Building a cohesive coalition for the Woodson Foundation's after-school program

Organizational Team Building

ORGANIZATIONAL TEAMS

GROUP DEVELOPMENT

The objective of this part of the study is to answer the question of how the Woodson Foundation could have been assisted in building a cohesive coalition by understanding the stages of group development. The Woodson Foundation is a large nonprofit social service agency and to be teaming up with the Washington DC public schools for the purpose of improving the outcomes of students. Problems at the school include truancy, low performance of students and crime and quick burnout of new staff. The Woodson Foundation plans to create an after-school program that is experimental in nature and involves private money being combined with local leaders in the community with educational expertise. According to the text studied in this course "A work team is such that results in the generation of positive synergy due to effort that is coordinated and as such the effort put forth by individuals results in performance levels that are greater than merely the sum of all individual efforts combined. The team should be comprised of a diversity of members from the cross-section of various interest groups involved in this after-school program.

generates positive synergy through coordinated effort. The individual efforts result in a level of performance greater than the sum of those individual inputs. The team formed should be a team that is able to identify solutions to problems and as stated is formed from a cross-section of the participating organizations and entities involved in the initiative. The group members should have all the same level of power vested in them so that there is no power-conflict within the group. The team should be made aware that no one will be able to have it all as their view deems to be right and that negotiation and compromise will be involved to ensure the best outcome for all involved and specifically for the students. The students should be the focus of the initiative rather than the personal views of individual group members.

PART III: RETROSPECTIVE EVALUATION

Retrospective evaluation in the team environment often involves peer-evaluation of performance. This is a viable method because only the group members actively involved in the team participation and collaboration has a full enough view of what has taken place to conduct evaluation of team members.

PART IV. REFLECTION

The Woodson Foundation is presently at the team-building stage which is an early stage of development of the team. This process is difficult and involves overcoming many hurdles before the team has solidified as a working unit with cohesion characterized by a collaborative and joint effort with identified goals and processes that work with the specifically formed team. There are several steps involved in team-building and this includes the first meeting and the forming of a joint and focused effort by the team as a whole in which individual efforts are not lauded but the total team effort is in the scope of all team member vision.

Program leaders should not only support but encourage diversity because out of a diversity of views arises great creativity and problem-solving ideas and skills. If everyone thought the same, then there would be no reason to form a team because then someone could simply hand out orders in a dictator fashion and the hive mind would follow. This is not the case for the Woodson Foundation because there are so many different interest groups involved with their own priorities. This team should be composed of a cross-section of representatives from the various interest groups so that the entire spectrum of the community and participating organizations and the school and its actors all have input into the teams problem-identification and solution identification.