for creating all of the slides, and the other team members were responsible for commenting and suggesting improvements. After a team discussion, we decided this was not an effective strategy because our team thought the Oral Presenter should really be focusing on understanding the content of the presentation and thinking about how to communicate the concepts in our project effectively, and not spending time on more lower-‐level tasks like making a slide theme or checking for the inclusion of references or checking for consistency of style or grammar. Consequently, we reworded our Ground Rules to emphasize that the Oral Presenter was not responsible for more routine tasks associated with the presentation, such as creating simple figures or fixing any formatting issues, and that this responsibility fell to the other two team members. The Oral Presenter would prepare a list of figures or tasks that needed to be done to the presentation so that she could focus on rehearsing her oral presentation. We found this was effective because it meant the Oral Presenter did not have to worry about
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checking that the slides were numbered, for example, and could instead focus on the more important task of practicing how she was going to explain the content in each slide the most effectively; this was especially helpful when there was limited time or a looming deadline. “ “We reworded the Ground Rules to emphasize this: that the Oral Presenter was responsible for creating the outline for what the presentation would contain and in what order concepts would be explained, in what way, and with which figures. Specifically, we said, “The Oral Presenter is responsible for deciding the higher-‐level concepts to be explained during the presentation, the logical flow of ideas, and how to illustrate any ideas with figures. If any lower-‐level tasks are done by other team members (such as creating a graph from data points or formatting culture images onto a slide), then it is the responsibility of the Oral Presenter to go over the presentation slides in the end and make sure she is satisfied with the flow, style, and cohesiveness of the presentation slides. If she is not satisfied with a figure, table, formatting style, or similar element, it is the responsibility of the other team members to fix the element until the Oral Presenter is satisfied. The Oral Presenter has the final say in what will be included in the presentation and whether the work done by the other team members is satisfactory. “ Hearing the strategies of other teams allowed us to fine tune the wording in our Ground Rules to fully develop the responsibilities of each team member for the Oral Presentation more concretely. “ see Examples in Module 4.2.
Module 5.1 Mission Statements Team Formation Model - Step 4. Creating a mission statement that can be utilized to create a scope statement for a time management plan 3.2.4 Mission Statements in course manual
A Mission Statement is a statement on how and what is to be accomplished by the team by clearly stating the intended direction the project and team will attain. The mission statement guides the actions of the team, designating the overall goal to give direction for decision-‐making. Mission Statements provide the framework or context where the team's strategies are formulated. Mission Statements allow the team to develop conceptual thinking about the technical aspects of the project and help team members to feel comfortable thinking of new ways to look at existing problems while applying their knowledge in innovative ways. The Mission Statement facilitates defining where
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the project may still need development and further helps the team members to communicate concepts more clearly and accurately in creating their objectives in the individual proposals. Mission Statements help the team to address organizational communication issue, allow the team to own their work tasks, and the successful completion of their projects (Module 5). Further Reading: Mission Statement (part of Entrance Conference Booklet used during Team Formation lecture)
A mission statement describes the best possible outcome and asserts the team’s
ability to articulate and execute a vision. The mission statement determines the creativity, quality, and originality of a team’s ideas and solutions. A powerful mission statement should stretch expectations and aspirations helping the team to jump out of their comfort zone. A mission statement can generate a mental image to stimulate an emotional response that can serve to invigorate and motivate the team. The project leader facilitates the team in the creation of the mission statement. A vision statement can be a corporate long-‐term goal. Your mission statement will be your team’s long term goal for the project with specific references to how you will interact as a team as well as how you will plan the project. The success of a project is the ability of the team to make the transition from idea to action. New projects can become stalled during the transition from forming ideas to accomplishing them. Teams need to organize the project development process by creating a mission statement, creating goals, prioritizing tasks, and evaluating team performance through developed systems of behavior called ground rules. The mission statement consist of three elements:
One, define the project's primary goals. Goals are the foundation and the reasons
for coming together to accomplish the project. This element may be augmented and expanded or change direction during a research project therefore reviewing the mission statement for accuracy is important. Discussions are focused on:
1. Delineating the purpose, values, objectives, and direction of the team by providing a
clear and compelling statement of the team’s direction 2. Defining flexibility and ability to continuously improve team and task process 3. Explaining the team’s commitment to innovative approaches for maintaining quality
task approaches to problem solving 4. Identifying what the team is doing long term 5. Discuss how you are going to achieve extraordinary goals
Two, define the project's formal organizational structure. Use ground rules, meetings, reporting activities and other team structures to support the organizational structure. This element changes to facilitate the project's goals. Discussions are focused on:
1. Definition of your team culture
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2. Authority for team to improve 3. Team’s commitment to innovative approaches for maintaining quality team
approaches to problem solving 4. Sources of the team’s competitive strengths and advantages (use exercises).
Three define the project's daily operational structure. Use your knowledge of each other’s strengths and weaknesses and time availability to create daily operational structure. This element may change to meet the project's goals within the context of resources available. Discussions are focused on:
1. Describing communication structure 2. Plan how to be flexible and to continuously improve team and task process. 3. Discuss a system to be used for innovation and quality 4. Create a system for problem-‐solving 5. How to implement qualifications for a quality work product. How to Use a Mission Statement in a Project Setting: 1. Mission statements are the first collaborative effort in the team. 2. Periodically review the mission statement to make any necessary revisions. 3. Empower the team using the mission statement and ground rules to create systems
of behavior that the team can follow to prevent and solve problems. 4. Commitment to a vision improves teamwork and establishes an ethical system of
research. Projects have specific objectives that need to be supported by their own project
culture. Projects include an assemblage of people enveloping a concept or idea and particular actions. Discovering, and even more important creating, and maintaining the character of that culture, is an important job of the project leader. If a team truly intends to complete their mission, they must deflect the temptation to depart from their statement unless, as in some cases, the project may reinvent itself as research leads in a different direction. Therefore, as stated, any mission statement created for a research project team must include the idea of flexibility, the ability to collaborate and change their mission and follow where the research leads your team. If your team stays true to a flexible strategy, and maintains a purposeful ethical persona that is articulated in the mission statement your chances for a successful conclusion to the project are enhanced. (Adapted from Nahavandi, A., 1997. The Art and Science of Leadership. London, UK: Prentice Hall International Dubrin, A.J., 1995. LEADERSHIP Research Findings, Practice, and Skills. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.) See examples in Module 5.2
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Module 6. Team Formation
6.1 What is a Team?
Most of the skills and abilities needed to be on a team are already familiar. The
goal is to organize these skills into efficient and effective strategies. A basic skill of team formation begins with learning the difference between a team and a work group. A Work Group is defined as having the following characteristics:
Strong Clearly Focused Leader Individual Accountability
Broad Organizational Mission Individual Work Products Efficiently Run Meetings
Measured Group Effectiveness and Problem-‐Solving Discussions, Decisions and Delegation
Many engineering students exposed to work groups consider them teams. A Team actually has the following characteristics:
Shared Leadership Roles Individual and Mutual Accountability Delivery of a Specific Team Purpose
Collective Work Product Encouragement of Open Ended Discussions
Specific Problem-‐Solving Meetings Performance Directly Measured by Assessing Collective Work Product
Discussions and Decisions about Problem Solving Collaborating and Doing the Real Work Together
(Katzenbach, J. R. & Smith D. K., 1993).
Teams are defined by the purpose the members wish to accomplish, their structure, culture, and environment. Engineers are usually asked to manage or be a member of three types of teams: work teams, knowledge teams, and cross-‐functional teams, which includes research and development teams.
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A self-‐managed work team is defined as a team that takes the responsibility to learn how to manage themselves, using shared leadership, structured decision-‐making, and attend formal weekly meetings as part of their structure.
A knowledge team utilizes the formation of team boundaries, shared team
leadership, team training and development, participative goal setting, enhanced flexibility, conflict management skills, enhanced creativity, decision-‐making, and written and clearly defined participative action plans utilizing technical communication. Knowledge teams require a strong project manager, who can effectively keep open communication with customers and organizational priorities and make the team accountable for their results (Romig & Olson, 1995).
A cross-‐functional team is defined as a team whose participants are from
different departments or disciplines that work together in a team to reach a common goal. Shared leadership is very important in cross-‐functional teams because as the action plans for the team develops, different team members lead the team through their area of expertise. Finding a common language and understanding differences in perspective is most important in cross-‐functional teams.
Complex and dynamic work environments require creativity, innovation,
effective strategic planning and the ability to define goals and objectives, strengthened by strong decision making. Teams have become an integral part of these environments. Organizations understand that teams can provide rapid consensus across departments, allowing effective prioritization, enhancing creativity, and providing companies with a competitive advantage.
6.2 Preparation for Forming a Team
Once the individual expectations, strengths and weaknesses are delineated ground rules can be formed. Forming ground rules supports a team in understanding each other’s working styles and values. Once these differences in values and thinking are discussed and integrated into the team’s culture collaboration can begin. Not discussing these differences can create interpersonal problems between two team members, which can escalate and cause performance problems for a team. An example of a common interpersonal problem on a team is when one team member may be a friend with another team member and after working together finds they have different working styles that is frustrating and not meeting one of the friend’s expectations. The other friend and other team member are also frustrated because the friend whose expectations are not being met is avoiding them and refusing to address the problem. The team becomes fragmented. The third member, unaware of the conflict, then feels left out. The friends feel alienated because they are avoiding the new conflict in their relationship. The solution to this problem is to discuss in advance of starting the project everyone’s expectations, strengths and weaknesses in specific areas that will impact the team’s overall performance. Then decide which strengths are needed, which
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weaknesses will be developed and which expectations can be met and use these decisions to create your ground rule systems.
Different working styles can be a source of conflict. Successful collaboration
includes separating these differences in working style as not a personal issue rather a difference that can be incorporated into performing the task and viewing the differences as an opportunity to learn and adapt both styles to a collaborative working style. Forming ground rules and viewing these ground rules as systems of team behavior can help ameliorate common team problems.
Successful collaboration includes creating a system for the team to deal with
conflict and negotiation. The manner in which conflict is dealt within a team setting is different than the method in which conflict is dealt within a personal relationship. Successful teams honestly discuss past team experiences by identifying their success and developing systems to deal with the problems they encountered in past teams.
Behavior is situation specific. Your leadership, conflict, working, learning,
thinking, and negotiating styles are also situation specific. Because these styles are situation specific, learning how to adapt them to a specific situation is a skill. In the above-‐mentioned example your friend is someone you may or may not have worked with before. Therefore, if you have not worked in a project setting with your friend in the past their behavior may be different than what you have experienced in past social or leisure time situations.
Identifying the use of these different styles in specific situations requires
knowledge and focus. Deciding on the appropriate style or behavior for the appropriate situation, adapting the style or behavior, and practicing these skills in a highly organized environment necessitates a high level of competency. To effectively organize a project, scientists and engineers need to be competent at both the team and task process. Bringing all your skills and abilities to bear upon a problem, creates a successful dynamic working environment that is satisfying and harmonious.
Relax and enjoy learning the information. Learning to manage a project is a
growth experience. "While you still have time and resources to maneuver anticipate upcoming limiting forces, which are small now, but can increase as time goes on. You cannot eliminate the limits. You, can however, work with them more effectively, and incorporate them into your next wave of expansion." (Senge, 1994). Collaborating can be very complex and hard to manage in large teams. Mastering collaboration in a small team is a good beginning for collaborating in a larger team. Projects begin with team formation. Forming a team has two essential steps:
1. When forming a team, team members need to get to know each other quickly. To get to know each other quickly small group interactive sessions are planned to discuss each other's expectations, similarities and differences and what strengths and weaknesses
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each team member possess in the context of the particular project the team is preparing to tackle. In forming a team, openly discussing skills and abilities as rapidly as possible is essential for developing trust. Initially taking the time to talk or “breaking the ice” in small groups supports new team members in trusting one another. 2. The teams need an organizational structure that defines boundaries. The structure should include definitions of team roles, ground rules, boundaries for communicating with each other and people outside the team, and a time management plan, which establishes boundaries for accomplishing the project.
Competent team members view their team as a living system with a culture of
its own, distinct and apart from the rest of the organization. Being a team member requires becoming a participant and an observer. Effective team membership necessitates knowledge and skill in many areas including knowledge of self, team development, team dynamics, and leadership theory. Other important skills are the development of flexible intervention skills, process observation and diagnostic skills, communication skills, and conflict and negotiation skills. Here are some other examples:
1. Definition and Differences Between Team And Task Process 2. What is a Team? 3. Team Life Cycle 4. Mission Statement And How To Create One 5. Ground Rules viewed as system of behavior 6. Time Management Plan 7. Conflict Management 8. Development of a Team Culture
6.3 Definition and Differences Between Team and Task Process
There are two processes happening simultaneously when people collaborate on a project. The two processes are the task process and the team process. Both processes are of equal importance and to achieve success necessitate proper structuring and maintenance. Team and task processes are composed of maintenance behaviors and abilities, structured hierarchically and maintained simultaneously. The first structure addressed when doing a project is the team process, establishing effective working relationships amongst the team members. These interpersonal relationships, once structured properly and established as norms within the team, allow the team to effectively communicate, manage conflict, make decisions, and problem solve. Team maintenance behaviors focus on the interaction between individuals while they are accomplishing tasks. Competent Team Skills
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1. Active Listening supports the team in becoming competent in influencing others, to be open to each other’s ideas, and listen actively before directing each other to act in a desired manner, which in turn allows the project leader to move others to act in a desired manner. 2. Understanding the responsibilities of each team member’s role within the team creates accountability, which is the ability to establish in each other a commitment to achieving results by making everyone accountable to the equal sharing of work and the regulating of their behavior. The desired competency level for accountability on a team would be to listen to each other’s ideas and then collaborate in ways that make each other individually and mutually accountable to the team. 3. Teams collaborate with each other to develop a willingness to work with others to achieve shared success at any time. Working collaboratively develops a Bias for Action, which allows team members to think over a problem before taking action and then appropriately and consistently make decisions when to act and when to delay. Procrastination on a team would be futile. Members must be able to react quickly and move forward after thinking and brainstorming a problem collaboratively. 3. Recognizing and adhering to the Ground Rules to establish a synergetic team culture by developing effective communication. Effective communication is the ability to utilize multiple communication modes and channels. A competent team member utilizes all technology available to keep the team high performing and increases resources by being trained in the latest communication technology. 4. Understanding how to individually and collaboratively plan a negotiation. Conflict management involves flexibility. Being able to adapt and work effectively within a variety of situations with team members and other individuals allows team members to be able to understand and manage different perspectives on an issue, which in turn permits the project leader to understand and expertly use situation specific management skills to manage the team. Competency in this area is being aware of different conflict styles and knowing how to appropriately apply them to different situations. Networking helps the team to expertly communicate information to build relationships and use them to accomplish the goals and objectives. 5. Project Leadership is the ability to use different leadership styles that are situation specific to achieve high performance for the team. Competency levels on a team are defined as being trained in situational and shared leadership skills. Coaching and supporting each other is acknowledging and utilizing a strong project leader whom is directive and leads by setting firm standards of behavior and accountability through coaching and building a strong team. Teamwork is defined as the ability to lead teams and be a team member who can share work and leadership by individually and mutually being accountable for the equal distribution of work.
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6. Assessment of Individual Styles of Behavior allows team members to develop interpersonal understanding of each other. Team members commit to understanding other team members by assessing their behavioral competencies. Competency on a team is learning the use of the assessment tools and developing expertise in their use. 7. Team members need to have a specific level of competence to become an effective team member. Learning to utilize self-‐regulation is part of this process and allows team members to regulate their own behavior and use emotional intelligence when faced with negative responses or actions when provoked, in times of conflict or while under stress. Team members need to be aware of the surrounding organizational culture so that the team can manage the organizational influences to achieve the objectives. Competency level for team members would be to have the ability to utilize informal communication channels and utilizes decision-‐making models to achieve high performance while understanding strategic management without having had the experience to develop the necessary skills. Once the team process is established the task process is planned. The goal is to apply the information learned in the initial stages of the team process to facilitate the execution of the task process. Initial Tasks: 1. Establishing a Mission Statement begins the development of applying conceptual thinking to the project. Members can then feel comfortable thinking of new ways to look at existing problems and detect patterns in systematic reactions to show some innovation and application of their existing knowledge The Mission Statement will help define where the project may still need some development and show how the team members can begin to communicate concepts more clearly and accurately in the Scope Statement in your Proposal.
2. Defining the Objective for the Team and Task Process by developing achievement orientation as a team that will allow each team member to do well, work to a high standard and to ask directly what is expected of oneself. 3. Creating Goals that can be decomposed into Activities for the Team requires analytical thinking allowing the team to make formal and logical deductions, using models and formulas, and scientific solutions. Competency in this area is to prefer analyzing data by applying theory and method, while making systematic comparisons of different features by setting priorities on a rational basis, identifying time sequences, causal relationships and consistently using formal and logical deductions successfully. 4. Utilizing the Strengths and Weaknesses of the team members in executing the task us accomplished through the identification of individual technical expertise, which is the specific knowledge, skills, qualifications, or experience required to perform in a
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particular team. And then having the team agree to technical skill development which is the ability to assess technical skills in each other and use them effectively to accomplish the task with the ability to work on a team where cross-‐functional technical skills maybe needed. The team members then need to apply the expertise by disseminate knowledge to oneself, team members, and others while learning to apply expertise.
5. Time Management Plans can create flexible boundaries and equally distributed workloads. Team members utilize dedication, which is the ability to meet objectives under increasingly challenging circumstances by thriving under some stress while meeting objectives. Time management also incorporates Strategic Orientation is the ability to link long-‐range visions and concepts to daily work. Team need to understand their competencies so they can develop the ability to use time management to keep the team high performing by managing other people and creating activity lists for the team to follow. Research on Team Effectiveness:
Our research at MIT has shown that the following elements must be present to have continuously effective meetings.
1. Meetings are planned out ahead of time by one team member
2. Agendas are sent out 24 hours in advance of the meeting and other members
contribute to the agenda.
3. The agendas are specific and have time estimates that use historic information
from past agendas throughout the term.
4. Minutes are taken at each meeting and are sent to each attendee within 48 hours of the meetings. Minutes are used as part of an active listening process, where the notes clarify what was discussed and then each person attending the meeting further clarifies their perspective after reading the recorder’s minutes. Minutes are collaborative way of continuing the conversation after the meeting is over.
5. All members of the team attend scheduled weekly meetings if the team is smaller than 4. If the team is larger than 4 members meetings can be effective if a quorum is present at each meeting and the other members are informed of decisions made through the sending of minutes. Decisions that are made without other members being present are placed on the next agenda for review when the team members are present.
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6. Effective meeting ground rules are kept in place throughout the life of the team and are reviewed, changed and followed by all team members.
7. Good facilitation by a project leader or appointed facilitator who is part of the team allows the team to proceed effectively.
8. Adhering to scheduled weekly team and faculty meetings for the team
throughout the term of the project improves the effectiveness of the project.