Editing Structuring Teams (section)

== Launching a Leadership Team ==
These are three decisions that a leadership team should make when first coming together in order to set itself up for success, and should continue to revisit as the team evolves. There are no “right” answers to these decisions, but they must be addressed for a leadership team to succeed.

See [https://harper.whc.ca:2083/cpsess2505230392/frontend/jupiter/filemanager/showfile.html?file=worksheet+-+Launching+a+Leadership+Team.pdf&fileop=&dir=%2Fhome%2Flqpvahro%2Fpublic_html%2Fresources%2Fassets%2Fworksheets&dirop=&charset=&file_charset=&baseurl=&basedir= this worksheet that walks you through answering these questions as a team].

=== Shared Purpose ===
We can’t start building an organization without a clear purpose. A team must be clear on what it has been created to do. Its purpose should be clear and easy-to-understand, while it must also be challenging and significant to those on your team. Team members should be able to articulate their shared purpose.

=== Interdependent Roles ===
Each member of the leadership team must have responsibility for their own piece of work that contributes to the team’s purpose. A functioning team will have a diversity of identities, experiences, and opinions to ensure that the most resources and perspectives possible are being brought to the table.

In an effective leadership team, '''no one works in a silo'''. Roles are truly interdependent when each person on the team needs the output of another team member’s work to complete their own.

For example, if a team’s purpose was to educate youth in your community about consent you might have an organizer as Teacher Liaison contacting teachers to book classroom sessions, another organizer as Facilitation Coordinator recruiting and training workshop presenters, and a third organizer as Curriculum Coordinator in charge of designing and refining the workshop content. The Teacher Liaison will be dependent on the Facilitation Coordinator to provide presenters to fill the workshops they book in schools. The Facilitation Coordinator will be dependent on the Curriculum Coordinator for lesson plans and other materials. The Curriculum Coordinator will be dependent on the Teacher Liaison and Curriculum Coordinator to get feedback from teachers and presenters on how to improve the workshop content. By designing roles that require the different members of the leadership team to work together, the team will be bounded and sustainable over the long term.

=== Explicit Norms ===
Your team should '''set clear expectations, or norms''', for how to govern itself. How will you manage meetings, regular communication, decisions, and commitments? And, importantly, what will you do if a norm is broken so that they remain active and relevant?

Teams with explicit norms are more likely to achieve their goals. Some team norms are operational, such as – How often will we meet? How will we share and store documents? How will we communicate with others outside the team? – while others address expectations for member interaction. Setting norms early on in team formation will guide your team in its early stages as members learn how to work together. Making norms explicit allows your team to have open discussions about how things are going. The team can update and refine norms as they work together to improve working relationships.