Category: Thriving Teams
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The Spirit of Our Team
When I was at university, I spent two years working for a homeless charity. It was the making of me. Aged 20, I had the privilege of supporting a huge range of people who had far more life experience; I learnt so much from them and about myself. I won’t bore you with the details,…
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The Social Brain: the psychology of successful groups
I’ve done a lot of reading, thinking, and ‘trying out’ when it comes to belonging in organisations and teams, always attempting to think sceptically and critically so that I follow evidence and never hitch my wagon to ‘nice to haves’, but rather get to grips of the whys and hows of groups working well. The…
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Resisting mutation: how to prevent psychological safety from becoming an empty buzzword (part 3)
If you have joined me for part 1 and part 2 of the series, you will now be familiar with the research behind psychological safety, its core principles, and some of the inevitable misconceptions and mutations that have arisen so far. We have acknowledged that, while the evidence for psych safety is so compelling in…
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Resisting mutation: how to prevent psychological safety from becoming an empty buzzword (part 2)
Welcome back, psychological safety and teamwork fans – thank you for returning to the series, and for all of the great feedback on part 1. In the previous post, I suggested that the term psychological safety was in danger of becoming diluted with well-intentioned but inaccurate applications of what the concept is. Even in the…
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Resisting mutation: how to prevent psychological safety from becoming an empty buzzword (Part 1)
Like many, I’ve been familiar with Psychological Safety and the work of Amy Edmondson for a number of years, and was convinced by the research (still am!) that it was a concept that could ignite the way teams thrive. I blogged about the basics of what it is and how to introduce it back in…
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Teaming Tales: Stalled Systems
This is the first post in a series called Teaming Tales. Each post will feature an area of teamwork that often veers into dysfunction, using a fictionalised fable to explore the issues, followed by strategies to help move forward. Catherine is five years into her teaching career, and is flourishing into an excellent teacher. She…
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5 ways to boost your teams this January
The mammoth 15-week autumn term ended with a triumphant spree of nativities, carol services, assemblies, events, sickness bugs, and, yes, for some reason, Ofsted inspections. Chances are, whether your spirits were sky-high, or dragging along the floor, you finished the term in a hurried flurry of getting everything done, or at least trying desperately to…
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Helping your teams to thrive in autumn term 2
I’m not a huge believer in obvious or cliché claims of cause and effect. Even as a child I found it irritating when someone linked being outside for too long with catching a cold. Sometimes, things just happen! Don’t read too much into it. But, when you run staff surveys throughout the school year, you…
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Stuck Teams
It’s a lot of fun exploring research about high-performing teams and applying the principles to your own teams. But sometimes, like anything exciting, it can seem a bit of a utopian dream when things aren’t going well. Every workplace, and every team, has its own context and circumstances, which is why I’m always reluctant to…
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Team vision: more than a stirring anecdote
Summer events often provide inspirational anecdotes for school leaders when addressing their teams, in September meetings or assemblies. An underdog, against-the-odds story from the Olympics. A holiday anecdote that demonstrates or celebrates different cultural norms. Perhaps, this summer, it will be the resilience and collaboration of communities in the face of riots. To my shame…
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The sun’s out! Let’s evaluate everything!
The summer term is often when the most evaluation occurs across our school teams. Planning afternoons, away days, and the ever-elusive ‘gained time’ prompt us to consider what we’ve been working on this year. The most effective teams will evaluate and debrief throughout the year, of course, ensuring that it is the norm to review…
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‘The research behind high-performing teams and how to lead them in schools’ – my researchED talk
Teams are fascinating to me, perhaps because I spent a chunk of my early career dismissing the value of teamwork. Inefficient. Unproductive. Too many voices. Then, as I began to lead teams, from an English department, to a tutor team, to a learning and teaching team, and many others, I began to revise this view.…
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researchED Surrey 2022 – reflections
On Saturday 8th October 2022, the sun shone gloriously across Surrey, thus enabling both a beautiful day for researchED-ers from across the country, and me the chance to open this blog post in clichéd fashion. The sun merely acted as a symbol for the energy and optimism of the hundreds of people who gathered at…
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Thriving Teams #9: Team Mental Models
Some teams work together in intense, high-pressure situations. Military teams may face perilous situations as part of their day-to-day working life; medical teams have lives in their hands and must treat each one with the same level of care and expertise. For these teams, having a shared knowledge and language of what must be done,…
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Thriving Teams #8: Team Diversity
In the build up to the 9/11 attack on New York City, the CIA missed countless clues that may have lead to the detection of the plans to destroy the World Trade Centre. The organisation suffered from perspective blindness, the way in which we can be ignorant to our own blind spots; the Agency had…
Sam Crome 