Assessments:
ASSESSMENT 1:
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.
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.
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:
1. Define change management and change management principles.
2. Explain the three learning disciplines that you examined for this assessment: personal mastery, mental models, and shared vision.
3. 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.
4. 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.
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.
ASSESSMENT 2:
Write a minimum of two pages in which you analyze how an organization can use ground rules and dialogue to grow as a learning organization. Analyze how ground rules and dialogue can be used to grow a learning organization. Address the following elements:
• Describe the differences between debate, discussion, and dialogue.
• Analyze the value of dialogue in helping a team learn and change.
• What are the ground rules required to reach this level of conversation?
• Describe what you are learning about how to design an effective dialogue session.
• Analyze the ease or difficulty of conversing at this level. Comment on the dangers and obstacles.
Your assessment should be a minimum of 2 pages in length, double-spaced.
ASSESSMENT 3:
Summarize your experience in facilitating a team development session, and analyze the value and usefulness of Peter Senge's five disciplines in the context of your team change management initiative.
This is the second of the assessments based on your two team-development sessions with a real-world group.
Write a post-session summary based on the completed experience. Include the following:
1. Explain the two learning disciplines that you examined for this assessment: team learning and systems thinking.
2. Team exercise plan:
o Outline the schedule for your second 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.
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.
ASSESSMENT 4:
Write a minimum of two pages in which you recall team experiences you have had in which a team was effective and another in which it was not. Write a description of these teams and their tasks, paying particular attention to the behavioral expectations for which the team members held each other accountable. Think of a team experience you have had in which the team was effective. Write a description of this team and its tasks, paying particular attention to the behavioral expectations for which the team members held each other accountable (these might have been spoken or unspoken). List the ground rules and describe how the rules helped the team perform and work well together.
Think of an team experience you have had in which the team was not effective. Write a description of this team and its tasks, including the spoken or unspoken ground rules that describe the expectations for behavior on this team. Examine the possibility that some members held ground rules that others did not. How might this have been a source of tension? Analyze how this difference in what is expected of team members caused conflict and damaged performance. What effect could a dialogue about ground rules as a method of team learning have had for this group?
Your assessment should be a minimum of 2 pages in length, double-spaced.
ASSESSMENT 5:
Write 10-15 pages in which you consolidate your experiences in facilitating team-learning sessions into a final analysis. Incorporate your learning on change management; facilitating change; the dynamics of change; the importance of stakeholder participation; and the use of language, trust building, and fear containment in team development.
You will need to complete Assessments 1 and 3 before completing this assessment.
Integrate your understanding of change management and the use of the five disciplines for team development, based on your findings from your two team development sessions, to write an analysis of what you learned about change as a facilitator, and about yourself as a facilitator.
Include the following sections:
1. Theory of the five disciplines as a method of change: Describe a relevant theory of change management and two of the five disciplines. (You are not required to choose the same two theories that you used in your team sessions, but you may use them if you wish.)
o Consider your audience as you choose your theory, and decide how to discuss it and what to present. 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 forum, or another group. Make judgment calls about the audience's needs and setting. Note: After successfully completing this assessment, you may wish to actually present your paper to a professional audience at your organization, in order to demonstrate your own development.
o Invent your own unique metaphor and use it to explain your chosen theory. That is, develop a graphic or verbal image of something familiar to explain an unfamiliar thing or process. An important part of considering an audience is to provide a powerful metaphor to help audience members understand and remember the relevant information. Causal loops and the ladder of inference are examples of graphic metaphors.
Team development summary findings: Present your summary findings from the two team development sessions, in which you completed the team exercises.
o Use the best stories and quotes from your session experiences to illustrate the disciplines and how they support change.
o Synthesize your learning from the sessions about team dynamics and the value of the five disciplines for team development.
o Illustrate some action statements made by your team and the subsequent changes you observed.
What you have learned from facilitating both team-development sessions:
o Write a section on your learning as a facilitator for the team development sessions. What worked? What did not work? What would you do differently next time?
o How would you change your contract, your explanation of change management, the disciplines, the exercises, your exercise choices, or your behavior during the team sessions, in order to enhance the quality of the team learning?
Recommendations: Provide your recommendations for enhancing team development in the future in a way that is practical, justified, memorable, and actionable for your team and your audience (ideally, the larger organization to which the team belongs).
o Include some of your best quotes and stories from your session experiences as examples.
o Show how your recommendations for building more effective teams will help the audience move closer to its preferred future.
o Include some models from your learning about disciplines that support team learning.
o Describe the potential power of using the five disciplines to support team learning.
Learning resources: To assist your team in learning more about the change management process, list a selection of books, articles, Web resources, and organizations containing the most important resources you would recommend.
Additional Requirements
• Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
• APA formatting: References and citations are formatted according to current APA style and formatting guidelines.
• Length of paper: 10 to 15 typed, double-spaced pages.
• Font and font size: Arial, 12 point.