Topic 9 - Leading Self-Managed Teams
Self-managed team can be a high performance team with full autonomy, when set up properly.
In this lesson, I've learned about the nature, the benefits, the characteristics of SMT; the stages of group development and distributed leadership in SMTs.
What I have learned...
I've drawn a mind map while attending the class and studying the notes. Below is the summary of what I have learnt.
As I have mentioned previously, I do not have any interest being a leader. My passion is with children. Learning about self-managed team is an eye-opener to me. I can blend being a teacher and a leader without sacrificing my passion for teaching or stifling my personal or career growth. As a primary school teacher, I have had several self-managed team experience. I often work with teachers of same level, towards the same goal.
For instance...
(1) When training a child for a district competition(common goal), a group of teachers (leaders) will share the responsibility to train and get the child (follower) ready.
(2) Weekly discussion for teaching and learning activities are conducted among teachers (leader)who teach the same year to ensure quality of teaching (common goal).
There are listless examples happening everyday. That's pretty normal for working adults.
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What I felt interested about this topic is to introduce this leadership style into classrooms among children.
Is it possible to introduce this leadership style into classrooms among children?
How to nurture young leaders in self-managed teams?
After a quick brainstorm, there's one major point to be considered ...
If I were to make SMT work among kids, same proficiency kids need to be grouped together. SMT will not work well in mixed-ability group, because children too advanced will naturally take lead while weaker children will happy to be followers.
If I were to change now, I need to break my mixed-ability group and regroup them according to similar proficiency. I should not be doing this now, because they are used to one another and peer teaching seems to work well among them.
If I were to make new changes to my grouping system next semester, this may not be a good choice because weaker group in the class will have high chance to be left behind. Unless I have known the class already, and have better way to relocate the weak kids. Also, it would work, if my class is of same ability.
All these years teaching, I am always thinking of the weak kids and how to help them. Today, learning about SMT broaden my views. I think SMT will definitely benefit advanced learners. With shared goals and a lot of autonomy, I think I will be able to see a lot of creativity from the little ones.
Although this is still an immature idea, this will for sure be something I consider next semester when a new year starts.
Discussion Question- How many members should a self-managed team have? I think 4 to 5 is optimum as too many members may hinder good communication. A group too many members will easily have 'passengers' too.
Discussion Question- What is the role of a champion? I think don't think there will be any champion in a SMT because leadership roles and responsibilities are distributed. Everyone is a champion in a SMT.
Just a piece of my thoughts. Thank you for reading! 😏
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