Building a Team

BUILDING A TEAM

By Karen Paup

Lesson Objectives

• Learners will understand the importance of a strong core team and distributed leadership
• Learners will understand how to structure a team to effectively distribute responsibility and decision-making
• Learners will be able to apply this knowledge to their advocacy

Build a Strong Core Team

• The core team should:
• Know the key players, conflict, and ways to leverage power
• Have self-interest that aligns with the issue
• Be fully invested

vs.

Leadership Development

Three Components of a Strong Core Team

Quality

Organizational Focus

Three Components of a Strong Core Team

A small group of leaders who organize other leaders and followers in your organization to act on various issues of concern. The outside layers of the circle represent the three main components of a strong core team. Click on each one to learn more about each characteristic.

How to Build a Team

Videos by Marshall Ganz

Disorganization v. Organization:How to Build a Team (Lesson 4)

While watching this video, think about:

• The different qualities of an organization vs. a disorganization
• Which sounds more like your experiences
• What Ganz identifies as the key to avoiding a disorganization

How to Structure a Team:How to Build a Team (Lesson 5)

While watching this video, think about:

• How Ganz describes the issues with concentrating leadership with one or two leaders
• How Ganz describes the issues with a lack of structural leadership
• What lessons can be taken from the Moses and Jethro story

Distributed Leadership:How to Build a Team (Lesson 6)

While watching this video, think about:

• How Ganz describes distributed leadership
• How Ganz describe what makes teams effective

Launching a Team:How to Build a Team (Lesson 7)

While watching this video, think about:

• What considerations should be made while forming a team
• Why these should be decided early and not as your campaign or organization progresses

Determining a Shared Purpose:How to Build a Team (Lesson 8)

While watching this video, think about:

• What the facilitator does to make this an effective example
• How this group finds commonality and a shared purpose

Determining Norms: How to Build a Team (Lesson 9)

While watching this video, think about:

• How the group decides to make decisions
• How the group handles disagreements
• How the group chooses to handle the breaking of norms

Determining Roles:How to Build a Team (Lesson 10)

While watching this video, think about:

• What responsibility these roles have
• How the group determines who fills the roles
• How the group members evaluate themselves in deciding who fills what roles

Determining Team Identity: How to Build a Team (Lesson 11)

While watching this video, think about:

• What purpose the activities in this video serve for the group's success
• Why Ganz refers to this as the "most important segment"

Resources

• Exodus, ch 18, 1-27

• Find the rest of the Ganz videos at Harvard Resistance School

• This link, How to Form a Tenants’ Union, has some great resources for people trying to build a strong group of people

Leadership development

Leaders do not come out of nowhere. They usually are doing smaller things until they get an opportunity to do something bigger. Core teamwork allows us to better build a base of leaders for the future. They understand their work more completely in a core team and by being a member of a core team, they already bring something to the table. Leadership development builds skills to an already-present base; core teams weed out those who are not committed beforehand.

Quality

A core team should not be more than five people. Otherwise, the responsibility gets too diluted. There is no official limit, but always think of quality over quantity. A core team must be willing to get into the weeds of the issue, as well as bring a needed skill to the team. They should be people who add value to the work and not just be those who have been around for a long time. They will be depended on to do most of the day-in, day-out work for the group.

Organizational focus

Think organizationally: Core team participants should not think of themselves as individuals but as the organization itself. This is the biggest jump in commitment; to not just be an individual in a group, but to accept that group as a part of themselves.