1 Governing bodies and ‘team working’

This section of the course explores the term ‘team working’ and is an opportunity for you to reflect on your own experiences of team working.

A great deal has been written about teams and groups: what the difference is between them and how they effectively operate. For the purposes of this course, we use the definition that a team is a group that ‘unites the members towards mutually-held objectives’ (Bennett, 1994).

Team working occurs in many different settings and in different areas of our lives. We may work in a team every day, or as a one-off event. Examples of team working range from planning a holiday with family or friends, planning an event with colleagues at work, responding to an emergency, working together to set a budget, participating in a meeting, to delivering a change in local or national government policy.

Figure 1 Features commonly found in in successful schools.

Mark Gardner of the National Governors Association identified that ‘building a successful governing body, like any other team, is about achieving balance and diversity in skills and experience. The governors also need to work together as part of a team’ (Young-Powell, 2016).