A Team is… A group of people with different backgrounds, skills, personalities and styles with a common purpose, who are working together to achieve clearly identified goals. Working As an Effective Governance Team To effectively focus all district efforts on learning and achievement for all students, a governance team needs to have a unity of purpose, a mutual understanding of roles and responsibilities, positive working relationships and supportive structures and processes. One of the chief ways a governance team can strengthen or maintain its effectiveness is to periodically assess its own performance in these areas. Unity of Purpose Unity of Purpose is a common focus, super-ordinate goals, the values and beliefs governing body members share in common about children, the school district and public education that help them transcend their individual differences to fulfill a greater purpose. Roles and Responsibilities Effective teams value and respect their essential roles, come to common understanding on the roles of the board and superintendent, and strive to operate within them. Positive Governing Body Culture (norms) Culture is the positive or negative atmosphere created by the way people in an organization treat each other. Teams have unwritten, (implicit), or written, (explicit), agreements about how they will behave with each other and others. These behavioral ground rules, often called norms, enable teams to build and maintain a positive culture or shift a negative one. Supportive Structure and Process (protocols) Effective teams discuss and agree on the formal structures and processes used by the board and superintendent in their functioning as a team (e.g., agenda structure, visiting schools, handling complaints or concerns from the community, bringing up a new idea, how to handle complex community issues). Protocols are the processes followed by the board and superintendent as they work together to govern the district. Protocols explain how they do business. Developing a Governance Framework
Once agreements have been reached, it is important to record them. Recording them in a governance handbook provides a valuable tool for creating a framework within which the governance team can operate effectively. A governance team’s governance handbook must become a living document that is reviewed and updated by the school district governance team in an ongoing manner, annually, or certainly when new members join the governance team. It is also important to ensure the team is committed to upholding the agreements. Some governance teams recommit to updated agreements at their annual organizational meeting. Others have their superintendent distribute their norms and protocols to district administrators so the management team is aware how the governance team is committed to acting and operating. A governance handbook will provide a framework for the governance team’s efforts, just as the district policy book provides a framework for the staff’s efforts. Collective commitments must be made and documented. Format for a Conversation Meeting Dialogue – A Definition A dialogue is any conversation that is animated by a search for understanding rather than for agreements or solutions. Dialogue differs from both mediation and debate. A good dialogue offers those who participate the opportunity to: Listen and be listened to so that all speakers can be heard; Speak and be spoken to in a respectful manner; Develop or deepen mutual understanding; and Learn about the perspectives of others and reflect on one’s own views. Participants in successful dialogues usually agree to follow communication guidelines that support these purposes. The more fundamental and passionate the differences among those involved, the more important it is to clearly articulate and commit to such agreements and to have a facilitator present who can remind participants to observe them. Below are some guidelines for dialogue in its most basic form: We talk about what is really important to us. We genuinely listen to each other. We see how thoroughly we can understand each other's views and experience. We say what's true for us without making each other wrong. We see what we can learn together by exploring things together. We avoid monopolizing the conversation. We make sure everyone has a chance to speak.