The TeamBuilders Group and Point Park University's Education Department co-hosted an event in Pittsburgh on 2-2-18 that explored strategies for understanding, creating, and enhancing the collaborative culture of educational institutions. Contact Jordan@teambuildersgroup.com for more information or to bring a similar seminar to your school.

1. Collaborative
Culture Seminar
Dr. Jordan Lippman Dr. Eric Stennett
Mrs. Kenda Hammer
Mrs. Mary Claire Arena
Friday February 2, 2018

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“Deep and simple is far more
meaningful than shallow and
complex”
- Mister Rogers

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“All people want and need to be
Heard, Seen, and Loved – in that
order.”
-Dalai Lama

6. Successful collaboration requires trust
to grow beyond your comfort zone
in a space where
everyone is respected, heard, seen, and loved
but, how?
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7. Co-Create Our Norms for Teamwork
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▪Be present with your whole self (no mobiles)
▪Listen mindfully for empathy, understanding
▪Share your thoughts, respectfully
▪Help your team; invite help from your team
▪Encourage everyone to participate
▪Trust your team (assume best intentions)
▪and . . . . .

8. We Brainstormed Norms
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▪ Be present (no devices) - listen for understanding
▪ Be bold
▪ Be hard on ideas but soft on people
▪ Be mindful of emotions
▪ Step-up, step-back - for equitable participation
▪ ELMO - enough let’s move on

10. Small Groups:
Collaborate Using
HCD
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A. Brainstorming (HCD) - individually to generate ideas
1. Go to your assigned group
2. Each team member has a different color post-it
3. Use sharpies to concisely write 1 problem per post-it
4. Generate as many problem ideas as you can
5. Every idea is a good idea

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B. Affinity Clustering (HCD) - categorize shared problems
1. One person adds a post-it to the poster - group similar
post-its
2. Another member adds an unrelated post-it to a
different part of the poster
3. Reach consensus about the clusters, name them -
regroup or add post-its if necessary
4. Draw connections between clusters
5. Look for a bigger problem that captures many
– Circle and label the bigger problem(s)

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Process of Placing and Grouping Post-its

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Process of circling and naming clusters

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1. Each person will put a
blue dot on the 3 most
pressing problems that
you would invest time
into solving
2. Do this before the break
E. Visualize the Vote (HCD) - identify the top 3 problems

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1. Choose one of the three problems that you
want to work on
2. This is your new group

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G. Generate concise description of the problem
1. Revisit the norms
for collaboration
2. Together, draft a
two sentence
description of
your problem and
reach consensus

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H. Reflect and Share-Out
Think about your collaborative process so far:
▪ How well did your groups work together today?
▪ How do you know?
▪ Did your group follow the norms? Why or why not?

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Reflect and Share-Out

25. TeamBuilders
T.R.U.S.T. Model of
Collaboration
Skill-Building
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TeamBuilders Lessons
Scope and Sequence

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▪ Teamwork norms
▪ Review and model
▪ Use deliberate practice
▪ Struggle before intervention
▪ Time to reflect

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What is the relevance of TeamBuilders T.R.U.S.T. to your
Collaborative HCD Activity today and your own work?

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30. PPU/TeamBuilders
Partnership
Opportunity
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Types of Educational Problems
Wicked - hard; no known solution
procedure; require creative problem
solving, insight and extensive
collaboration.
Tame - challenging; solvable with
straightforward procedure that must be
found; require coordination of many
steps, a lot of time and effort (person
hours).
Source: Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Nelson &
Stolterman, 2003

32. Execution Network Participation Opportunities
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Collaborative Schools Cohort = The TeamBuilders Group
▪ Beginning Summer 2018
▪ Cohorts of 3 to 4 schools work together for 1 to 3 years
▪ Cohorts co-identify problems to solve together
Collaborative Leaders Research Fellowship = PPU + TeamBuilders
▪ Wicked problems co-identified by fellows, grants, publications

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Reflection and
Wrap-up

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Discussion
1. How you would use
any approaches or
networks from today
to approach problems
in your organization?
2. How important is
establishing a
collaborative culture
to accomplishing your
goals?

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Exit Ticket
Data is from Exit Tickets for 6 of 12 participants
1. How was this seminar relevant to you and your organization?
Very relevant. We consider ourselves great collaborators, but realized over time that we
became stalled, due in part to differences of opinion. Some of the strategies in this seminar will
help move us in a positive direction.
Introduced me to body of practices as collaboration/ and group of people asking questions
important to me.
2. Tell us about your experience today and the bridge between the
TeamBuilders trust model and HCD techniques?
The camaraderie, tempo, and orchestration created a positive learning environment.
"Enlightening."
Practicing using HCD w/ norms was great!
The process of extracting info from people is definitely beneficial. However, I kept thinking
about teams and the spaces we create for teams to function.

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Exit Ticket
3. Are you interested in engaging in a Collaborative Schools Cohort to
solve a wicked problem?
● 1 yes (let’s talk)
● 3 possibly (time constraints, need to learn more),
● 1 n/a, 1 no (not my decision)
4. Interested in helping to found a research-to-practice University Lab
where stakeholders collaborate to tackle the kinds of problems we
brought up today?
● 4 yes
● 1 possibly (need more info on how it would work),
● 1 no (not my decision)

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Unsolicited emails from Participants
Dr. Lippman and Dr. Stennett,
I want to thank you and your exceptional group for orchestrating the
Collaborative Culture Seminar. The discussions and breakout sessions were
well organized and challenged the groups’ critical-thinking process. Your
TeamBuilders facilitators were incredible, interpersonal and are truly vested in
all participants to get the most and best out of us all.
Hi
Thanks for inviting me yesterday. The work you are embarking on is very
interesting. Please let me know if you are in need of any assistance. I am very
interested in this work as I think the potential for impact is super high. Will it
be easy work, no, but I feel it is work worthy of investing time and effort. I am
willing to lend my time in any way possible, so do not hesitate to reach out.
These are the type of opportunities I’ve been looking to become engaged in.

38. Blog post by Norton Gusky about the Event
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Read the rest of the Blog Post
https://remakelearning.org/blog/2018/02/23/developing-a-collaborative-culture/

39. Thank you
Jordan P. Lippman, PhD jordan@teambuildersgroup.com
Eric Stennett, EdD estennett@pointpark.edu