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?

Whether working with customers on a public desk, participating in a short-term project to improve workflow or meeting weekly with a regular team, library work involves interactions with groups of people to get things done. At the same time, often team dynamics and miscommunications get in the way of effectiveness. In this online course, you will learn the characteristics of highly effective teams as well as strategies for improving team dynamics.

We’ll cover topics such as team 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 it’s challenging to work on a team and ways to navigate those challenges. You’ll leave this course with practical tools for team improvements and the ability to be a great team player. Whether leading a team or being a member, improve your performance on 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 in combination with "Communication is More Than Words" is approved as covering the Communication and Teamwork competency for the American Library Association's LSSC program. Both courses must be taken to meet the competency set.

Do you work in a rural or tribal library? If so, you may be eligible for a course fee waiver for this course. This Infopeople course has up to five no-cost seats allocated for rural or tribal libraries. Fill out a fee waiver request, and if a no-cost seat is available you will be notified via email.

Keywords: Communication and interpersonal skills