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Introduction

Welcome back to Season Three of Linking Our Libraries! We are Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, and we are here to share information with all types of libraries, archives, and other nonprofits working to build their skills. This season, we are working on building a toolbox of leadership skills and ideas. By the end of this season, you will have fifteen specific skills that will make you a stronger leader and manager in your organization.

This week we are looking at teamwork ideas.

The Basics

When a manager (or professor) announces people will be working in teams, the result is always the same: groans, eye rolling, and immediate claims of “I always have to do all the work on a team!” It is frustrating to hear the constant refrain of “Can’t I just work by myself???” complete with dramatic sighs and a multitude of excuses for being a solo operator.

The answer is the same: No. This is a team organization, profession, and life. No one gets things done alone, even as a solo librarian. We always work in teams, we always work with and for other people. Remember our basic purpose in libraries? It is to serve our communities. We are defined by working with other people to accomplish goals, and to be stronger and better together. This is true whether or not you like your team, whether or not you want to be part of the team, and whether or not everyone does the amount of work you think they should do. Even when people do pieces of the work alone, they are part of the overall team. Working collaboratively is the only way an organization will succeed. It really is that simple.

There are probably a multitude of reasons why people do not want to work in teams, but as a leader: who cares? What we instead need to focus on is how to get it done effectively. This starts with some understanding of why teams are valuable, and the process of bringing teams together so everyone can play a role. Some teams will be short-lived and serve a defined purpose; some will be around as long as the organization exists. All will be important.

T.E.A.M can stand for: Together Everyone Achieves More. It sounds hokey, and I know we are all sick of seeing these motivation posters fading on the walls of break rooms (though, check out Despair.com for some much more entertaining “motivational” posters!). But it is still true. And this is the idea you need to keep banging into your staff members and colleagues. When teams work, they can do great things.

So, what do we need for successful teams?

Purpose: Every team should have a purpose, and it should be spelled out for everyone to understand. The Holiday Committee seems to speak for itself, but some parameters will make it function more effectively: set a budget, identify a few holidays, and figure out how much time and effort this should be taking away from the other work people are doing. Giving each team a purpose, and working to ensure that all these different teams operating around the library have purposes that coordinate not collide, means things will get done.

Get On Board: Once the purpose is set, everyone needs to get on board with it. Too many teams are derailed by whiners who don’t like the wording, or were campaigning to be the committee chair, or who just don’t like being there. Obviously: don’t be that person. (This is surprisingly hard sometimes, as we are all on teams we don’t like, or where we don’t want to participate. Toughen up!)
Then you need to work with the people on the team who are non-participators, or those who are active bad influences. Talk with them directly, and do not let passive-aggressive behavior go unremarked. Use peer pressure to encourage people to participate; this is the only time we will suggest public shaming – but it is for a good cause.

Make some plans. In the team formation you created (or were given) a purpose; now translate that into goals and plans for getting there. Look back to the Planning episode for specific strategies, and use them to make some good team plans. Not every team will be successful, not every project will work out; but you want to be sure you are ready to measure the activities and results to identify places you can make changes along the way, and to have good data on the result. If everyone is investing time and energy into this team, there should be material to show at the end.

Teams should be creative! Everyone grinds their teeth when they hear “…but we’ve always done it that way,” right?? Encourage your teams to think of new ways to approach their mission, or to think of new missions. Maybe they finished their initial purpose of rearranging the stacks; but in the process they realized the library needs a space planning team. Great! Maybe they realize adding confetti and colored markers to the strategic planning committee will make their ideas flow more easily – fantastic! Maybe they all want to meet at 6 am in the park across the street and feed ducks while they talk. Let’s do it!

Another important characteristic of a good team is diversity. Diversity is a fundamental for successful teams; and it means bringing in people with different viewpoints, different experience, different skills, and working these different ideas into a successful outcome. It may seem easier to just stock a team with your friends – people who like you, think like you, and come up with the same suggestions and outcomes that you do. Things will move along quickly with your shared mindset and frame of reference. But what kind of results will that bring? This team will miss the experience someone else had from working on a similar project that went up in flames, or the idea someone had after reading a great book, or the willingness to paint walls or clean floors or rewire the routers – or whatever else we don’t even know we missed out on with our lack of diversity. And this is the very point: you only know your “stuff” so you need other people to contribute different “stuff” to the process.

Teams work best when people have specific roles to play. These can include:

• Leader: there needs to be a President Truman “the buck stops here” person who is in charge of making things happen. I have seen libraries where groups giggle cheerfully and say “oh, we’re all in charge!” and I have to stop myself from grinding my teeth in frustration. That is nice in theory; but when things need to happen, and to fit into the overall plan with other goals and tasks, someone needs to be in charge.
• Then you want someone to be the Fixer. This person’s job is to make things happen. Will you need a room reserved for a meeting? The Fixer is on it. Do you need a projector/computer, roll of duct tape? Be sure the Fixer knows. This is the person who can order supplies, arrange for donuts, find folding tables, update the website – or who will be in charge of corralling the people who will have these tasks delegated to them. There needs to be one point of contact here, even when many people are working to get things; and that is the Fixer.
• Administrator is the third role. This person keeps minutes (even cursory ones), to avoid the inevitable “what did we say last time?” and “did we ever vote on this?” only to have five different people shout out five different memories. This person also keeps the agenda, and keeps track of time passing. You want to strike a balance between everyone talking at length with meaningless babble, and people not participating enough. So have an agenda, and have some suggested times on it to give everyone an idea of how long to spend on any one topic. This person can also be in charge of records, keeping track of receipts, and organizing paperwork. (There will always be paperwork, no matter how small the project was in the beginning.)
• Now we move on to a job we want to see on every team: the Cheerleader. This person is not required to do athletic moves, but instead to keep things going and pointing out how the work is contributing to the library’s mission, and all the good things that will result. This is an easier job when the team is working to build a new Children’s room, harder when the team is doing space planning and responsible for moving the entire collection of Reference materials from the second to the third floor, and still harder when the team is analyzing areas for possible budget cuts for the upcoming slashed budget. When things are fun and easy, this role can sit back and bask in it. But teamwork means things are going to be a challenge – either internally or externally; and you want someone who can keep people motivated.
• We also need the flip side of this role: the Challenger. It can be surprisingly easy, even in a nicely diverse group, to develop groupthink. That is, everyone wants to get along, wants to come up with good procedures, and wants the team to be successful; so everyone just goes along with the ideas already put forward. If a manager says “I think our team should do this” it would be hard for a Circ clerk to say that idea isn’t going to work out, and to stand against other people who want to just agree with what the boss says. Your team needs someone who will, in a constructive way, point out problems, holes, or places where your work will run into problems. This person is assigned to figure out the failure points, so then you can all work to be sure that does not happen.
• And finally we come to the final role to be played: Team Members. All the other roles involve some level of leadership, planning, thinking ahead. Team members are the ones who, of course, should be contributing all along, but who will be primarily focused on getting results by doing the work. They are on a team to accomplish things, so if our team is rebuilding the Chemistry books, the Team Members will be out there talking with the Chemistry faculty and students, chatting with vendors, looking at other collections, etc. If our team is digitizing our local history collection, the Team Members will collect resources, buy scanners, and set up a schedule. In short: Team Members are the heart of the team. Be sure they understand that their role is important – not in that annoying “Everyone’s a winner!” sense, but because it is truly important to have people who can be relied on to get things done.

Stages of Teamwork

Bruce Tuckman put together a model for teamwork that appears in all kinds of places talking about the stages teams go through as they go through their life cycle. Sharing this model with your team can help them to see what they are doing and going through as a normal process, instead of having to constantly reinvent the wheel of teamwork every time.

• • The first stage is Forming. In this step, teams start to come together. Everyone gets acquainted, the mission is shared and possibly focused more tightly, and we just generally get started. People are usually on their best behavior, and there is a sense of optimism about the possibilities in this shiny new team setting.
  • Then the next stage sets in: Storming. And now the “let’s just get along” is over, and we see people pushing back against the expectations of others. Usually it is a matter of everyone seeing the mission a little differently, or having different expectations for the responsibilities of the team. This is where too many teams get eternally stuck: they always encounter this resistance, things do not immediately go well, and they assume teamwork will always be bad – so they check out. But if you reassure team members that this is a completely normal and expected stage of teamwork, it can help them to see a way past it.
  • Once we work through our major issues, we enter stage three: Forming. Now we are really feeling like a team. We may be wearing matching t-shirts, have in-jokes, or at least all identifying with the mission as we decided coming through the storming stage. That sense of optimism we started with returns, and we are ready to move forward.
  • We enter the busy stage: Performing. Tasks are being handed out, things are being accomplished, phone calls are being made, emails are flying, databases are consulted, books are moved. This is the heart of what people think teamwork really is, and it is where the work happens. It is good to remember that we cannot just leap to this stage though; teams need to work through the first three stages to “earn” this one. That work may take an hour, or may take a week; but it sets the foundation for successful teamwork.
  • And our final stage: Adjourning. Some teams will be great at getting everything done, everything goes smoothly, and this stage is marked by tears, hugs, and promises to stay in touch. Some teams experienced problems along the way, and if these problems derailed the mission, this stage can be marked by thankfulness it is over. Maybe you have a final wrap-up meeting, or send out thank you notes to everyone, or some other system of showing that the mission, for better or worse, is over. Hard work should always be recognized, and having a formal stage for it is an important part of making the team experience as fulfilling for everyone as possible.

Conclusion

Teamwork seems like something that might just be magical – it works or it does not, and either way it is tough to figure it all out. This is kind of true – sometimes things work or not and as a manager you do not have a lot of influence. But teamwork has a procedure, and knowing it can make the whole thing seem more straightforward. Following through the process above, using the models, and remembering to keep everyone focused on getting the job done, and teamwork may turn into an actually pleasant, professionally fulfilling, part of everyone’s job in your library!

Thanks to everyone for joining us this week! Check back in with us next week to discuss our next topic: Research and Writing.