Community Of Practice

Trust- should be slowly built up across team members, through developing confidence in each other’s competence and reliability. Trusting individuals are willing to share their knowledge and skills without fear of being diminished or exploited.

Trust is the output of your behaviours and actions of you as a leader and it either builds or erodes over time. Ineffective leaders often don’t get this element of their personal accountability. Importantly, if you don’t build trust and mutual professional respect you cannot be an effective horizontal matrix leader. You must also assume good intent of your team and business partners rather than suspicion and derision so when something does happen (and it will) you are showing empathy in your own relationships by seeking to understand instead of becoming emotional and seeking to assign blame. This is something each of us need to make one of our personal management habits.

Though the idea of working collaboratively is not a new one, the concept of professional learning communities (PLCs) has recently become very popular in education. During the summer of 2012, the Pasco County School District introduced the concept of PLCs into its schools in an effort to improve student learning in this era of increased educational scrutiny and accountability. Department heads suddenly found themselves relabeled PLC facilitators and called to attend two days of summer training meant to prepare them to lead PLCs once the school year began. The other PLC participants, the

We established trust by taking small risks one at time, listen for other groups’ interest, come through each other,

In order to implement an effective Professional Learning Community (PLC) for the development of a Google-Based School, the team must create an environment conducive to their needs and how they best work in a group setting. In order for the Professional Learning Community to be effective in the implementation of a school-wide initiative, the members of the community must have confidence that they are the main group leading to change in the school (Wood, 2007). Creating a functional team involves key factors involving the team characteristic, recognizing positive and negative forces relating to these characteristics, and overcoming the negative forces in a systematic manner (Mealiea, & Baltazar, 2005). Moreover, importance for creating an effective Professional learning community focuses on open sharing, developing skills, identifying and utilizing resources, and forming frames of reference (Spanneut, 2010). Each of these characteristics falls into the overall systematic creation of the learning community that works to increase student learning by creating and achieving specific goals and through setting ground rules, goal setting and analysis, and delegation of tasks in order to prepare to implement the Google-Based School initiative.

Trust is an integral component of a highly effective team and is especially necessary in a cross functional team composed of members from various cultures. “Trust is the mechanism by which the risks associated with social complexity are transcended—risks that might otherwise stifle initiative” (Lewicki & McAllister, 1998, p. 446). Inherently people do not trust those that are different from themselves. Consequently, creating a fertile environment for trust to grow is critical to overcome the natural responses and build cohesion.

The petals are innovation, respect, compassion, fortitude, analytical thinking, emotions and vigilance. Trust is the veins and stem of the rose that continue to pump the vital nurturance to each petal and provide adequate water. However, trust can easily be distorted when there is the absence rapport about trust development (Monzani, 2015, p.2). It is easier for followers (subordinates) to relate to trustworthiness when a leader has specifically defined goals and plans of achievement (Monzani, 2015, p. 3). The trust element is only a small portion of this puzzle called management however, it is the portion most overlooked by those in leadership roles. Managers have noticed that the trust factor often leads to a motivational benefit for both the leader and followers but it also may give the impression of reduction in power, as a manager (Lam, 2015, p. 836). It is important that managers promote two-way communication between the leader and employees and vice versa so that employees comprehend the limitations of interactive participation and the intention of their leader (Lam, 2015, p. 851) with the encouragement of social exchange (Miao, 2015, p.

Community of practice refers to a group of people who share some common values, interest and knowledge and have the sense of togetherness among them. These communities are formed involuntarily and are non-hierarchical who meet to share their common ideas. They are normally more willing to share their knowledge among them in comparison to other groups. These groups don’t have any entry and exit barriers.

Since being identified as a model trough which knowledge where developed, held, transferred, created, and shared (brown and Duguid, 1991; Lave and Wenger, 1991, Wenger, 1998), the communities of practice approach has become increasingly significant within educational management and practice, internal and external education organizations, and public and private sectors across the world. The community of practice is originally developed by the two anthropologists Jane Lave and Etienne Wenger in a study of situated learning of five apprenticeships: Yucates midwives, Vai and Gola tailors, naval quartermasters, meat cutters, and non-drinking alcoholic. rentichicps hat is currently being used to gauge and facilitate knowledge transfer in a range

To build an understanding of how communities of practice create organizational value, we suggest thinking of a community as an engine for the development of social capital. We argue that the social capital resident in communities of practice leads to behavioral changes, which in turn positively influence business performance. We identify four specific performance outcomes associated with the communities of practice we studied and link these outcomes to the basic dimensions of social capital. These dimensions include connections among practitioners who may or may not be co-located; relationships that build a sense of trust and mutual obligation, and a common language and context that can be shared by community members. Our conclusions are based on a study of seven organizations where communities of practice are acknowledged to be creating value.

John C. Maxwell says, “If you want your life to improve, you must improve yourself. You must make that a tangible target.”18 Therefore, developing a personal growth plan for my life is very important. I have an intense desire to achieve all that God desires for me and of me. In addition, Maxwell asserts, in The Law of the Rubber Band, “Growth stops when you lose the tension between where you are and where you could be.”19 This tension refers to the fact that rubber bands are only useful when there is tension, otherwise they never hold anything together. Therefore, his point is if leaders get comfortable and complacent, they cease to grow. He states, “The greatest stretching seasons of life come when we do what we have never done, push ourselves harder, and reach in a way that is uncomfortable to us. That takes courage. But the good news is that it causes us to grow in ways we thought were impossible.”20 His point is for leaders to constantly step out of their comfort zone in order to try things they have never done before. For instance, a leader could write a blog, speak publicly, take on a new sport or exercise program, or read a book that is outside of their field of expertise. Interestingly, Peter Drucker said, “The greatest enemy of tomorrow’s success is today’s success. No one has ever made a significant impact after they won the Nobel Prize.”21 Therefore, I plan to keep myself in a place of constant tension so that I continue to grow. Therefore, in order to ensure that

In order for interpersonal trustworthiness to exist in organizations, a leader-follower relationship must first exist between the parties involved (Caldwell et al., 2010, p. 500). Once that leader-follower relationship is established, leaders have to earn trust. Leaders earn trust by their respective actions, morals and virtues. Trust is can also be based on past history. If something was done in the past which questions a leader’s values, morals or judgment, it would be unlikely that the leader would be trusted in the future. One of the most important parts of being an effective leader is building and maintaining trust. Trust can further be defined as a “multi-dimensional construct comprising different dimensions of the trustee’s attributes that the trustor evaluates” (Ingenhoff and Sommer, 2010, p. 341).

Additionally, it implies that everybody is important and has something to offer. Therefore, we need to assist each other with our ideas and expertise without reservation. Wheelan (2016) asserts, “Too much knowledge and too many different skills are needed for any individual to accomplish tasks alone” (p. 2). In like manner, (Dockery, 2011) highlights R. Judson Carlberg’s insights on “Christian leadership essentials” by warning us that God created us to be relational beings. Successful relationships develop when value is placed on hearing and sharing gifts with others, and clarity of goals and vision are understood. Thus, rather than seeking to defend one’s own perspective, cooperation and problem solving ability are enhanced. This sheds light on Wheelan’s view on cohesion within a group. “Cooperation facilitated by cohesion provokes positive effects such as greater division of labor, increased trust and the development of lasting agreements, and a stronger desire to work on group tasks” (Wheelan, 2016, p.

Working with other individuals in a group or a team comes very naturally to most people. In Genesis 1:26 God said, “…Let us make mankind in our image and our likeness…” We were created to be relational people as a reflection of the relationship God has within the trinity, as well as the relationship He desires with each and every one of us. According to Fischer, there are many benefits from working together. These benefits include, but are not limited to, having more voices or perspectives when making decisions along with an increased capability for division of labor and responsibilities. Unfortunately, as a result of The Fall and our sinful nature we often do not reflect The Lord in our relationships or teams. With this in mind, Fischer highlights that teams have a list of negatives also associated with them. A few examples are general dysfunction and disagreement, longer decision-making processes, and social loafing (Fischer, 2012). This paper will address the presence of social loafing and conformity within teams.

The author of this selected article mainly introduces a way of managing knowledge, namely communities of practice (COP). His key argument is that he comes up with a concept that management of knowledge is a doughnut, evolving logical steps and connecting performance and strategy by knowledge. In addition, the author extremely declares the importance of practitioners in the knowledge management and the environment of communities of practice. The chosen article mainly presents three elements of COP (domain, community, and practice), detailed steps of COP, and three enabling structures (sponsorship, recognition, and support structures).