All Work is Team Work

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Four-week course | May 5 - June 1, 2026

• Do your team meetings feel like a group of individuals who aren't making progress together?
• Do you find that too much time is spent talking about why something happened or looking for blame instead of discussing ways to move forward?
• Do you feel that team members spend more time protecting their turf than working together?
• Does "groupthink" instead of constructive conflict dominate your team decision making?

Library work involves interactions with groups of people to get things done, whether interacting with library users, participating in a short-term project, or working on a regular team. Each team’s dynamics and communication impacts the effectiveness of the shared work. In this online course, you will learn the characteristics of highly effective teams, identify common issues on teams, and strategies for improving team dynamics.

We’ll cover topics such as team roles, group dynamics, team agreements, and how to make decisions. You’ll understand the all-too-human reasons it’s challenging to work on a team and ways to navigate those challenges. You’ll leave this course with practical tools for improving team interactions and results.

Readings, videos, discussions, practical examples, and assignments during the course guide you to learn skills, share experiences, ask questions, and apply the concepts needed to improve the teams you are on.

Course Outline: When you log in to the Infopeople online learning site, you will see weekly modules with these topics:

• Week 1: What Is a Team?
  • What makes a team
  • Stages of team development
  • Team roles
  • Characteristics of effective teams
     
• Week 2: Decision Making in Teams
  • How decisions are made
  • Tying decisions to strategic plans
  • What happens when team members do not agree
  • Tools for decision making
     
• Week 3: Finding and Solving Problems in Teams
  • What makes team communication difficult
  • Social triggers
  • Five dysfunctions of a team
  • How to communicate difficult information
     
• Week 4: Tools for Creating High Performing Teams
  • Team agreements
  • Skills for making a team effective
  • Roles for high performing teams
  • Team charters

Time Required: To complete this course, you can expect to spend 2½ hours per week, for a total of ten course hours. Each week's module contains readings and various options for assignments, discussions, interviews, and online meetings. You can choose the options most relevant to your work and interests. Although you can work on each module at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night, it is recommended that you complete each week's work within that week to stay in sync with other learners.

Who Should Take This Course: Library staff in all types of libraries who work with others on teams and want to improve their personal and team performance.

Presenter:

Sharon Morris, Infopeople Instructor since 2022, has offered library professional development throughout the U.S. for over 25 years, including in-person and online webinars, workshops, conference presentations, and institutes. She is a core instructor for the Research Institute for Public Libraries, has co-created leadership institutes in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas as well as for the Association of Rural and Small Libraries and Mountain and Plains Library Association.

She holds a Master’s in Library and Information Science and a Ph.D. in Managerial Leadership in Libraries. Dr. Morris' professional development covers a wide spectrum of topics, including organizational development, leadership, interpersonal communications, and library service excellence. She shares research in ways that help people to relate and apply findings in their daily work in libraries.

Training Provider: Infopeople

Track: Teamwork