What seventh
graders can teach
us about teamwork
Creating a culture of
collaboration and an
environment of support
is not a quick process.
It requires strong,
consistent messaging
from you with support and
empowerment.
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Leadership
Recreation youth soccer
teams, like many kids’ sports teams, can be
described as a mélange of ability, effort and
ambivalence. For every star player on the
team, there is a player participating by force
of parent.
In many ways, it is exactly what many ed-
ucation leaders confront when they look at
their district or site teams. There are stand-
outs and those who work hard. And there
are those who are just going through the
motions.
Turning a group of individuals with
unique talents and personalities into a co-
hesive team requires leadership. But how do
you get them to buy into a common focus
and goal, while cultivating mutual respect
and support? How do you get your staff to
develop an understanding that every person
has an equal share in the success of the team?
Finding the solution requires a strategy
and determination for what you’re trying to
accomplish. The strategy you use as a district
or site leader to transform a group of indi-
viduals into a team committed to each other
could rest with lessons learned from a bunch
of seventh-grade girls.
Piranhas soccer: The beginning
Formed in first grade, the Mighty Pira-
nhas soccer team was about as awful as you
can imagine. A single victory for the first two
seasons, with players and families celebrating
anything that resembled a tie. As a coach, it
was comically dreadful in every manner. One
match, we put a player down by the oppo-
nent’s goal the entire game just so we could
score a goal. But we still couldn’t score.
Things began turning around for this col-
lection of players around third grade. The
girls began to see that winning was fun.
They won six matches that year and were
By Naj Alikhan