Tag Archives: cooperation

Building Community

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It takes thought and intentional action to build community in a classroom or a school. The chances of it happening organically are small, and even if it does build this way, it is likely to be uneven. Community building takes effort, it takes vision or at least cooperation in a focused direction… And even then it isn’t guaranteed.

It’s easy for students to form small groups and these groups can be open and accepting or they can be closed and cold. The art of community building is creating scenarios or activities where students must work together outside of these naturally forming groups. But that’s just the first step. The next step is to ensure that these scenarios or activities are ones where these organized groups can and will find success working together.

The next step is around expectations. It’s about explicitly showing and helping groups work together through conflict. Whether students or adults, there are times when we need to work with people who are a bit challenging to work with. They can be bossy, lazy, distracted, distracting, and even annoying. Not everyone is easy to work with. How is conflict handled? Are groups left alone to sort it out for themselves? Or is problem solving both provided and explicitly taught?

In teacher organized groups, are roles clearly defined? This can be done by the group, not just the teacher, but division of roles in a group help to provide the group with guide rails. This increases individual accountability and reduces the opportunity for conflict. And when groups of people can find mutual success in a project, that helps to build community.

Common goals, common practices, high expectations about how we treat each other, and planned opportunities to share common positive experiences all contribute to fostering and building good community. It doesn’t happen on its own. And if there’s one more thing that can help build community it’s food. Opportunities to eat together and celebrate together enrich the community’s familiarity and collegiality. Expecting community to build without consciously working to develop it will usually end in a disappointing way. And while the effort to build community may not always be rewarding, it is much more likely that the effort is rewarded far more than just expecting community to build organically.

Team support

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When things are going well, it’s easy to compliment a team. Success and smooth sailing can make a team look good. Everyone is doing the role they should, and ‘results speak for themselves’. But what happens to that team when there is a crisis? How do they react then?

When things go wrong, when challenges arise, what does team support look like then? Does the team start to point fingers and blame others? Do they rally with or against each other? Do they seek advice from their colleagues or do they spew orders, demands, and/or expectations?

If you want to know how good a team is, watch them when things are tough. See how they support one another. Pay attention to how they deal not just with the problem but with each other.

Any team can handle success well, but it takes a very special team to deal with challenging situations in a good way.

The Playmaker

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I watched a high school basketball game tonight. It was a blowout, ending with a score around 51-98. One kid on the winning team was a real highlight reel, with dunks, blocks, steals, 3-pointers, and despite being the biggest guy on the court, he’d bring the ball up the court sometimes, and even play the point guard position.

But of all the things he did, the highlight for me was when he’d penetrate the defence then find the open man and dish it to him for the easy basket. It wasn’t the dunks and blocks, it was being the playmaker and making sweet passes.

Teams need the clutch player that you can count on to score points, but when that clutch player is also a playmaker who makes his team play well, and who isn’t selfish, that’s a really great player. Then he’d be on the bench and he’d cheer like he’s the number one fan of the team.

In life, that’s the player to be.

This is just Canadian high school basketball, and while this kid will probably play university basketball, he’s probably not NBA material… but I’ll tell you one thing, whatever he does in life, I’d want him on my team.

Teamwork makes the dream work

It’s so much easier to enjoy work when you have a good team. When you have the opportunity to work with people who not only get stuff done, but also step up and implement ideas that move everyone towards a common vision, then you know you are in a good place. When others have strengths that complement yours, that fill in the gaps where you aren’t as strong, great things can happen.

Momentum is gained when there are more people who step up than don’t… When you have enough people interested not just in doing what needs to be done, but also doing things that make work better. They develop ideas and follow them up. They share in, and take the lead towards, building positive outcomes, and their interests align with the vision of the team.

Not everyone has to step up this way. It’s unlikely that you’ll be on a team where everyone is willing to step up and do extra. But when there is a critical mass of the ones who do step up, who find their niche where they are giving the team a little extra, who get excited about adding value, then teamwork really makes the dream work.

And to top it all off, this excites you to want to do more.

A global community

One love, one heart 
Let’s get together and feel all right. ~ Bob Marley

I used to think that we would reach a time in my lifetime where we could all be seen first and foremost as citizens of the world. That people would eventually be able to get a global passport and travel with a universal identity as global citizens. It was naive, but I thought it would happen.

With the rise of social media, I thought we were getting closer. I saw how social media extended the reach of individuals to find others of similar minds and interests. The internet extended our reach and our ability to understand others, whether they thought like us or not.

But while understanding our differences can help us see that we really are more alike than we think, differences in core values separate us further. Religions divide us more than anything else. That’s ironic and sad. Faith in a higher being sectionalizes humanity into narrow groupings that undermine our ability to focus on the well-being of our global community.

What would it take to go beyond the divisiveness of religious dogmatism?

What would help us see that as a species we have more to gain from being cooperative rather than confrontational?

What could bring us all together as a global community of citizens that care for our species and our world?

I fear that people will try with tyranny before they try with love.

Doing the math when trying to do better

If you are dealing with machinery, there comes a point where the cost of more efficiency or productivity can become too exorbitant to justify improvement. But is this true in the same way for tweaking social systems?

Making a car go 10% faster, or making it 10% more efficient on gas or battery life can prove to be too expensive to be worthwhile. It can be a simple cost/benefit equation. But what about improving teamwork or relationships?

What’s the price of a team not working well, but not trying to make it better? What’s the price of poor communication continuing without working to improve communication channels and clarity? What’s the price of maintaining unfairness, inequality, or injustice?

When does the cost of positive social change become inefficient?

If you ask me, unlike the simple math when dealing with machinery, we can’t do the math in improving social change until we’ve done more to make things right. The costs we can’t tolerate here sit on the extremes. They are the costs of ignorance, hate, and blame. They are also the costs of retaliation, shaming, and sweeping generalizations.

What is the cost of social change for good? My simple math tells me the effort is worth the price we need to pay. Because the value we get always exceeds the price we pay, when we are striving to make the world a better place.