The T-Team is our hope for continuation of the SPEC work at The Trust.
The Trust's "SPEC story"
The T-Team is our hope for continuation of the SPEC work at The Trust. Happily there is great commitment to the endurance of the T-Team among leaders beyond those of us who experienced the SPEC course series.
Accomplishments:
- All-Staff meetings adopt World Café format with small group targeted discussions and reporting/discussing with large group
- World Café experiences build foundation for the All Staff Retreat
- Retreat leads to Values workgroup and adoption of Values and behaviors
- T-Team "leavens" the atmosphere of the Trust with enhanced cross-departmental communication and an expectation that complaints must also come with ideas for solving the problem
- Cross-departmental committees form and thrive and complete valuable work that helps the entire organization (All-Staff meetings, Contract Analyst, Metrics, Values)
The "Bee Team" (see photo from the March 25 T-Team meeting)
Here is our T-Team hard at work. The serious start to the meeting shows us listening to Scot's report on our SPEC Check, with healthy skepticism leading to numerous questions and lively discussion.
We discussed the meaning of key terms:
- Empowerment contrasted with Detachment (as in "detached from decision-making").
- Prevention-wondering what limits to the word are set in the SPEC Check, and how that may differ from the way the Trust tends to use the word.
An important observation was offered: that "community" as defined by Dr. Prilleltensky is different in critical ways from "community" as defined by Mark Freidman and Results Based Accountability. Gaining understanding of nuances here might help staff members at The Trust better converge idealism about community activism with the RBA route The Trust is currently embarking on.
At the March 25 meeting, as has often happened across the year+, discussion took the question:
- Are we (the T-Team) just being another 'committee' with an agenda and tasks to get done, or are we putting attention to being a force for moving SPEC external? We have been building a culture of exchange of ideas, and hope it will infuse our decision-making.
The strong sense of T-Team members is to keep pushing for the latter-embody enough SPEC internally so we can manifest SPEC principles and practices outside in the community. The work goes on---
3 Comments
Jesse and others at TCT: It has been an honor to work along side you these past 2 1/2 years at SPEC. I have really been humbled by your hard work to bring values based practice to the Trust. This essay from Jesse so elegantly and concisely summarizes the kinds of impact your SPEC involvement has had with internal SPEC at TCT, and the desire to extend it beyond. Sometimes during the course I truly wondered if the SPEC approach could endure and move beyond committee life at TCT as well. It is so inspiring to see you grapple with this. I hope that we can continue to support each other in the years ahead, as we have so much to teach each other. Can we explore some cross organizational dialogue about these practices?
Dear TCT friends,
What has always impressed me about working with you is the "learning" attitude of your team, and the willingness "to hold the tension"; that is, resisting running away from difficult questions and sticking with it, even if the answer is not easy or comfortable. I have found in your team tremendous humility and commitment. I can see that the t team has taken several meaningful steps to increase "participatory democracy" in the organization, something easy to talk about but hard to implement.
I have been reminded in our work together how important it is to involve members at all level of the organization in decision making.
I look forward to our continued work together.......monday in fact, just before the board meeting.....
Dear Jesse and others:
Thank you for your great insights and for all you have contributed to the SPEC class. It's great to read Jesse's llist of the accomplishments of the t-team and the growth in the organization as a whole. I am truly impressed with the group's attempts to push SPEC principles internally, and with your willingness to share your challenges with the SPEC class. As the funding organization for some of the other agencies, members of your team played a pivitol role in helping to create a safe environment where concerns can be shared and expressed without worrying about negative repercussions. I think this is an important step toward SPEC external!
Ora
Would you like to comment?
You must be a member. Sign In if you are already a member.