Tag Archives: teamwork

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.

Authentically empowered

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In a recent post. Process, product, and purpose, I shared that there are some teachers coming to learn about our self-directed, inquiry based school. And that our students will be planning and presenting to these teachers. I wanted to expand a bit on the process.

One of our teachers shared this diagram with the students to help them:

Then yesterday they pulled me into their meeting to ask a few questions, (the teacher I mentioned above was teaching or he would have joined us too). The students asked me what my vision for the presentation was.

I said I would like it to be story based. That there are two stories to tell:

1. What’s the experience of a student – both their experience in a school day, and moving from Grade 9 to Grade 12.

2. What is their story? How can they share their personal stories of doing progressively more challenging inquiries?

I also made sure to ask questions about how they would do this and not just make suggestions. My talk with them was a discussion not a one-way sharing. They invited me to the conversation. My final suggestion was that I knew what they were planning was going to answer all the questions the educators asked in advance… So rather than addressing those questions directly, which would disrupt the flow of their narrative, they should end the presentation with a slide of their questions and ask if they missed anything or needed to answer any of them with more depth. They liked this idea as a way to start off their Q&A at the end.

That’s all the direction they got. I was in the room with them for about 15-20 minutes. They will create the presentation and they will want to show it to us before presenting. We won’t have to ask them to see it, they will ask us for feedback and input. That’s part of the process they’ve learned. Further to this, there are 6 of them and we didn’t pick a leader, we didn’t tell them how to organize themselves or the presentation. I did mention that the presentation should be cohesive and not look like 6 different presentations, but I gave no examples of what I meant by this. They didn’t ask, they understood.

If these were a group of Grade 9’s & 10’s we would have scaffolded this a bit more, but these four Grade 11’s and two Grade 12’s are now seasoned presenters. At least one of them will inject some humour into the conversation, any one of could will ‘wow’ the guests with the depth of their inquires, all of them will be incredible ambassadors.

And one final note: none of them are doing this for extra credit. All 6 of them are coming in on a professional development day when all their peers are off school, and they are doing this voluntarily. Why? Because we asked. Because they get to design it, and because they know they go to a pretty unique school and they want to share their story. If they didn’t get the chance to be authentically empowered in this way, it would have been unlikely that the first 6 students I asked all agreed to volunteer. They are six awesome ambassadors, sharing their stories, in their own way, and still meeting the goals of the presentation.

Our guests are going to have a great experience learning about our school from our students, while we will be in a room next door doing our own professional development.

Be invisible

Yesterday I said in a post about our school’s open house, “I have a saying I share with the tech crew which is, ‘It’s your job to be invisible’.”

A few years ago we had Alvin Law visit our school. When he arrived our tech crew set him up with a wireless microphone and had everything set up just as he specified. He did a truly amazing performance and after the show, after the tech crew helped take off the microphone, Alvin said to me, “Dave, what kind of a school are you running here? It feels pretty special.”

Then he said, “I present to multi-million dollar companies, like IBM and Microsoft, and I have never had a tech crew treat me so well. I’ve never had my sound work so well. I’ve had presentations where they are paying me a lot of money to present to 1,000 people and they can’t get my sound to work. There wasn’t a single issue with my sound today, it was perfect.”

That’s the sign of a good tech crew… they are invisible. When a microphone doesn’t work, people notice the tech crew. They are also noticed when a microphone is too loud, or there is feedback, or an off stage mic isn’t turned off, or when the lighting doesn’t actually light up the performers. When these things happen, the crew become part of the performance. When everything works as planned, they are invisible.

When a tech crew does their job well, they are invisible.

How can I add value?

I have a friend who asks this question a lot. When we connect, if there is ever anything to be done together that’s the question he asks, “How can I add value?”

It’s simple and direct… I’m here to help, and happy to add some value to what is being done.

When I taught leadership to students, sometimes I came across a kid who was like that. They didn’t really see themselves as leaders, but they were. They were not necessarily the kids who wanted to run the show, but they were the ones who arrived to an event early, they stayed late to clean up, and if they saw someone working on something like stacking chairs or creating a poster, they went to help without being asked. They found places to add value.

People like this don’t always get the recognition they deserve… if you know someone like this, take the time to thank them, to appreciate them. It’s a special kind of person who doesn’t look for the attention or limelight, but is always there to help.

Shifting winds

Most school years are like prevailing winds. You know which way you are sailing and you adjust your course a little and keep going.

This year, and especially these past 4 months, have created shifting winds that keep altering the direction we are going, outside of our control.

If you’ve ever watched a sailing race, the most important aspects of a boat being successful are leadership and teamwork. That doesn’t just mean working together when everyone agrees with the captain. In fact, the test of a true team is how well they work together when there is disagreement.

In the coming months there will be some metaphorical rough seas, and blustery winds. To sail through safely we will need good leadership and great teamwork.

In our Province, we have leadership worth following and listening to. It is sad to see a team crumble under good leadership.

In other jurisdictions people are not as lucky. It is equally sad to see a team crumble because of poor leadership.

What we have to remember is that we are all in the same boat. How well will we sail through this rough patch? Calmer winds and seas will come eventually, until then the shifting winds are testing our resolve to work together.