Team Conditions to Enhance Professional Wellbeing

Schools are made up of various teams, including year-level teaching teams, a leadership team, there maybe specialist teaching teams, support staff who are teamed with classroom teachers, front office staff who would make a team. By nature, schools are service oriented organizations, made up of people serving others. Now school staff are under increasing pressure to maintain their high standards to provide excellent education for all the students in their care. Wellbeing has become a very topical in recent months and years, and we are now more conscious to look after our people so that they can maintain their high standards. If school staff employ the 6 Team Conditions, they will improve their teaching practices AND they will also improve and foster their own personal and professional well-being.

The six conditions for team effectiveness framework comes from decades of research by leading scholars and practitioners in the area of team effectiveness at Harvard, MIT and Yale another leading universities. They have studied the performance of thousands of global teams around the world to bring rigorous science to the question of how to foster superb teams. Currently there are three international leaders in the 6 Team Conditions team: Dr Krister Lowe, Dr Melissa Sayer and Dr Ruth Wageman, who is the primary co-founder, chair and an international authority on team effectiveness.

Let’s unpack the three essential conditions for highly effective teams and the three enabling conditions for highly effective teams and apply those conditions to school life, and in particular, how their introduction and practise can enhance staff wellbeing. By applying these six conditions to various teams within school settings, you can take away practical lessons and applications to your own workplace. When you start to use some of these strategies your personal professional well-being will be enhanced, and you will be able to thrive in your workplace.

The three essential conditions for highly effective teams are: having a real team, having the right people in the team and having a compelling purpose.

The real team needs to be bounded, they need to know who is on the team. Hopefully it is a stable team with the same people at each of the meetings and the team that can work together to accomplish their end goal. Those team members need to be interdependent, as well as being independent. They all have their own responsibilities, while working towards their common goal. Analysing a school’s Support Team it may consist of Inclusion teachers, Guidance Counsellor, members of the leadership team, and curriculum leaders. Within the school staff and parents may ask if they the right people on the team?; do they work together for a common purpose? and do they know who is on that team?; are they bounded?

Another essential condition is to have a compelling purpose. Does the team have a clear, consequential and challenging purpose for a forming the team, and be continuing to work together, and independently, for a common goal? If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, then they have a compelling purpose which would highlight the importance of the work they’re doing interdependently, as well as independently. So their compelling purpose must be challenging (not easy and professionally stimulating), it needs to be clear (easily understood and transparent) and it must be consequential, i.e. it must have some impact, effect or improve the situation.

In using the Learning Support team as the example, tracking the 6 Team conditions we have to ask – do they have a compelling purpose? Yes, to support the students with learning disabilities and support the staff with resources and strategies to support these students. There’s the compelling purpose. It is clear, as everybody know that’s what their purpose is. The teachers know it, the parents know it, and the team itself understand it.  And is that purpose challenging? The reality in schools is that it will be very challenging because meeting the needs of all students remains a constant challenge in most schools. The compelling purpose is to make a positive difference in the lives of the students and staff. It is consequential. Once the members of the learning support team know that compelling purpose and everyone is clear, there is clarity in role descriptions and clarity around tasks then that will ease a lot of the stress of people having uncertainty, ambiguity. Clarity is kindness! Remember that.

The third essential condition for highly effective team is having the right people on the team. This means there a good mix of people, with a diversity of skills that can fulfill the compelling purpose. This is about having the right people with the necessary skill set and the necessary experiences to contribute to the team, to achieve their compelling purpose. 

The learning support team staff may ask are there the necessary diversity and skills that can add value in supporting the teaching staff to meet the needs of students with disabilities. If that’s the compelling purpose of the team, we must have the right people with the necessary skills, the diversity of experiences and talent to add value to achieving the compelling purpose.

Similarly, a teaching team could have diversity, with a variety of skills so that teachers can work together. They may share out the responsibilities of planning, resourcing and communicating, so that the workload can be shared amongst the roles, without duplicating work (which adds stress to teachers lives). If we can share out responsibilities, minimize duplication of work, then we must be enhancing personal and professional wellbeing of their teachers. Having the right people, in a real team, with a compelling purpose, is a step in the right direction to enhancing teachers well-being, personally and professionally.

The three enabling conditions that enhance the three essential conditions to create high-performing teams include having a sound structure / good work design, having organizational support, and having team coaching.

The sound structure or work design means that the team does have its professional norms in place, i.e. the expectations when the team gathers of how people work independently and interdependently. The team size should not be too large. If it’s more than ten then it will probably be less effective, with it being difficult for everyone to make meaningful contributions to the teamwork. Ideally an effective team could have 5 – 8 people on a team. Some teams may be significantly less and they can be highly effective. The task design is also important so that team members understand what is expected of them; who is doing what, and any other conditions to ensure that the compelling purpose can be reached. In a teaching team it would be important to ensure that the teachers understand what is expected of each other when they gather for a planning meeting. They know that there’s going to be a team of teachers, working together and hence they need to understand what the task is at hand. It must be clearly defined, so everybody can contribute. Once the sound structure has been met, it will enhance their work, minimize the duplication of work, and hopefully promote their well-being in a professional setting.

The organisational support is another enabling condition which will promote high performing teams. This includes the team having the necessary material resources to do their job. It includes them having all the information necessary, to fulfill the tasks as required. The organizational support can also include suitable recognition and/or rewards for jobs well done. Now in a school the recognition and affirmation could be improved student results; it could be positive feedback from members of leadership team or the parent body. The intrinsic rewards from the intrinsic motivation of seeing students achieve with some due recognition from other stakeholders, are important conditions to promote highly effective teams. There will also be the element of the necessary education and/or consultation to ensure that the team can do their job. All those things are necessary from the organisation to fulfill the team’s responsibilities.

The third enabling condition for highly effective teams is team coaching. Now the team coach can come from within the team, it could be a leader from within the school, or it could be an external consultant. Whoever that person is they need to be available for the team and they need to be able to add value and be helpful to the team. So if the team has a compelling purpose and it has fulfilled the other essential and enabling conditions then the team coach should be able to add value, so that the team’s work can be enhanced.

The 6 Team conditions can be used to enhance professional wellbeing, to create highly effective teams in schools, where staff may thrive and enhance the lives of their students.

Now this is a very brief overview of the 6 Team Conditions. The 6 team conditions have a positive impact on the team behaviours, which then improve results.