Myths and Realities of High Performance Teams
A senior admin team, a department - teams one and all!
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of “management training” and why it’s a term completely missing from the independent school world.
We ask employees to manage other people as soon as they become department heads and even though there are many transferable skills from managing a class of kids to managing adults, of course it’s different! And in development, there’s an old saw that either someone is good office manager or a good fundraiser but it’s a unicorn who can do both.
I’m contemplating starting some small management training programs for specific cohorts and wondering where the biggest needs are in terms of learning more skills for people management.
This survey will take just a minute or two!
I’m so curious!
No agenda, no attend-a. And did anyone remember the treats?
Photo by Hannah Lim on Unsplash
Before I get into today’s topic, I just wanted to say a bit about the present moment in case it’s a bit of support to any readers out there. Please feel free to skip to the next header if you’d rather!
I was talking to my sister yesterday and we were commiserating that we were now filling moments of free time with news and commentary - I had been reading more, both fiction and nonfiction, and listening to music or narrative podcasts - because, as my sister put it, she feels the need to “monitor” events. And we discussed that although there have been past presidential administrations where policy concerned us, sometimes quite deeply, neither of us felt this need to be on alert, all the time.
It is exhausting and I remember feeling the constant need to be on news monitor duty when I was a head of school, which was unsustainably exhausting. It was exhausting to lead and manage adults who also felt compelled to be constantly monitoring and then be calculating how both their response to events and their need to monitor was impacting both their well-being and their ability to fully engage in their jobs. When you feel the need to constantly monitor, if you aren’t monitoring, you’re thinking about when you’ll get the chance to monitor again, which of course impacts your focus and your ability to fully show up for people. Speaking for myself!
And I think this need is driven less by politics than about the drama and the unpredictability, the “did you just hear that?” kind of attention thievery that works so well in entertainment when it’s a diversion. We all know strong feelings drive the algorithm. Just one more Reel before I go to bed…
Is this monitoring tendency a “me” problem? Yes! And this is not to discount the real human impact of decisions that have happened over the past two weeks, or even the absence of a leader who can model empathy in tragedy and help us collectively get to catharsis. I know people close to me who are seriously concerned about losing their jobs and others who feel a sense of danger and vulnerability today that they did not two weeks ago. That is way worse than my “monitoring” stress, although a friend of mine fighting cancer once said to me it is unproductive to compare stresses - there’s a lot of hard things in this life.
So if you’re in monitor mode now, I don’t have any great advice. I just wanted to say I see you and it is so hard! Being proactive can be helpful, getting your ducks in a row, such as being able to be loud, proud and specific about the positive impact of your school’s DEI programs, making sure you are not dependent on any federal government grants, understanding how to be reassuring to international parents as the US’s place in the world shifts.
Since the fall of 2017, I’ve kept a copy of Julian of Norwich’s prayer on my desk: “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.” One can hope.
The Myths and Realities of High Performing Teams
You could drown in all the advice out there about creating and sustaining high performing teams, a senior admin team or otherwise. The Harvard Business Review articles. The LinkedIn wisdom. All the books by smart people with big degrees and major CVs and fancy websites. All the team building exercises out there. No one is hiding their light under a bushel around this topic.
Leadership and management is a juggling act of relationships, strategic priorities, business realities and current context. You can’t drop any of the balls. And for departments within the organization, the same holds true, but with fewer balls and (somewhat) lower stakes.
Creating and sustaining a high performing team is important and it is hard and perhaps it’s a goal we continually strive for but only realize for precious, short and specific periods of time. Like all leadership challenges, at its core are messy human beings who don’t behave according to the advice, who color outside the lines. They have years where they are professional ninjas in their roles and years in the wilderness. And sometimes just as you wrangle some iconoclastic team member to be on the same page, they have the temerity to (gasp!) leave for another job.
Sometimes team members get along with you swimmingly but don’t all get along with each other. Personalities and styles can grate. Or sometimes they get along too well and back each other up too unquestioningly.
Then there are the conditions on the ground. That was always my main complaint about HBR articles - this would be great if we weren’t navigating (fill in the blank).
My sense since becoming an academic department head in 1998 is that no team is ever settled completely - just as one person you thought was a bit dissonant left the team, another one showed a new, complicated side. Or a high performer enters and the incumbent superstar starts to wilt. It’s whack a mole. Group dynamics are complicated and one person leaving changes the dynamic.
I’ve been thinking about highly satisfactory team efforts I’ve been involved in from the past and what lessons can be learned in how to navigate the never ending journey of team building.
What came to mind, quite randomly, was an experience from 15 or 20 years ago, when the new-ish humanities department at Walnut Hill was looking for a unified pedagogical approach to English and history. Humanities departments are not rare but English and history are in fact quite different as traditional academic disciplines. To make it authentic and not a “budget saving exercise” as the department head said, we needed to plant a flag.
(And as a side note - this article is a fraction of what I wrote once I got started - there is enough here for several more articles on team dynamics, decision making, project execution, etc. And it also made me remember one of the absolutely worst and most vicious team experiences I ever had, also at Walnut Hill, over the recommendations of…. a space usage consultant. That definitely deserves an article and some deconstruction!)
The effort was marked by being mission driven and innovative; it moved the needle. It was extremely and satisfyingly collaborative while having a clear leader. Decision making methods were reasonably clear. The members of the team had similar characteristics in some ways that I think made the team building less challenging and in other ways, could not be further from each other in temperament and motivation.
My role itself was tangential as I was academic dean and I was only teaching one class, but I used to make time to attend their department meetings for the pleasure of it - and how many meetings can you say that about?
So what was the secret sauce?
Enough of the team members felt a need to do something truly innovative and understood it would take work and time - it felt “worth it” and that it mattered
The team genuinely respected each other, even though I suspect there were some private, unshared opinions about some aspects of each other’s pedagogy. (Aren’t there always?)
The team bought into, and respected, the mission of the school and believed in the need to build a curriculum that was relevant and amplified the mission.
The team leader had a combination of intellectual curiosity, open mindedness and deep integrity with significant achievement in his own teaching practice.
The personal relationships between team members and the leader varied in their depth and comfort level, but there was respect and congeniality.
The team leader had a boss (me!) with whom he had a trusting and supportive relationship and could use as a thought partner. The boss didn’t pull any punches when pushing for innovation and the team leader was comfortable pushing back at the boss. On the face of it, they were in lock step but in fact, there were points of contention that the two of them genuinely enjoyed hashing out (at least I did - most of the time!)
The team leader dedicated a lot of time planning meetings, giving “homework” and had buy in from team members (and school resource support) to conduct off offsite meetings, sometimes overnight
The team members liked each other personally and in social situations, enjoyed each others’ company. They were genuinely invested in each other’s well being. There were a lot of laughs.
The meetings were characterized by an atmosphere of trust and a general comfort in all team members contributing. Some people made more comments and suggestions and others asked more questions and there were definitely members who contributed more frequently. But everyone contributed.
Sometimes meetings could be dull but much of the time they often had a quality of genuine engagement - wrestling with a real dilemma - and a playfulness.
There was a clear goal and an outcome that was celebrated
I could say this felt easy because the stakes were low - certainly the school wasn’t going to go bust if this initiative flopped - but sometimes politics are the most vicious when the stakes are the lowest. The stakes were really the department members giving up their identities as history or English scholars and faculty and there are some schools where even a discussion of that would be a nonstarter.
The faculty members came from a range of ages and years of experience at Walnut Hill. They also represented an average range of experiences at the school in terms of promotions rewarded or denied, pet course ideas or projects approved or denied, successes recognized or overlooked, a range of moral authority and degrees of influence with peers and popularity with students. Just to say - in another circumstance, culture or context, there were people who could have nursed grievances at the table, as there always are, but no one did. (The more I think about that, the more I am curious about it. I think it had to do with the wider school culture and the relatively less stressful timeframe of the early 2000s, but hmmm. I’m also sure other participants would have a different view.)
The process in getting to a curricular outcome was not without its bumps - there were disagreements - and eyerolls - along the way. Even when the team arrived at a framework, some team members were more enthusiastic than others in implementation. But even the less enthusiastic members were up to give it a sincere effort.
At the end of the day, I think all the team members felt proud of what had been created and appreciated the common language and approach to textual analysis and essay composition - what one faculty member started calling by its acronym, OIA - a process of deep observation moving to inference and then on to the creation of a claim or thesis to analysis - and that got adapted by the faculty and eventually, students. What was created was a change of approach but the building blocks were skills that could be easily taught and reinforced throughout the curriculum.
In running your senior team or departmental team, there are a number of disadvantages that the humanities team did not have. Your goal may be less tangible and clear and the efforts to get there may be disparate. And there were many interpersonal similarities among a team of English and history teachers that made connecting easier. And all team members were going to have to employ the outcome in their day to day work, so there were no silos and no zoning out when the agenda item had “nothing to do” with your day to day.
And maybe most importantly, for a senior team, you’re building a team of people who, professionally, are shaped by the cultures they come from. Development offices have a certain kind of culture. Admissions offices have a different kind of culture. Accountants and finance people have a certain culture. Etcetera. It’s not a bunch of nerds whose idea of heaven is a barbecue, some beers and a rousing game of Fictionary.
So what are some takeaways from this reflection?
The team leader needs to put the time in to lead the team. This is a significant investment and I suspect most leaders don’t create the space to put in the effort to even begin to imagine how they can create the conditions for a high performing team.
And be the leader! Step into your authority. Grab the wheel with a smile and also show you’re open to sitting in the passenger seat from time to time, but show that the team has direction and a destination. Your team will be more invested as they perceive they are valuable enough that you’re spending your precious leadership time thinking about how to get the best out of them.
If you come in without an agenda or even a clear point of view of what you as the leader want from this group as a group and do a “report around the room,” why should any member of the team take the collective work of the team very seriously?
And when you make the time, the team leader can:
Create and model a baseline of trust and respect, including allowing for social space in regular meetings and in offsites where fun is part of the agenda
When you’re swimming in management advice, of course you have learned that trust is fundamental. And I think it deserves to be said that there needs to be just enough trust, not absolute, interpersonal trust. There are people I’ve trusted professionally who I wouldn’t trust to walk my dog. (This is not a put down - my dog is an adorable and complicated character.) And there needs to be respect between team members that enables trust to exist.
And you can build respect two ways as team leader - by supporting each individual team member to increase their capacity and excel in their area and then celebrate this success so the group members are proud they are part of a team of very competent professionals. And you can provide opportunities and model getting to know each other as individuals, so you can grow respect for each other as people.
Build the case for a common goal that brings a team together
People are undoubtedly complicated and I think the higher up in the organization, the more likely there is for a disparate group of people to be sitting around that team table, with different goals and priorities and ways of operating and attitudes about collaboration and authority. So the more you can model that there are school-wide issues that need everyone’s good attention and that it is worth grappling with even if there are differences of opinion, no matter what is happening in their particular office, the better chance you have to bring people together. Make your regular meetings places of consequence where important decisions are shaped.
Think about what role playfulness might play in your team dynamics
This is smaller but significant and it may not work for everyone’s style but playfulness often exposes a side of people you don’t normally see. It can make people open up and be a little more vulnerable in a way that doesn’t feel threatening. It can be thought experiments or spending twenty minutes having people draw a picture of their day or ten minutes of venting about how that lunch of Scotch eggs in the dining hall really was an innovation gone wrong. Schools are joyful places. Have some fun.
Model all the stuff you want to see - and provide small corrections and big praise when dynamics shift in a way you’d prefer.
Let’s say someone is always late and it’s always for a “good reason.” (Schools are full of “good reasons”) Maybe this person also doesn’t love meetings in general. Maybe it feels a smidge disrespectful.
It’s tempting but I would advise not bringing the hammer down. Remember, you have the weight of authority behind you. Instead, take a minute to let them know that you would really appreciate it if he was on time next time because you really value his contributions to the group. You might need to repeat this. But once he starts to show up on time make sure to give fulsome recognition and appreciation for this fact.
Maybe the most important thing to keep in mind is that no one’s team is high performing all the time.
Accept the fact that leadership is a verb, a story that never ends, and not a destination. Also accept the fact that sometimes events will conspire and you’ll have to accept what your less-than-high-performing team can do while you’re muddling through whatever current context you’re muddling through. Don’t waste time shaking your fist at the latest HBR article someone thoughtfully sent you (or at the latest edition of Talking Out of School!)
Then get back in the saddle. There’s the old saw that the only constant is change. And old saws are old saws for a reason. Some of the highest highs of my career have been moments of team work and a strong team can make a difference in the trajectory of an organization. It’s absolutely worth it.
See you next week =-
Julie
End of Year, Summer and Fall 2025 Workshop and Retreat Facilitation Bookings Open!
Support your community by building skills to manage demanding parents!
I have started booking Managing Complicated Parents workshops for both end of the year and Fall 25 back-to-school professional development - available both in person and virtually. (I renamed and tweaked the Effective Parent Communications workshop!)
Improve your governance game by improving communication between the board and the head and the board and the community!
I have also started booking Communications Skills for Trustees workshops for board retreats and new trustee orientations - available both in person and virtually.
Also booking for senior team or board retreats for summer and fall 25! More info as to my retreat facilitation approach here.
Upcoming Speaking Events
Powerful Partnership: Skills and Tools for Head/Board Collaboration - NAIS Thrive 2025, Nashville, TN
with Moira Kelly, President, Explo
Will you be in Nashville at NAIS Thrive in February 2025? I’d love to see you! My presenting partner Moira Kelly and I were given a prime spot at 11AM on Friday, Feb 28th to present on the head/board partnership. I’m arriving around noon on the 27th and will be there all day on the 28th. If you’d like to have coffee and chat, just reach out.
And new events for this spring will be posted shortly with TABS and the Independent School Chairpersons’ Association. Stay tuned.