Team dynamics are a key contributor to the success of a Project Team accomplishing their goals. Inspired by areas of study related to team dynamics such as characteristics of high-performing teams, common dysfunctions of teams, and phases of group development (i.e. Tuckman’s forming–storming–norming–performing model), I identified a set of behaviors that I hypothesized would lend themselves to a team’s success. During program touchpoints, staff observe participants' behaviors in order to follow teams’ progress in developing as a group. Learning about how individuals and teams progress in this process help us continue to learn about how to foster successful cross-organizational collaborative efforts and also help the program team ensure that teams are successful in reaching their goals. Observing these behaviors helps our program team to:

+ Identify when individuals or teams may need support
+ Inform coaching of team leaders
+ Predict the success of a team meeting their goals
+ Predict whether participants will feel the benefits of participating in the program are worth the time invested
+ See how behaviors change over time (e.g. following the development of the team as they work together, seeing if updates to the program design impact team development from year to year)

There are five categories of behaviors that we observe, with negative and positive behaviors associated with each:

+ Participant’s contribution to relationship and trust as a team, and to vibe of work session (e.g. exhibiting hostility, being empathetic or supportive, displays of closeness or vulnerability)
+ Participant’s contribution to a “building” conversation rhythm (e.g. shooting down ideas, “yes, and” generative thinking, disagreement without being disagreeable)
+ Participant’s contribution to productivity of work session (e.g. distracts or goes off-topic in a way that is displeasing to other members, actively keeps the ball rolling, (re)focuses the team on goals/outcomes)
+ Participant’s initiative (e.g. declining ownership of action items, enthusiastically volunteering to take on action items)
+ Participant’s accountability/ dependability (e.g. delinquent in completing owned action items, completes deliverables on time)

A huge part of “removing barriers to collaboration” for the teams is the logistical support that the program team provides. As we continuously sought to engage more of the 100kin10 network in collaborative problem solving through Project Teams, the program grew over time and more staff support was required. Since 2017 the program team has grown from one person (me) to a team of three, plus regular outside consultants. To support our growing program I developed an internal infrastructure for our team, including:

+ building out the roles on the team
+ forming ongoing protocols for each team role (e.g. checklists that track steps of various support processes)
+ created assorted data tracking processes and tools,
+ establishing our team’s “ways of working” — which are our norms for working together, how we collaborate, how we update each other (e.g. the creation of a weekly meeting in which each member shares updates on their domains of work, seeks support from others on the team, and collaboratively develops a status report to share with the rest of the organization)

In order to keep track of program data for our own support needs, to keep other staff members abreast of individuals’ and organizations’ engagement in network programming, and to track funding-related KPIs, I developed a master tracking tool that houses (and generates) a variety of data points. This tool contains basic information about each participant in the program (name, contact information, organization, geographic location, status in our network, link to their record in our CRM system) as well as additional data points for each participant that are added by support staff after program touchpoints (i.e. meeting attendance and key team dynamic behaviors observed). Data from this tracker automatically feeds into a dashboard that anyone in the organization can access for a quick snapshot of how the program is going. Among other detailed data points, this dashboard automatically generates:

+ The breakdown of unique participants, unique organizations, network members, network guests, and teachers participating
+ The breakdown of participants by the aspect of the challenges underlying the STEM teacher shortage that their work aims to work against
+ the percentage of participants who attended each program touchpoint,
+ The average team meeting attendance rate across all participants, and participants who have fallen below that average

In addition to providing the structure for teams’ work together, we also provide tools, templates, and resources that help make their work easier and more successful. One of the most praised tools that we provide is the “Project Charter.” Essentially, I have created a clickable workbook that guides teams through the process of determining what the outcome of their work will be and how they will accomplish it. As they move through the prompts and document their decisions, they ultimately end up with a deck that presents their plans, which can be shared with members’ home organizations to keep them abreast of the team’s efforts.

The Project Charter contains all of the activities, that over years, I’ve observed are important for teams to do together early in the process. These activities help members get to know each other, get on the same page about what they’ll be doing and how they’ll go about it. Example activities include:

+ developing team norms and behaviors
+ brainstorming potential project outcomes
+ developing the project approach
+ creating a project timeline

For each activity, there are written prompts and “thought starter” questions to reflect on. Teams can move at their own pace through the activities and team leaders can choose how they’d like to facilitate each activity, assisted by the provided helpful hints.