When you are given a brand new team of people to work with it is sometimes hard, they have history, connections, unspoken values and communication pathways all mapped out.  You have to negotiate and tread softly until you bed in your power relationships, make the connections that you need and learn who is who.  But what if you get given a team with no history…… imagine the possibilities…. that’s my Christmas present this year.

In my new role I get a brand new fresh team, we all share the overarching company values and history that are part of the attraction of the job; stories of mateship, survival, adventure, exploration and research.  They are pretty amazing values to start with.  Other then the corporate culture they are a team with no history, limited connections and no unspoken team values and goals.  We get to start afresh, a green fields project with an ultimate aim to make a community.

I feel an enormous amount of pressure to get the foundations right, to create an atmosphere that will allow positive energy to thrive and a create a warm safe community for every-one to relax in.  Not a huge ask really….. hahahaha sounds like Utopia when I write it down!!!

Anyway aim high so I started to prepare by reading about how to create positive communities.  Communities are amazing when you think about it, groups of people who connect over something; a street, a love of gardening, a love of cooking, an interest in social justice or motorbike riding.  Our community will form because every-one wants to go to Antarctica, every-one is up for the challenge of living in one of the most remote places on earth.  So I need to harness that commonality and focus our group on what it is about this challenge that makes us a community.

Sounds easy really………

I have lots of things planned for our first group day, sessions to help us all get to know each other better, develop group roles and identify group values and just in case anyone tries to bring some negative energy into the room I have packed pink quartz along with the sharpies and white board markers…..  I am happy to be accused of quackery but pink quartz makes me smile.

I’ve have used a couple of models to develop my approach (to balance my pink quartz quackery).  I love forming, norming, storming by Tuckman in 1965, still relevant today.  I never really saw the value of the concept when I studied it in a psychology subject, reading it now with a team to guide the theory has a different meaning.  It is comforting to know that the stages that a team moves through occur all the time all over the world, other leaders are struggling (or comfortably negotiating) a team through a forming or storming stage all over Australia and at other Antarctic stations.

The second model that I love is the intentional communities matrix, this model looks at the creation of communities from a sociological viewpoint.  Using the categories of endeavours, place, community and self to examine the different facets of a communities dynamic.  This model is great because it recognises the self in community, the individuals and their range of backgrounds, personal values and experiences.

I can’t wait to see how the community develops to see which parts work and which parts don’t and hopefully I can recognise each and respond or intervene as needed.