All Work is Team Work

• Does it seem like people talk about working together but nobody really knows how?
• Do you spend too much time talking about what happened and not enough time deciding on the actions to take?
• Do you feel that team members spend more time protecting their turf than working together?
• Does “groupthink” instead of constructive conflict dominate your team decision making?

Whether working with customers on a public desk, participating in a short-term project to improve workflow or meeting weekly with a team to alter services to accommodate shifting budgets, work involves interactions with groups of people to get things done. In this online course, you will explore the characteristics of highly effective teams such as team formation, roles, group dynamics, team agreements and how to make decisions while having all members of the team feel heard. You’ll leave this course with the ability to be a great team player, which will also improve the performance of any team you are on in the future.

Course Description: Readings, discussions, practical examples and assignments during the course will help you learn skills, share experiences and questions, and apply the concepts needed to be a great team player.

Course Outline: When you log in to the Infopeople online learning site, you will see weekly modules with these topics:

• Week 1: What Is a Team?
  • What makes a team
  • Stages of team development
  • Team roles
  • Characteristics of effective teams
• Week 2: Decision Making in Teams
  • How decisions are made
  • Tying decisions to strategic plans
  • What happens when team members do not agree
  • Tools for decision making
• Week 3: Finding and Solving Problems in Teams
  • What makes team communication difficult
  • Social triggers
  • Five dysfunctions of a team
  • How to communicate difficult information
• Week 4: Tools for Creating High Performing Teams
  • Team agreements
  • Skills for making a team effective
  • Roles for high performing teams
  • Team charters

Time Required: To complete this course, you can expect to spend 2½ hours per week, for a total of ten course hours. Each week's module contains readings and various options for assignments, discussions, interviews, and online meetings. You can choose the options most relevant to your work and interests. Although you can work on each module at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night, it is recommended that you complete each week's work within that week to stay in sync with other learners.

Who Should Take This Course: Library staff in all types of libraries who work with others on teams and want to improve their personal and team performance.

Library Support Staff Certification (LSSC): This course is approved as covering the Communication and Teamwork competencies for the LSSC program.

Online Learning Details and System Requirements may be found at: infopeople.org/training/online_learning_details.

Course Start: This online learning course starts on Tuesday, April 22, 2014.

After the official end date for the course, the instructor will be available for limited consultation and support for two more weeks, and the course material will stay up for an additional two weeks after that. These extra weeks give those who have fallen behind time to work independently to complete the course.

Keywords: Communication and interpersonal skills