Integrating Collaboration
How will you begin to incorporate collaboration with your team? At your school?
I like to collaborate and utilize all the employees I work with. Everyone has thoughts and ideas if you mine it properly.
I will you begin to incorporate collaboration with my team and school by focusing on the situation, issue, or behavior and not the person. I will make every effort to maintain the self-confidence and -esteem of others in my team and school. After constructing relationships through clear communication and conflict resolution, I will take the initiative to make things better and lead by example.
Our team is also pretty small. I do feel like I am respected in my opinions and decision making. I've taken the reins a little bit more before the holiday season-taking initiative to make contact with new schools and new counselors in our admissions process. I identify with this as one of the cores of effective collaboration and I'm excited to take more initiative to contribute to the success of our school.
While I believe our team already collaborates, I do feel their is room for improvement. The 1st thing I wold do is meet with the team and pinpoint the top 2-3 issues. Once we recognize those issues I would ask them to come up with some solutions on an individual bases. We can then meet, brainstorm and then put a procedure and policy in place so things run smoothly moving forward.
James, I would agree! Thanks for posting all your great comments in the forum.
Elizabeth Wheeler
Good point, Elizabeth. You go about encouraging cooperation because common sense tells us it is usually in the best interest. If common sense doesn't work, then try setting up a reward for cooperating. If all else fails, at the very least, stay positive. Positivity serves us very well. Negativity only serves to confuse and deceive. It's just as easy to do the right thing as it is the wrong thing. I think we have a no-brainer here.
James, Great idea! How do you go about encouraging cooperation?
Elizabeth Wheeler
Encourage cooperating with others on your team in a positive light to improve the quality of the organization.
Team input is very important and I think that it will be important to
implement some parts of each of the team members suggestions. Each person needs to feel that their contribution is important. Once a week we will be having a meeting on how to make our school run better and meeting the needs of our students. I realize that it is not one team members problem but all of us need to share and be problem solvers. Each of us can add our own area of expertise and this will add variety and diversity.
Asmir, Group brainstorm sessions can be very beneficial. What are the steps you will take to ensure group sessions take place?
Dr. Jean Norris
Sit down together and see what areas we can improve on. At that point we can brainstorm on ideas on how to improve before making decisions.
Victoria, Interesting situation. Admissions is the first impression for all students. How specifically will you bring your concerns up to management?
Dr. Jean Norris
Unfortunately, my school does not include admissions in their weekly meetings. I understand they discuss the amount of cancels, reasons and how to improve this situation. By excluding admissions from this meetings, the school is missing out on the collaboration of the people who first meets the students and can provide a much better view of the situation which in our case reflects a little bit of Financial Aid and lack of 2nd interviews in certain cases, before acceptance to the College. We are planning to talk to management and provide them with ideas and ways to determine how to solve this problem.
Nikeline, What a great idea! How many of those ideas are put into place?
Dr. Jean Norris
I agree with this one. I definetly incorporate collaboration with my employee's by asking for ideas and feedback. We even have a bowl for employees to put suggestions in and we discuss one once a week on how we can implement it.
trang,
Can you share some more specifics on your post? It looks like it could be very interesting to know more about how you use movies.
Dr. Jean Norris
Thelma, This is a great practice. Do you have a team that you work directly with? If yes, what do you do to integrate collaboration on your team?
Dr. Jean Norris
We are a small campus that holds weekly meeting of all staff so we may share ideas and concerns. By meeting often and talking openly with all departments, we are able to identify problems early on and find resolutions.
