· Identify, contact, and engage a real-life group or team that you can work with in two sessions to conduct a team development exercise. Then, write a team development plan and post-session summary based on your first completed team session.
Assessments 1 and 3 in this course will allow you to:
· Demonstrate your ability to facilitate a team in building capacity towards becoming a learning organization.
· Analyze the use of specific change management learning disciplines in a team setting.
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These two assessments will be based on a pair of team development sessions that you will facilitate with a real-world group of about five individuals.
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:
· Competency 1: Apply change management interventions.
o Describe a team development exercise used with a team, based on a relevant learning discipline.
o Describe a team development experience based on a relevant learning discipline.
o Explain lessons learned for chosen discipline and group dynamics.
· Competency 2: Analyze applications of change management principles.
o Define change management and change management principles.
o Explain the learning disciplines of personal mastery, mental models, and shared vision.
o Explain the process used to select a learning discipline and the rationale for its selection.
o Explain successful and unsuccessful aspects of team development.
o Explain lessons learned for planned and unplanned team facilitation journeys.
- To deepen your understanding, you are encouraged to consider the questions below and discuss them with a fellow learner, a work associate, an interested friend, or a member of the business community.
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- What are the pros and cons of Senge’s five disciplines of a learning organization (personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking) as an approach to change management?
- Have you experienced the learning organization elements found in Senge’s deep learning cycle(skills and capabilities, awareness and sensibilities, attitudes and beliefs) and the organizational architecture (guiding ideas, innovations in infrastructure, theory, methods, and tools)? Would any of your professional experiences exemplify the use of deep learning cycle and organizational architecture? Consider examples from your experience when these elements were not used, but might have benefited the organization.
- Consider Senge’s wheel of learning (reflecting, connecting, deciding, doing) as applied to an incident in your life. What do you notice about the dynamic of planned and unplanned change?
- Define your personal vision; what do you really want? What would having that vision bring you? As a leader of a team, why might it be important for the people you are leading to understand your personal vision, and vice versa?
- What are your top five values, and how do they support or detract from your personal vision? Why might it be important as a leader to share your personal values, or to create a conversation about values to highlight a change from where we are now to where we want to be? How does where we want to be relate to what we value? How can articulating a vision and values help build trust in a team and what obstacles exist to that articulation?
- When considering an issue or problem, the more stakeholders’ perspectives you consider, the more possibilities can be discovered to act upon. When considering each perspective, reflect on the four factors of time, expectation, examination, and understanding, to better understand each stakeholder’s position on an issue.
- After you have completed your first team development session, reflect on how it felt to be the change agent. What did you do that helped or hindered change?
- Consider an experience from your past in which you were involved in setting a vision with a group. At what level were you asked to engage, and how did that affect the success of achieving the vision? What is your preferred level of engagement as a leader? What are the risks and opportunities in increased participation in vision setting?
· assessment is based upon the first of a pair of team development sessions that you will facilitate with a real-world group of about five individuals. For each session, conduct an exercise based on one of Peter Senge’s five disciplines for team development.
Preparation
Selecting the Team
Identify, contact, and engage a real-life group or team that you can work with in two sessions, to conduct two team development exercises. Select a problem or issue within the group that the team can work on, using the exercise you have chosen. The goal of each session is to bring team perspectives to this problem or issue, rather than to solve the specific identified problem.
Ideally, your team should consist of individuals from your workplace, or with whom you have a professional relationship. If this is difficult to arrange, there is flexibility as to both group composition and mode of communication. You can simulate an organizational team with members drawn from a social organization to which you belong; a church, community, or civic group; a private club; or a group of personal friends, acquaintances, neighbors, or even family members. As part of your final assessment, you will make hypothetical recommendations to a specific audience, based on the results of your two sessions. Ideally, this audience would be the larger organization in which the team functions, but it could also be to the session team itself, members of an educational symposium, or another relevant group.
If necessary, different team members may attend each meeting. Moreover, team members do not have to reside in the same town. The meetings may be held virtually (for example, by phone, e-mail, or Web conference).
The size of your team should (preferably) be about five people, including you. It can be larger, although more than 10 can make facilitating the exercise challenging. It can be smaller, but should not be less than three people, with you included. A very small group can present facilitation challenges, in terms of generating participation and a range of views.
Selecting the Exercise
In each team change management session, you will conduct an exercise based on one of the concepts and tools from Peter Senge’s five disciplines. Choose the disciplines your team will focus on from the following options:
· For your first session, lead your group through a team exercise based on the personal mastery discipline, the mental models discipline, or the shared visions discipline.
· For your second session, lead your group through a team exercise based on the team learning discipline or the systems thinking discipline.
Use your judgment in choosing each exercise, based on the suitability of its goals to the nature of the team.
Recruiting the Team
When recruiting your team for each session, introduce yourself (if necessary). Briefly explain the nature of your task, the time commitment required (two one-hour sessions), and that you will be reporting your results on the experience. Indicate that you will protect all team members’ personal information and their identities. (You may also want to repeat this information at the start of each session.) In your explanation of the task, include a brief overview of both sessions. Schedule each session to last at least an hour.
Directions
Submit your first team exercise plan and post-session summary based on your completed team session.
Plan your first team exercise and write a team development plan for your first session. Your exercise for this session should be based on one of the following three disciplines identified by Senge:
· Personal mastery.
· Mental models.
· Shared vision.
Facilitate the first team development session, addressing the following:
· Define change management and the first three disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, and shared vision.
· Explain the learning discipline you have chosen and why it is important.
· Explain how you will use the organizational team development material (the exercise) during the session.
· Briefly introduce the problem or issue the team will work through, using the exercise.
· While conducting the exercise, take copious notes. Record the session, if possible.
Write a post-session summary based on the completed experience. Include the following in your assessment:
11. Define change management and change management principles.
12. Explain the three learning disciplines that you examined for this assessment: personal mastery, mental models, and shared vision.
13. Describe the organization of the team you have selected for your assessment and identify the sector of the organization (non-profit, government, business, or industry). If you will not be working with employees of an organization, please indicate the nature of your group.
14. Team exercise plan:
o Outline the schedule for your first team development session. Include the job titles or roles of the team members participating in the session. List the scheduled meeting date and time.
o Describe the problem or issue you chose as the intended purpose for your team development session.
o Identify the learning discipline that you chose to focus on for your team exercise. Explain the process used to select that learning discipline, the rationale for its selection, and the team development exercise that you used with your team.
15. Post-session summary:
o Describe your team development experience in a narrative format.
o Explain the successful and unsuccessful aspects of the team development exercise.
o Explain the lessons learned for team facilitation, including both planned and unplanned journeys that resulted.
o Explain the lessons learned for your chosen discipline, and its potential for helping a group examine itself, choose new direction, and commit to that direction.
