In
my organization, I work in a high-performing team. My team is focused on
providing support and feedback for new EagleVision instructors on their first
evening of class. Each of us is tasked with supporting a certain number of instructors
in the first week of a new term. We are available to them in case they have
forgotten how to do something or just need a little extra support getting the
session set up before class starts.
Our
supervisor helps us when we need it. He also provides us with comp time to make
up for the time that we spend after hours supporting new faculty. Many of the
team members work from the office, but there are others that are able to work
from home with workstations that the university provides. We are all expected
to provide assistance to the instructors as needed; however, we generally go
above and beyond by following up the next day with any campuses that had
technical difficulties the night before or passing on questions regarding
certain issues to specific teammates to be answered.
We
have all grown throughout our time working together. We have learned a lot
about our campuses, instructors, and even the technology that we work with. We
are willing to help each other out when necessary and we all realize the
importance of accomplishing our goals.
We
share the same values, as well. We believe in providing quality service to our
instructors. We also believe that our responsibility doesn’t end with
supporting them on their first night but continues after that with following up
with any issues that we notice during the session. If we did not have common values it would be very difficult
to work together successfully. Because we all share goals and values, we are
able to provide quality support to our faculty members and campuses. If one of
us does not know how to solve a problem, other members of the team step in to
help so that the values that we all stand for are upheld.
In
the Denning text, four patterns of working together were identified. Work
groups work on the same project, have defined roles for each member, and all
report to the same supervisor. Teams share goals, coordinate their activities
to accomplish their goals, share responsibility for performance, and have
appropriate management and resources. Communities share common interests,
practices, and values. Finally, networks are groups of people who maintain
contact with each other because they believe that there is some benefit to
staying in touch.
An
example of a network that comes to mind would be LinkedIn. I have had many
colleagues over the years tell me that I needed to join LinkedIn. I have not
done so until this class. I have not really seen the benefit of this type of
network yet. I suppose that if I were in the corporate world I would be more in
tune with the benefits of this network. The people that I have linked with via
this network are all people who are my friends or current colleagues. I do not
go on the site frequently to look for people. After I joined for class, I
looked for people who I wanted to link to and many of them told me that they
never check this site themselves. This has been a negative experience for me
and I am not sure that I will continue to monitor this network once the class
requirement is over. There is nothing that I can do to influence this outcome. I
could go on the site frequently to keep up with others, but I do not see any
benefit to this at this time.
I
have already mentioned a positive experience that I have had with one of these
groups. My support and feedback team works great together and I am happy to
have them as my colleagues. I have learned a lot from all of them and we work
together well to accomplish our goals. To influence the outcome, I will
continue to do my part and work with my colleagues looking for ways to improve
what we already do well.
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