The final blog... 5.

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, the five major dysfunctions that disrupt team effectiveness are, Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, and Inattention to Results (Lencioni, 188). The dysfunction discussed today will be the final tier of the pyramid, Inattention to Results.

What?
Continuing in the tradition of writing about my experiences in ministry with Young Life at EMHS, I would like to relate an experience I had while working with my team leader, Sam Vaughn, that portrays the complications in working with a team when one member puts their needs ahead of the team's goals. Sam is a senior at Virginia Tech, and for his final club, he wanted to run everything. Games, songs, skits, and giving the talk. Giving the talk itself is extremely stressful, but to try and run everything at once is insane. We tried to talk about him when planning the clubs for the semester, but he wouldn't have it. He had made club about himself, rather than about the kids.

So What?
I was elected by my other teammates to talk to Sam about the incredulity of his idea. After talking to him several days in a row, and after pointing out the inattention to results that he was having, we came to the conclusion that he should just give the talks, and the rest of club would be handled by the other leaders. The problem was solved efficiently and in a timely manner, weeks before our last club.

Now What?
As we move towards the end of the year, the team has moved past its Inattention to Results, by becoming totally focused on the goals of the team as a whole, and not on individual ego or pride. We are working as a near perfect unit that trusts each other, addresses conflict without fear, and has the ability to address goals as a team.

Absence of trust

What?

Following in the theme of previous blogs, I will continue to write about experiences faced working with a team in the ministry Young Life, at Eastern Montgomery High School. Two weeks ago we added two new members to our team, Tasha and Casey, both Freshmen at Virginia Tech. It has been pretty smooth sailing so far, with no major conflicts among any of us. However I have noticed, that we do not trust them to complete any tasks. This may be to ease them into the unit as a team, but even among praying about different subjects and carpooling together, both seem to be forgotten when it comes to pretty much every decision that needs to be made. There is a large absence of trust among the group as a collective whole and nothing has been done to change it.

So What?

During the next few weeks, we will be sharing our personal histories with one another, and going on a hike/meal at Homeplace as a team. I believe that these exercises will grow trust between us, and make it so we can work as an effective unit. We also have started carpooling as often as possible to the school as a full team, in order to get an hour of driving to talk and become friends. Casey and Tasha are quick on their way to becoming integral members of the team, and not "newbies" or "freshmen" as we sometimes refer them as (in a loving way).

Now What?

Now that we are moving past the mistrust of teammates, we can begin to work together to make Young Life club as great as possible, and we will have better ideas with more people working on them together. I have included pictures of Casey and Tasha both, to give you a face to the names. Casey is the boy, and Tasha is the girl.

Eastern Montgomery Young Life

What?

There are many facets to leading young life with my team at Eastern Montgomery High School. The three c's of young life are contact work, campaigners and club. Contact work is the work done at the high school, or in the community. Just hanging out with high schoolers, meeting new people, and being a role model in the school. Campaigners is the weekly bible study at someone's home in Shawsville, where high schoolers meet together to learn about the Bible. Club is the huge group event every week, aimed at high schoolers who don't attend church and don't know anything about Christianity. It's organized chaos for one hour in the community room of the library every Monday at 7. At the end of the hour, myself or one of my teammates gives a talk about importance of Jesus Christ. My first club talk was first semester of this year, and afterwards the team met together at my house for "club critique" where we go over what worked at club at what didn't, and give constructive criticism to the speaker. Unfortunately, my talk needed a lot of constructive criticism, something I didn't take kindly to.

So what?

In Group Dynamics for Teams by Daniel Levi, he talks about the need for team performance evaluations on page 276. "Performance evaluations are valuable for providing feedback to employees, motivating them, and supporting training and development..." These are all great reasons for team feedback. I realize that now, though I didn't while I was being the one criticized. However, my next club talk went even better than my first, due to me working through the problems I encountered and fixing them during my talk.

Now what?

I look forward to club critiques after clubs where I speak. I know that during these times I get useful information for bettering my performance on stage. Though club is only a small facet of what Young Life is about, it is very important that we work hard on club talks and do them excellently. Therefore, team feedback is a valuable asset in bettering our work at Eastern Montgomery High School. For more information on Eastern Montgomery Young Life go to http://sites.younglife.org/sites/EasternMontgomery/default.aspx

Blog 2

In the fall of 2009, I was placed in difficult position. I was SCA president of Hickory High School in Chesapeake, Virginia, and was in charge of planning and organizing the powder-puff football game for the junior and senior classes. This event was my brain child of the year before, and everyone was expecting it to be bigger and better. The group I was working with contained some good friends of mine, who I had known all throughout my high school career. Unfortunately, this caused some division in the group, as we were not used to working on large projects together, and were comfortable enough with each other to be blunt. Feelings were hurt, and large loads of work fell on some, while others were discouraged and zoned themselves out of the project completely.
From reading chapter 9 of Group Dynamics of Teams by Levi, I became aware of ways to make decisions in groups, without conflict, and for the greatest good. Though we had known each other before the project started, the nominal technique I believe would have been effective. This technique is mainly used for “non” teams who do not want to gain relationships. But seeing as everyone know each other already and were friends, I believe these techniques would take hard feelings out of the situation. It is a democratic technique that would have been fair to everyone.
Though my group is a team, and plans on building relationships with each other, I think this same technique for the base of making large decisions on our action at the Boys and Girls Club would work effectively. It would keep negative feelings from forming, and be the fairest way to decide big decisions about the future of our team.

Blog 1

My time at Virginia Tech has been amazing so far, mainly due to the men I live with. I live at a house on Willard Drive, with guys I know from Young Life and my freshmen year. They are my best friends, and we have more laughs than I can remember. However, when this "team" was first forming, we went through the stages of group development as described by Tuckman and Jensen(1977). We got to know each other, had some problems, created social norms, and are performing at living together day by day. Adjourning has yet to happen, but I'm sure it will be sad. Though I didn't realize it at the time, this process could have been much easier, had we known what to expect, and the norms would possibly be different.
As we got to know each other last year, my roommates and I had a few issues. One was snoring. My snoring is awful, and the guys didn't like that. This caused some conflict within the group, that could have been avoided. Had we addressed this issue as a group, instead of just getting into small, heated conversations later, it could have saved them all some sleep.
Then the norming stage began. My roommates and I all enjoy cigars, and we accidentally fell into the habit of smoking them very often. This is not a healthy habit. Now however, it is difficult to break this norm, because it is what we know and are used to doing when we are all together. Other norms were positive, such as eating together every Sunday night. But in retrospect, if I had known the norming stage was occurring, we could have addressed the issue and not have fallen into the social habit of doing this.
Finally, the performing stage is ongoing for my household. We get along pretty well, but due to my newfound knowledge of the performing stage which we are currently in, I believe we can do better. We can treat each other better as individuals, and take care of the house better corporately. This is one stage that has been happening, can change still, and will look a lot better in the future. I'm sure our landlord will be quite happy.
The house I live in has a fabled past, and present. The Willard House has been lived in by Young Life leaders for about twenty years now. Alumni have a blog to keep in touch, http://willardhouse.wordpress.com/
The current men residing in the Willard house also have a blog, willardhouse.blogspot.com
Also, five of us lead Young Life in the New River Valley. This link will take you to it's homepage.