All Work is Team Work

• Do your team meetings feel like a group of individuals who aren’t making progress together?
• Do you find that too much time is spent talking about why something happened or looking for blame instead of discussing ways to move forward?
• 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?

Working in libraries involves interacting with groups and collaborating on teams. Whatever your situation on teams, you likely have experiences of situations dissolving into dysfunction quite quickly. What can you do to notice warning signs early and to be a better team player or leader? This course offers you practical and research-based strategies to recognize issues and improve team dynamic and performance. 

The course includes the topics team member roles, group dynamics, team agreements, and how to make decisions while having all members of the team feel heard. You’ll understand the all-too-human reasons why working on teams can be challenging. You’ll leave this course with the tools, mindset, and ability to be a more strategic team player, which will also improve the performance of any team you are on in the future.

Course Description: Readings, videos, discussions, practical examples, and assignments during the course guide you to learn skills, share experiences, ask questions, and apply the concepts needed to improve the teams you are on.

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.

Keywords: Communication and interpersonal skills