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Team Starter KitR E L AT I O N A L L E A D E R S H I P ™ TO O L K I T

This toolkit is to help teams looking to join the PCP Action Network who haven’t yet formed their core leadership and clarified their mission. By following this guide, you will complete all of the requirements needed for your team to apply for the PCP Action Network.

CONTENTSAssumptions on Leadership................................................................................. 2

Steps to Forming a Strong Team……………………………………………..…... 2

1. Defining and Engaging Your Core Team .......................................................... 3

2. Drafting a Mission Statement ...........……………….……………………….…. 5

3. Determine Team Logistics ................................................................................ 8

4. Getting Instutitional Backing and Support…………….…….……………....... 8

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ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT LEADERSHIPWhen utilizing this guide, please take into account the following assumptions that we at Primary Care Progress make about leadership:

Sustainability is best approached at the very beginning of a team’s work together. It may seem counterintuitive to talk about transitions in leadership when you are just beginning. However, effective leaders acknowledge that leadership transitions are a natural part of the lifecycle of a team. This allows them to consider how plans and projects will continue after the current team is gone to ensure team sustainability and continued impact.

Effective leadership requires convening and engaging others. Leaders should spend more of their time connecting with others, distributing leadership roles and responsibilities, and helping others be effective team members working towards an important goal, rather than doing all of the work themselves.

It is better to recruit a select few passionate members over many partially-committed members. If you care enough about an issue or group to ensure it continues after you move on, you need to look for others that are just as passionate. While this requires time and is more challenging, long-term sustainability requires committed members.

Strong teams include a diverse “core team” of committed leaders, rather than just one person. In our model, leadership is defined as interdependent, distributed, and collaborative. It is not a hierarchical title of one individual over a team.

STEPS TO FORMING A STRONG TEAMTo join the PCP Action Network, we ask that you have a strong team already in place. In the simplest terms this means you need to:

1. Form a core leadership team

2. Develop a clear and compelling team mission

3. Determine logistics for when and how the team meets

4. Get institutional support and buy-in

Leadership recognizes that teams are not just about achieving success by completing set goals and tasks, but also assuring team satisfaction through supporting and developing its members.

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1. FORM A CORE LEADERSHIP TEAMIn order to be an effective change maker in primary care, you’re going to need to build a core leadership team. At PCP, this consists of three to eight committed leaders from at least two different professional tracks, and one faculty advisor. Your entire team may be much larger, but your core leadership team is the group of people as passionate about the issue and as committed to engaging others in your cause as you are. They not only help to make important decisions, but help get the work done, engage new networks, and make the work fun!

Strong teams embrace and actively seek out diverse members. Diversity speaks to aspects of identity such as race, gender, and sexual orientation, but it also refers to experience, profession, and perspective. It’s not enough to simply recruit diverse team members. It is also important that deliberate space is created to include diverse opinions and perspectives. The strongest teams understand and value the contributions from different life experiences, training, and professions.

Here are some points to consider when searching for your next core team members:

INTERPROFESSIONAL

The members in your core team should represent as many different health professions as feasible. Why? As the next generation of primary care professionals, we must be adept at working in interprofessional teams. Being interprofessional will change your approach, resources, and outreach possibilities, and will ensure your team is utilizing an interprofessional approach from the very beginning.

SIZE

The ideal size of your core leadership team is between three to eight committed students. Once you have beyond eight members it can be difficult to make collaborative decisions and find times that work for everyone to meet.

YEAR OF SCHOOLING

You will have a much easier transition of leadership at the end of each year if at least two members of the core team are a year below or above one another in their courses. Setting things up this way will facilitate partial team transitions instead of full team transitions, and will support easier leadership continuity and team sustainability. Thinking strategically about who joins your team may make for easier roads ahead.

COMMITMENT TO TEAMWORK

Strong teams rarely just happen—they are intentionally built and maintained. You know your team is strong when there is mutual trust and all team members are committed to building a sense of group identity and group efficacy.

To find your core leadership team, you’re going to need to have a lot of conversations with people in your primary care community to help identify those as passionate as you. Make sure that these conversations are in person. Though relying solely on email is tempting, studies show people become more committed and engaged when they connect with people, not causes.

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THE CHANGE-MAKER’S TEST

This simple exercise can help you determine who to follow up with in your network and team. Create a sheet with two sides:

Once populated with names, your list gives you an accurate sense of your current leadership capacity and provides a guide for who you should be connecting with.

Most people on the right side of the list will not end up moving to the left! Unfortunately, you’re going to find most people aren’t as passionate or able to commit to the team (at least right now). However, you may be incredibly surprised to discover new people through conversation who are deeply passionate about the issue and who commit to working with you. Bonus if those folks have access to new networks (including people from different professions, stages of training, etc.).

The people on the left side of the list are folks who might be as committed to your issue, but you won’t know until you have

a conversation with them and learn more about their passions and values.

The right side are the folks you can count on to help you with the work and are just as passionate as you. This includes people who are already on your core leadership team and people you discover after speaking with them.

Effective leaders are constantly searching for other leaders to join them or replace them. They do this by both engaging with people already on the team and by bringing new people onto the team. To form a strong team, you need to look for others who are just as passionate about the issue. Unfortunately, they don’t grow on trees, so it may take time to find them. So take time to set up conversations called one-to-ones.

One-to-ones are opportunities for you to hear about what motivates others and for you to share what motivates you. They can be short and simple, but they are strategic and thoughtful ways to find people who share common values.

Don’t be afraid of rejection! The strongest teams take awhile to build, and it is better to put more time into finding the right team members than rushing to find people who aren’t committed. If people say no to joining your team, all it means is that they are not able to right now—it is not a personal rejection of you or a complete rejection of the work you are seeking to do.

ENGAGING NEW MEMBERS

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WHO SHOULD YOU APPROACH• People in your team or community who have been engaged in activities and might want to take on a

leadership role (see Change-Maker’s Test on page 3)• People in your network who’ve demonstrated interest in the issue• People outside your network (other professions, different stage of training, etc.) who are likely to be

passionate about the issue• Primary care leaders at your local institution

HOW TO SET UP THE INTERACTION • Make it face-to-face. You can’t get at someone’s passion over email.• Make it an intentional conversation, where you’re demonstrating genuine curiosity about them, their

activities, and their passions and values.• These interactions can be as long as you want (e.g., a conversation over lunch), but they can also be

relatively short—be realistic about your time and respect that of others. This will go a long way and will help you maintain the energy you need for the work that you want to get done together.

CONDUCTING A ONE-TO-ONE

Listen to the other person about their motivations and what resources or skills they might bring to a team. Let them do the majority of the talking.

What are you involved in right now?

What’s most meaningful to you about it?

Why is that so important to you?

Let me share my motivations and values.

What values do we share?

What interests can we act on together?

What skills and resources do we each bring to this work?

When could we meet again to keep building this relationship?

COMPONENTS OF A ONE-TO-ONE

ASK QUESTIONS

GET AT WHAT MOTIVATES THEM

SHARE YOUR VALUES

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To be effective, your team needs to figure out its mission. A mission clearly articulates what your team is going to do and why it has decided to do this. This will not only direct your efforts toward something that is both important to you all and achievable, but it will also help you engage and attract others to your cause.

Mission statements are also great ways to practice team building. Taking time to intentionally build trust and communication skills is essential to the effective functioning of your team and should really begin as soon as the team is created.

CREATING A TEAM MISSION > THE WHAT & WHY

2. DRAFT A MISSION STATEMENT

“In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.” - Dalai Lama

The following is a series of exercises to help you create a team mission that is inclusive and represents the team as a whole.

Each time you are starting a new team it can be helpful to repeat this process.

PART ONE > CREATING SHARED VALUESIt is important to take some time to find common values shared by the members of a team. This process helps build connection, passion, and commitment for the work ahead. There are many ways to discover shared values on a team.

Values are essential to discuss as you launch a new team or project, because people often make assumptions that others share their same values or priorities which can cause conflict later down the line as challenges arise. By not only sharing one’s individual values but also creating shared team values, the vision and priorities of the team gain a more clear focus.

The following page has a an exercise to help your team arrive at a list of five shared values.

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VALUES EXERCISEBelow is a brief, simple exercise you can do to help your team determine what values you have in common.

Step 1: Each person views a list of common values, like the list below, and is told to select 10 values that are the most important to them as relates to the team and the work they are doing.

Step 2: Looking at their list of ten, each person now must narrow down their preliminary list to only three values. Those values should be ranked in order.

Step 3: Looking at everyone’s top three choices, use collaborative decision-making to come up with five values that the team identifies as common shared values.

*Don’t forget to debrief! Make sure to check in with the team. How did it feel to narrow down and rank values that are so important to us? How did it feel to share those values? Did the group decision-making process feel balanced and fair? What has the group learned about how they might work together around decision making to inform the next decision they need to make together?

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PART TWO > INDEPENDENT BRAINSTORMTake five minutes for each of your team members to work independently, completing the following prompts.

PROMPT 1 | Write the five shared values you came up with as a team.

PROMPT 2 | Write as many ideas as you can generate for mission statements.

PROMPT 3 | Write what sorts of activities your team might do in order to help achieve this mission, including who your team could work with and the kinds of projects that your team could engage in. What is the unique work that your team could do based on the people you have involved?

PART THREE > GROUP WORKAfter brainstorming answers to all three questions, take ten minutes to share your ideas with one another, looking for the links between the ideas. Try to identify common themes and reduce the number of options. Add any ideas that come up from the discussion as well.

Split into groups of three. Take fifteen minutes where each group should combine the ideas from the large group discussion and use them to write one or two sentences that best describe the team’s mission, the groups it could engage, and the project(s) it could work on.

OUR TEAM’S SHARED VALUES

POSSIBLE TEAM MISSION IDEAS

WE COULD ACHIEVE THIS MISSION BY...

Finally, vote to select one of the drafted missions. Make any necessary edits to finalize and gain group consensus.

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LOCATIONWhere is your meeting taking place? Consider:

• Accessibilty for team members• Ease of booking/scheduling• Size of space• Equipment (whiteboard, WiFi, etc)• Virtual ability, if needed

TIMEHow long should meetings last on average, and with what frequency? Come up with a clear schedule that members can commit to. It is best if the team can plan consistent meetings at least three months out so team members can schedule around them.

COMMUNICATIONHow will your team communicate about and between meetings? Consider:

• Use of technology like Google Drive, Asana, Slack, text groups• Responsibility for internal communication. Who will send reminders and follow up notes?• Responsibility for outside communication. Who will reach out to other organizations?

MATERIALSAre there materials and equipment you need for meetings (e.g. handouts, flipcharts, etc.)? Who will provide them? Where will they be stored? Where will documents be saved so everyone has access (ex: Dropbox, Google Drive)?

3. DETERMINE TEAM LOGISTICSYou will need to figure out when, where and how your team plans to get together. Make sure the team agrees on:

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4. GET INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT

FACULTY ADVISOR | All teams must have at least one faculty advisor working with them. Faculty are not “in charge” of the team, they are members of it, acting as a bridge between the team itself and the institution and decision-makers. PCP provides Faculty welcome packets to help explain a little more about what we do and how they would be involved.

FUNDING | We ask that all PCP teams first attempt to get funding for projects from their institution, particularly as these projects expand and grow. Though PCP does fund some project work, you must be able to show proof of effort before PCP provides any additional funds.

Finally, we ask that you get buy-in from your instution. This may vary quite a bit, but in general you should aim to have: