I had the chance to sit in a professional development session with my learning team this week that was really good. We had the chance to think a lot about “the state of our learning team” — and that’s always a good thing.
During the course of the session, our presenter asked us to look at a series of images and to choose the one that best represented collaboration to us. One of my thought partners chose an image of a crew team:
He went on to say that to him, crew was the perfect example of collaboration in action because:
- Every member of the team has to be in sync with one another in order for the boat to succeed.
- Every member of the team has to make contributions that are roughly equal to one another. If some members pull harder than others, the team will fail.
- The rowing members of the team have to trust the commands and directions given to them by their coxswain — who is the only person looking forward during a race.
- A crew is trying to work efficiently — finding the shortest distance between A + B.
My colleague is right, isn’t he?
Crew teams really ARE terrific examples of collaboration in action — and if collaborative teams of teachers were always in sync with one another, were committed to making equal contributions, and could trust one another implicitly, they would be highly successful, too.
But my colleague also missed an important characteristic of a crew team: Each of the individual members had an interest in — and commitment to — their sport before they were even introduced to one another.
That interest and commitment changes EVERYTHING, y’all.
None of the members of a competitive crew team have to motivate their peers to lean in and pull. Instead, their peers were ready to fully invest to begin with. And none of the members of a competitive crew team have to wonder whether or not their peers are going to show up and work hard. They made an intentional choice to be there because they were passionate about the sport to begin with.
Think about it this way: What would happen if a competitive crew team brought on a new member who wasn’t interested in contributing to the team — so halfway through races, he’d sit up in his seat and let his oar go slack in the water? Or if he was so convinced that he could do everything on his own that he pulled faster or harder than his peers? Or if he had absolutely no experience with competitive crew and yet he really wanted to be on the team?
It would be a disaster, right?
And the team would inevitably fail all because of the actions of that one member.
Can you see the leadership lesson here?
If you REALLY want to leverage the power of collaboration to improve the quality of teaching and learning in your building, you HAVE to be careful about the people that you are hiring to work on your collaborative teams. Each new member has to be fully committed to the idea that they ARE going to rely on one another, that they CAN’T accomplish their goals individually, and that they WILL pull their own weight because they know that their peers can’t succeed without them.
Does this make sense, y’all?
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