Adjourning a Team

One aspect of working as part of a team that I did not consider before this week's reading is adjourning. Every team goes through an adjourning phase whether it be in-depth reflection on the practices of the team or a simple "good-bye". Some teams I have worked on have had excellent adjourning periods while others could have been improved upon. The hardest team I had to leave was my fellow undergraduate students at Plymouth State University. I had known some of those people for four years, and worked with them in various capacities throughout our studies. The last project I worked on was a senior seminar capstone-like project with a long paper and public presentation. We worked for 3 months together on this project, really completing the bulk of the work in the two-weeks or so before the due date. After our final presentation was completed, my two group-mates and I had dinner together and talked a lot about our teamwork. Although it was a hard transition to no longer be working with them on the project or going to school with them (we all graduated about a week later), our adjourning seemed to help us feel more confident to meet the needs of team situations in the field.
Our comments during the adjourning were mostly positive- that we all had clear roles, we communicated well, and that our presentation was killer (except for my nervous stuttering!). What we could have done differently was discuss some of the hiccups in our team performance. For example, of myself, Rachel, and Kelly, Rachel and I made the bulk of the decisions about what entered the PowerPoint Presentation. This could have been more effective if we had made joint decisions. I also suspect that beginning really working on the project sooner could have been beneficial. Overall, I think we exhibited excellent teamwork, and this was reflected in our friendly and jovial adjourning period, and yet there were things we could have improved on to make our closure more effective. This was the hardest team I had to leave because I felt like we worked so well together and had such a shared vision for our project. 

Effective Communication within Conflicts

One conflict I have had in the recent past is families wanting me to have their child use the potty twice an hour or even more frequently than that. It is incredibly difficult to help a family potty train their child in this manner when I have one other teacher in a classroom with me with ten children. As much as I would like to support families in this way, it is often impossible to have children sit on the potty that frequently. This leads to a conflict with families in which I can use effective communication skills. One strategy I could use is part of the principles of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), which is that I could state what I wanted rather than what I don't want (The Center for Nonviolent Communication, n.d.). In this case, I would tell the family that I really want for their child to learn to use the bathroom and to take ownership of this skill rather than saying "well I really don't want to take your child that often because it causes me inconvenience". I could also use the NVC principle of connecting with universal human needs- potty training a child saves money, increases convenience for the family in the long-run, and satisfies a societal expectation of children around age three. These human needs are indeed important, and valuing them and identifying them helps to maintain that strong relationship. Saying "We can't do that, we don't have enough time" is a lot different than saying "we really value potty training, and we want all the children in the classroom to gain that skill, but it is difficult to have enough supervision to take your child that often". The second sentence conveys much more respect for the needs of the family. These are excellent strategies to support effective communication with families. What would you do if a family asked you to take their child to the bathroom every 30 minutes but you didn't feel you had enough staff or time to do so?

Reference
The Center for Nonviolent Communication. (n.d.). The center for nonviolent communication. Retrieved from http://www.cnvc.org/