Social Engagement
Creating a Team
A crucial first step when creating a team is to ensure that you build a clear and common vision, a cohesive philosophy and group identity. In a team composition, the essence is the people, and qualities such as adaptability, flexibility and communication are valuable to ensure that your team is on a pathway to achieving your common goal.
Questions to think about and discuss:
- What is the mission and the objectives of the team?
- What are the goals that you aim to achieve by creating this team?
- Who is the target audience and who will benefit from your activities or be interested in your community?
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Setting up the team:
- Build your team: Consider what are the expectations and the roles of each member of the team and how to gather individuals that are a group that is interested in joining the team. That could be done through in-person conversations or with an open online call.
- Create an operational framework: Define the group structure, roles and responsibilities within the team along with the decision-making process you will follow.
- Create the team guidelines: To achieve clarity and consistency, it can be useful to develop a document that outlines the team’s goals, mission, values, and operational framework.
- Agree on a Communication Plan/ team meetings: Once the group is set, it’s important to discuss the communication style, meeting frequency, and the activities that will take place.
- Plan for a time and space for check-ins and reflection: Make efforts to collectively evaluate, assess and adapt based on feedback and information from the team’s members This is a crucial and helpful step to ensure the sustainability of your group’s development and aligned objectives.
Team Roles
To ensure the effective operation of your project, it is important to work with your team to clearly define each individual’s roles and responsibilities. While you are working together to achieve your common goals, tasks should be assigned within the team and everyone should understand their responsibilities. To prevent frustration and ensure an effective organisation, it is crucial to establish defined protocols. The allocation of roles amongst the members could be based on each of their availability, skills and knowledge.
Some of the main areas to cover are project management, financing, administration /coordination, and communication but those can vary according to your own needs based on the scope of your initiative and planned actions. Another element of effective teams is the establishment of explicit team norms that can aim to set clear expectations of how the team should govern itself, manage meetings, communicate, make decisions and set commitments. Something to take into consideration is the clear communication of the expectations of the team. These norms should allow the team to have open discussions about how things are going and should be updated or revised on a needs basis to improve working relationships. Usually, people have the tendency to join initiatives with great enthusiasm and a strong desire to participate, but as life and other commitments arise, capacities, availability and individual priorities can change and availabilities may not always align with your original plans. Hence, it’s important to communicate, set clear expectations, organise, and coordinate team members’ efforts as a team.
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