Session 4: Growing and Managing Teams - October 2022A

Session 4: Growing and Managing Teams

Hi @oct22-a-cohort! Hope you are all doing well and getting out to vote today (11/8).

I look forward to seeing you all on Thursday 11/10. The slides and handout for the session are available.

Nudge reminder: As you wrap up the Week 3 Storytelling and Communications tasks, remember to post your progress in the Session 3 thread , along with any questions or issues that have come up. If you weren’t able to get a task done, you can use your response to talk through that as well. We can talk through any questions or issues at the beginning of Session 4.

Hi @oct22-a-cohort,

It was great to see you on Thursday. For those of you who missed the session, please look over the slides, handout, and worksheet. Feel free to post any thoughts or questions in the forum.

This session discussed the importance of a solid project plan, good intentions, clearly articulated responsibilities, and a set of helpful strategies to form collaborative alliances. Different perspectives, talents, and efforts support your OER projects in unique ways, beyond just distributing the workload!

However, good teams don’t just create themselves; they need deliberate communication, cultivation and management (including problem-solving and conflict resolution) on the parts of all members, but particularly those in leading roles, e.g. project manager, technology lead, etc. This also includes modeling being an active, engaged team member and promoting self-care throughout the project. We must all model what we want to see in our classrooms, work places, or communities!

You started to see the unique nature of your respective teams in last week’s “Share your personal story activity.” In this session, you leveraged this knowledge to identify particular roles and assign specific responsibilities to one another. Please make sure to come to an agreement around team roles at your next scheduled team meeting. To help guide and document your decision-making, refer to the session template: Roles and Responsibilities. These roles may shift over time, but it’s critical you begin your project work with clear expectations on roles and responsibilities

Instructions for next week’s 1:1 meetings.

Next week, each team will meet with me individually for 20 minutes. This will give us the opportunity to talk about your projects in more detail, and for me as your facilitator to more clearly understand what you are working towards. I will spend some time reviewing your project summary and homepage before we meet, so I can guide your teams in their next steps.

I would like one member of each team to book a time for you and your team to meet with me. Please fill out this sign-up sheet to book your 1:1 meeting, and be sure to answer all the questions to help me adequately prepare for our conversation! I look forward to these personalized 1:1s meetings next week, and to learn about how to better support your work.