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Reflections
on working in an international project team
1. Introduction
While I was drafting this paper I received an email from one of the team
members at ISSA, Judith Fowler. It’s well worth quoting:
“I feel the human factor is very important, and I suppose there's always
an element of luck when a large group of people find themselves working
together... there is the general enthusiasm, genuine desire to learn and
share
experiences, willingness to reach agreement, enthusiastic participation in
social activities (which is when many spin off ideas emerge)... I think
someone referred to us as the "dream team". And if you think of football,
what is it that has a team winning cups one season and fighting against
relegation the next? No easy answer.”
Judith was responding to an observation made frequently in the team
meetings about the effectiveness of the InterAct project team and also the
rich rewards, both personal and professional, the members have felt in
working as a part of it.
All of us can recall different and less positive experiences as members of
other teams. This paper is an attempt to address the question of why this
particular team has been so successful and to make some suggestions for
replication of our experiences.
2. Context of the project
The InterAct project team exists in a very specific context. As with all
project teams it is a temporary organisation set up with the
implementation of a fixed and well-defined set of tasks in mind that must
be completed in a fixed time. These are all clearly laid out in the
original project proposal, along with a clear budget, staffing plan,
resource allocation and leadership and management structure. These are
accompanied by a logical and appropriate allocation of expertise and
responsibilities to the various tasks. Responsibility for leadership,
management and administration is also clear, resting with Vox in Norway.
The project also exists in the context of European funding and the mission
and values reflected in Leonardo funding and of the European Union itself.
3. Vision and values
A very clear overall context is therefore provided by the requirement for
the project to support the economic strand of the European vision. This
overall context exerted a powerful influence on the formation of InterAct.
The project had to form in a way that could contribute towards the
economic and political impulses that had called it into being. The
trans-national dimension and involvement of vocational training
specialists and enterprises whose employees had significant basic skills
needs were all conditions of existence.
At project level, this translated readily into a vision equally powerfully
influenced by the mission of Vox, the lead partner (comment from Graciela
Sbertoli, Assistant Director, Head of Unit for Basic Skills and
International Co-operation):
“ ... we have a mission statement. It has four words and the first is
almost untranslatable. The closest I can come to an English phrase is "Advocacy
for adult learning". The Norwegian word "pådriver" sounds much more active
than "advocate", though. It has connotations such as "locomotive", "initiator",
“innovative force", "fighter". So maybe you should translate it with "Making
adult learning happen"... As for values, we currently have a list of three:
user-friendliness, courage and generosity/open-mindedness”
Coherence of vision and values begins to emerge. For example, Westminster
Adult Education Service has as its vision:
“Inspiring and developing our community through learning”
and all the partners share a sense of purpose informed by similar
sentiments, either implied by their activities or explicit in their public
statements.
4. Leadership
Leadership is a complex and much-researched subject. No one has yet been
able to provide a definitive recipe for success. Team members have
frequently expressed warm admiration for the leadership team and
identified their leadership style as key to the success of the project and
especially in keeping the team motivated. I would like to suggest that
this has been achieved through skillful application of expectancy theory (Vroom,
1964) and careful construction of an organic organisation (Burns and
Stalker, 1966) as well as through effective and efficient administration.
Expectancy theory is all about motivation and says that well motivated
teams are characterised by a positive correlation between efforts and
performance. InterAct team members believe that
-
Favourable performance
will result in a desirable reward
-
The reward will satisfy an
important need
-
The desire to satisfy the
need is strong enough to make the effort worthwhile.
An organic organisation is a fluid and flexible network of multi-talented
individuals who perform a variety of tasks without being restrained by
hierarchy or function. A series of observations by Simon Crowe1, Learning
Resources Manager at Westminster Adult Education Service, supports this
view and is especially interesting on the role of technology in the
project. Simon’s personal observations are in italics.
“This “Successful Teams” checklist below, comes from Chris Widener (2006)
which he applies to sports teams: He says “Sometimes we are the team
leader or “coach,” while other times we fulfill the role of follower, or “player.”
* Is there communication between coach and players and from player to
player?
A complex matrix of communication exists within the Interact team. Face-to
face meetings are the essential foundation, but the effective online
communications through public and private email, discussion forums chats
and blogs (through the Virtual Learning Environment) has seen
relationships blossom. This is the real power of e-communication creating
and strengthening communities
* Is your team committed to excellence?
We work to a high standard. Randi and Graciela set those standards.
Excellence must be a value common to a majority of the team members and we
now have a “culture of excellence”
* Do those on the team know what it means to follow?
In my opinion all of the following apply:
-
Leaders create followers
create leaders.
-
I will follow someone I
trust.
-
I will follow someone I
like.
-
I will follow someone who
supports me.
-
I will follow ideas, not
objectives.
* Does everyone on the team know their specific role?
Not to my mind. Beyond project leader, we have never been assigned roles –
so is this essential to a successful team when the other elements are in
place? Tasks emerge and are assigned to people but not explicit roles (see
below).
1Further evidence of the
organic nature of the team – giving a clear and specific “job title” to
the team members is almost impossible. Everyone takes a variety of tasks.
* Do the individuals on the team regularly operate out of their strengths
as opposed to their weaknesses?
Absolutely; front runners change constantly as the tasks change. Hence,
the burden is shared, individuals take on responsibilities for the things
they enjoy, are competent at, have the resources to do or feel are
important. No really challenging task is thrust on anybody. This is a key
feature of Interact.
* Does the team take a break from time to time to just have fun together?
This cannot be stressed strongly enough
“The team that plays together stays together”. Fun is fixed into our code
of behaviour. I call this the “Interact Model”. It creates a sense of
bonding that lays the foundation for the success of the team...
* Is there a sense of and communication of genuine appreciation among my
team?
Praise is plentiful and heart-felt. It flows around the of communication
matrix discussed earlier it is not meted out from above.”
5. Conclusions and recommendations
From our experiences on InterAct I recommend the following as likely to
contribute to setting up a successful project team:
-
Work from an over-arching vision. This can be as broad as the vision of
the entire European Union
-
Ensure there is common ground between the partners in terms of vision
and values
-
Ensure the team has appropriate resources, skills and knowledge
-
Recruit inspiring, skilled and experienced leaders who can provide a
robust framework and plan
-
Ensure administration is effective and transparent
-
Build in worthwhile professional and personal rewards
-
An organic organisation is particularly suitable to project work
-
Successful teams need a certain amount of good fortune
For me, the most challenging and perhaps most critical of these is the
setting up of the leadership team who are the glue that holds everything
together. A final comment from Judith Fowler that captures this
effectively in a way shared by all the team members:
“Graciela and Randi are great team leaders and always ready to answer any
questions participants may have”.
Donald Lush
September 2006
Appendix
References
Burns, T. and Stalker, G.M., The Management of Innovation, Tavistock
Publications, 1966.
Vroom, V., Work and Motivation, John Wiley and Sons, 1964
Widener, C., www.madeforsuccess.com, accessed 20.04.06
Acknowledgements
Special thanks, of course, to the entire InterAct team. Their generous
sharing of observations and thoughts were the spur for writing this paper.
Specific thanks to Graciela Sbertoli, Randi Husemoen, Judith Fowler, Ioana
Ursache, Erica Sahlin, Dave Evans and Simon Crowe for detailed
conversations and written input. |
