When I first started my MLIS program three years ago (has it really been that long?), one of my first assignments was to reflect on being an online student and working as part of a team. The class that the reflection was for is the one that, three years later, I am acting as Peer Mentor for. The assignments from when I originally took the class haven't changed much other than to be updated to match the changes in both the program's learning management system and a set of tutorials that ground new students in using the online databases provided through the campus library's website. In fact, the presentations on teamwork that my students are watching in the personal skills unit are the same ones I viewed three years ago. The concepts and ideas in the presentations are just as relevant now as they were then. How do I know? Because today, after completing my group's meet-up for the new students, I can look back at our work together and identify a lot of the team "should do's" I remember from my 203 class.
While I was the one that initially proposed the topic for our meet-up, my two teammates helped develop it into a workable presentation. They helped to come up with ideas of what to include, how to organize it all into distinct sections, and figure out what presentation medium to use. Without their work, the final product would not have been so well-thought-out. This is definitely one of the benefits of teamwork. I don't remember who it was that said this, but the line "greater than the sum of its parts" comes to mind here. We all had different areas of "expertise" to add to the presentation, and we each got to present the part that we contributed so each person was familiar with what she was talking about and was comfortable with presenting her part--a logical division of labor, if you will.
We did have a team leader for this project. She was never officially named as such, but she took on the role with much finesse and ability. I had no qualms about having her take the lead in this; with everything that was going on as we were developing and executing our ideas, there was no way that I would be able to take on the role myself. I was hardly going to be able to keep a group organized if I was having such difficulty keeping myself organized! So what did she do well? She kept us on task. She kept up team communication and sent reminders letting us know deadlines we agreed on, what we needed to do, etc. She oversaw putting our separate parts of the presentation together. She
encouraged us, and we encouraged her and each other in turn.
Now each team will be different, and not all team leaders will have the same responsibilities. But one thing I think all team leaders share despite their duties towards their team's goal is that they set the tone of the group experience. Someone in the team leader role that is not suited to the task will set a negative tone with ineffective leadership. Teams are formed to accomplish something; how can that happen with a leader that can't lead? How can they get the respect they need in order to foster the trust that teammates must have for the leader and each other to be successful? We respected our leader and trusted her to guide us; we trusted each other to do our part of the work to achieve our goal (the meet-up presentation). She set the tone for the entire experience: positive, encouraging, productive, successful.
I wish all of my students their own successful teamwork experiences while in their program.
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