Local Leadership Firm: Leadership Forum

Looking for a local leadership company who might be able to speak to our students about leadership, I ran across a fairly local company:  Leadership Forum


They have a great library and a newsletter with great links about leadership in today's world.

Working with MTM (Multiple Team Membership)

Many of the things we do with our students involve a huge number of tasks with similar deadlines, too few mentoring resources, too few students, and a desire to give our students the opportunity to explore any topic they're interested in across all of those tasks.


The result:  multiple team assignments. It's great for exposing them to a wide variety of interests but it's a huge challenge in providing them the time and focus for getting that done.  Here's a great article about tips in managing that and how the benefits of multiple team membership (productivity and learning) can be off-set by higher costs in terms of time, integrating people, and getting things done.

• Multiple Team Membership: Working Together Effectively Before It All Goes Downhill by Michael O'Leary, Mark Mortensen and Anita Wooolley

And a very cool graphic from the article showing the tipping point between productivity and learning benefits and the costs of multiple team membership:

Team IQ

Team IQ might be an interesting topic to explore.  What happens when teams go through norming and nudging -- how do you play your part in increasing your team's IQ?  Are you aware of your Team IQ?  How strong is it?  Is the goal of nudging to increase team IQ?

Here's the trigger for that thought - it would have to be tweaked on what characteristics a "high IQ Team" held.

• SOMETHING NEW: MEASURING TEAM IQ:  Is your team intelligent?   By IMD Research Fellow Dr. Karsten Jonsen - June 2011

Managing Teams Across Distances

Had a great experience last week with high school students working on trebuchet prototypes across 100 miles via Skype.  2 students in each location, trying to build a working trebuchet out of scraps of wood, cardboard, and various other materials.  They had 20 minutes the day before when they were together in person to look through a big bag of materials, divide it out, figure out who was working on the top throwing part and the bottom base.  Their goal the following afternoon was to create a trebuchet, communicate via Skype and put the pieces together the following day.

It worked great.  The biggest challenge was the Skype technology being a bit too laggy and difficult to hear in the shop.  And, interestingly, the adult mentors liked Skype better than the students -- probably because we're considering the financial and time aspect as well as easy communication.

For next time, here's an interesting article about managing teams across distances and cultures -- and more importance for hierarchy when working virtually, interestingly.

• Secrets of virtual success  ---- by Erin Meyer ----

Welcome!

We're in the middle of searching out all sorts of resources and ideas about 21st century skills:

• What those skills are
• How to implement those skills in real life
• How to cultivate those skills in students -- from the youngest students through to adults

Lots and lots written on leadership.  Not much written on organic leadership, on how to lead from within the group, on being flexible and dynamic -- and even less on how to bring those real life leadership skills to high school students.


Or maybe this blog won't be about that topic at all....