Team dynamics and accelerating team development are necessary elements in complex organizations. These elements may be even more useful in educational organizations where volunteer efforts need to be harnessed within a matrix-hierarchy approach to shared leading and governance. The Team-Based Learning Collaborative (TBLC) is a non-profit educational organization that values the development of teams as a core tenet of its mission to transform and optimize education through creation of high-quality learning environments. Towards the end of optimizing team dynamics and accelerating team development, the executive team integrated strength-based approaches to teaming, assignment of charges, and engaging in follow-up and follow-through to evaluate the progress of the group.

The Working Genius (WG) model was introduced into the TBLC committee and governance structure in 2022. This approach included the addition of three Leadership Teams (LT) to complement the work of committees and enable cross-committee collaboration, built with conscious inclusion of each individual’s areas of genius, competency, and frustration. Once each member completed the WG assessment, their areas of genius were identified, and these results were used to ensure that every LT had representation from all of the WG combinations to ensure that the early, middle, and end phases of project management were engaged within each team.

Within the LTs, each team included six individuals and they worked across committees on presidential charges that would further and extend the work of the TBLC executive team and committees. The WG results provided steering committee members with a pair of designated archetypes to help them identify their areas of genius or strength.

These designations included: Wonder (deep, reflective, wanting to see the connections in universal and holistic ways), Invention (seek novelty and new ideas or solutions, wanting to constantly test the bounds of what is known and currently done), Discernment (evaluative skills and ability to detect nuance and difference among seemingly similar options), Galvanize (energetic, create a draw to, and excitement for, ideas, projects, processes, and heighten momentum), Enablement (empathic and intuitive about the needs of others, with a desire to help and assist others on their own terms), and Tenacity (pushing for required standards of excellence and making an impact on the world through completed results). Areas of genius within the Steering Committee members revealed this breakdown: Wonder (22%), Invention (33%), Discernment (28%), Galvanize (22%), Enablement (67%), and Tenacity (28%).

This session will describe the process for integrating WG into the team to accelerate teaming, provide metrics on the impact of this work on deliverables, and share strategies for attendees to integrate this approach with their own teams.