Team Wellness

Start the process of designing and implementing a team wellness program by answering the following questions:

• What can each team member do to support their personal wellness? 

• What can the team do to support each other's wellness? 

• What can the team do to support the wellness of the team as a whole? 

• What can the administrators and school board do to support individual and team wellness? 

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• Designate which Character Strengths best support the running of each protocol, routine, meeting situation, etc. in how you manage your meetings. Work to utilize your team members where their strengths best fit the task(s). Go the extra step to get the VIA Team Report which combines the strengths of all team members to help team functioning and wellness. (Accomplishment and Relationships Pillars)

• Edutopia Articles - Edutopia provides a series of articles on wellness strategies for educators along with research that supports the belief that teacher wellbeing affects student wellbeing. A good starter article that connects to Positive Psychology is "3 Steps School Leaders Can Take To Support Teachers Right Now". (Multiple Pillars)

• Greater Good in Action - The folks at the GGIA (University of California - Berkeley) offer a vast number of wellness practices at their resource site that teams can try. (Multiple Pillars)

• Habit Formation - 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teams

• Icebreakers - Access a constantly growing list of questions to choose from to apply to help slow things down and experience community time with your team. (Relationships Pillar)

• Leadership - Look to review the tenets of authentic leadership to get everyone's take on what successful leadership looks like. Remember that the team leader is not the only leader on your team. Hopefully, team members engage their strengths and talents in various roles leading out on activities, events, initiatives, etc. Having designations such as wellness, literacy, and STEAM leads for example offers leadership and shared responsibility opportunities to support team members' engagement with their passions, and their strengths. (Multiple Pillars) 

• Moving Out of Your Comfort Zone - Reflect individually and as a team about where you might challenge yourselves to move from your comfort to your growth zone. Use this write-up and in-depth article to design ways possibly use WOOP or another goal-setting strategy to start your stretch! A connection is to be TTWWADI Busters! (Engagement and Accomplishment Pillars)

• Personal Wellness Plan - Each team member develops his/her own plan and seeks out support on some or all of the PERMAH pillars that he/she sets goals within. Look to review your strengths from the Via Strength Inventory to see which ones can help you fully engage within each PERMAH pillar. A helpful further step is either to set overall wellness and/or individual goals for each PERMAH pillar using the research-supported WOOP goal-setting strategy. Here is a simple chart that can help with this process. This write-up for creating a family wellness plan can be adapted for a team wellness plan and this plan can be adapted for a personal wellness plan (regular and in-depth version). (Multiple Pillars)

• Resilience in the Workspace - Watch this short video together on characteristics of resilient people to then discuss and unpack. | How to be Resilient at Work | Stress Management at Work (Multiple Pillars)

• Review the efforts at Google to build psychological safety for team wellness and to support innovation. Review this article by David Burkus and this one by Jill Casey to promote psychological safety for teams. Watch the TEDx Talks video by Amy Edmondson who is a researcher on this topic. (Positive Emotions and Relationships Pillars)

• School Leadership Support - Administrators collaborate with interested staff members to create a staff wellness program to "learn and live it" (i.e., Positive Psychology) as the folks at the Institute of Positive Education say. The team could start with the usual questions of who, what, when, where (we know the "why"), and how to design the program. As always, providing structured and protected time and space will be big on the list. One approach is to bring in outside specialists such as yoga, fitness, meditation, etc. trainers. But do remember to access your in-school talent as well. An important option is to provide life coaching especially around helping folks design and implement personal wellness plans. (Multiple Pillars)

• Self-Determination Theory (SDT) - Spend time individually and as a team to unpack this theory that focuses on motivation. The researchers behind the theory put forth 3 main psychological needs which motivate us: Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness (Connection). From a wellbeing perspective, one can see that when these needs are met, we move closer to a sense of thriving. There is overlap with PERMAH especially when you add in the contribution by being able to engage one's Character Strengths for one's own sake and/or for the greater community. The Center for Self-Determination Theory is a helpful resource if you are curious about this theory. (Engagement, Relationships, and Accomplishment Pillars)

• Team “All About Me/Us” Graphic Organizer - Design an organizer with categories (components) of individual and team attributes that support the wellbeing of the team. The team collaborates to fill in information for each of the categories. This template can get you started. (Multiple Pillars)

• Team Mindfulness - The Harvard Business Review articles "Why Your Team Should Practice Collective Mindfulness" and "What Mindfulness Can Do For A Team" provide a helpful listing of practices to help teams function better and be more well. (Multiple Pillars) 

• Team Sharing with Vulnerability - Go through the process of each team member taking some time to respond to the following prompts for his/her work life. It also can be applied to one's home life. The second step is to set aside team sharing time to be a bit vulnerable to sharing responses. (Relationship Pillar) (Thanks to Kelly Braun for this activity.)

  • When I am at my best it will look like _______________.

  • I work best when I do these things _______________.

  • I work best when my team helps me by doing these things _______________.

  • When I am not at my best it will look like _______________.

  • My professional language of appreciation (words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, physical touch, and receiving gifts) is _______________.

• Teacher Wellness After School Activities (ASA) - Organize a team after-school activity (ASA) to get you out of the building and have fun. Possibly choose from croquet, Frisbee golf, corn hole, lawn bowling, and/or hacky sack. There are lots of fun activities so look to talk with the PE teachers to offer ideas to put into practice. (Multiple Pillars)

• Team Building Activities - Review this listing of team building activities that help to provide direction, structures, rewards, and self-improvement opportunities while growing a shared mindset. Playmeo Database of team and trust Building Activities. (Multiple Pillars)

• Team Wellness Continuums - The team members design a set of continuums around criteria related to their individual (personal and professional) and team wellness. Set up periodic check-in times to share where each individual is and where folks feel the team is on the continuums. Use a protocol or two for sharing the results. Another approach is to use the “how full is my bucket” with positive emotional deposits. One can note in increments how full his/her bucket is with the opportunity to share when the bucket was dipped by negative events and when a positive emotional deposit was made. (Multiple Pillars)

• Team Wellness & Soft Skills - A blog post on the soft skills that promote team wellness. (Multiple Pillars)

• The Psychology of Teamwork: The 7 Traits of Highly Effective Teams provides research on components of a healthy and effective team. (Multiple Pillars)

• The Strengths of a Successful Team - Brainstorm, Form Group Responses and Finalize Responses  (Accomplishment and Relationships Pillars)

  • What do each of us believe are essential Character Strengths that need to be engaged for building a successful team? 

  • Which strengths do we need to exercise to best support how we operate (i.e., efficiency and productivity) as a team? 

  • Which strengths can best help each of us to experience increased autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Self-Determination Theory)?

• Wellness Days -  Teachers take personal days to take care of doctor visits, home repairs, etc. And how about having days in which teachers take off from work to participate in wellness activities to further their wellbeing? (Multiple Pillars) 

• Whole School Wellbeing Day - At least once a year and hopefully more, look to have a day dedicated to wellness. One approach could be to use the PERMAH pillars to have interested students, staff, and potentially parents offer activities that connect to individual and/or multiple pillars. The Character Strengths would of course be integrated into the offerings. Outside providers also could be called upon to contribute their expertise to the day. (Multiple Pillars)

• Workplace Wellness - Positive Psychology offers two full listings of employer and employee wellness strategies for the workplace. List 1 and List 2. (Multiple Pillars)

• Active Constructive Responding - a) Share a recent interaction with someone when you were in the active-constructive response mode amplifying your partner’s communication. b) Share a recent interaction when you realized later that you were either active-destructive in response to deflate or passive-destructive in stealing your partner’s news. How might you have your antennae up next time to move into amplifying mode? (Relationships Pillar)

• Animal Spirit Cards - Look to purchase a set of animal spirit cards for the team. Each team member chooses a card from the deck to share how the animal represents how he/she is feeling, an identity, a hope, etc. Take turns sharing your choices. Look to design and create your own spirit card to share with the team. (Relationships and Meaning Pillars)

• Beauty Break - Share a beautiful image, poem, song, moment, etc. (Positive Emotions Pillar)

• Balloon Toss - The goal is to keep the balloon up in the air as long as possible. You can play sitting around the collaboration table or do your own version as in just using your feet! On a side note, you might want to take up Hacky Sack as a ritual meeting starter. :) (Positive Emotions and Engagement Pillars)

• Being Present (Mindful Moment) - Describe the feelings, sights, sounds, and smells of a recent mindful moment. (Engagement Pillar)

• Brain Break - Choose your favorite and yes, give your brain a break! (Engagement and Health Pillars)

• Do a short fun activity that you did with your students. (Engagement Pillar)

• Emotion Check-Ins - We do check-ins with our students in morning/community meetings so let's do them at our team meetings. :) Here are a few feelings/emotion labeling tools to draw from: Feeling Chart | Putchik's Wheel (Relationships Pillar)

• Flow - Describe a recent time when you were in a state of flow. (Engagement and Accomplishment Pillars) 

• Forms of Positivity - Share a recent serene moment that you savored. | “When did an interest last draw you in by the nose?” (Curiosity Strength) | “When has hope helped you through a recent challenging time?” (Grit & Hope Strengths) | “What has transfixed you with awe?” (Zest Strength) | “Think of a time when you felt a surge of love?” (Positive Emotions Pillar and Love/Kindness Strength)

• Gratitude - Find a few ways to share gratitude and celebrate. Comes up with ways to share gratitude as a team ritual whether formalized in meetings and/or as a part of the grade-level culture for students and teachers. (Positive Emotions Pillar)

• Growth Mindset - Share a recent example of when you were fully in growth mindset mode. (Engagement and Meaning Pillars)

• Joyful Moment(s) - Share an in or outside of school joyful moment. (Positive Emotions Pillar).

• Laughter (Amusement) Break - Find ways to laugh… share a story, tell a joke, watch a video of a comedian, etc. | “When was the last time you laughed? Tell us.” (Positive Emotions Pillar)

• Personal Sharing Time Questions - Choose from the following to share a bit more about ourselves (Relationships Pillar):

  • What would your perfect room look like?

  • What job would you be terrible at?

  • Who is one of your heroes and why? 

  • What skill would you like to master?

  • What irrational fear do you have?

  • What are some small things that make your day better?

  • What movie title best describes your life?

  • What is something that your friends would consider “so you”?

  • What was one of my best childhood experiences?

  • What was the worst gift you ever received?

  • In your group of friends, what role do you play?

• Self-Strength Spotting and Sharing - Ahead of the team meeting each team member reflects on the past week to a time/place where he/she applied one or more of his/her strengths. Team members draw a picture of the strength engagement situation in preparation for the team meeting. At the meeting everyone takes turns sharing their picture and strength(s) with teammates who listen applying the Acknowledge - Validate - Celebrate protocol. (Positive Emotions and Engagement Pillars)

• Share new learning whether personal or professional. (Engagement and Accomplishments Pillars)

• Share a recent “win” as an accomplishment, something that really worked out well. (Accomplishment Pillar) 

• Social Connection - Share a recent experience when someone stepped in and really supported you. (Relationships Pillar) 

• Student Stories - Look to pause and build in time to reflect and celebrate your student growth stories. This would take place outside your regular Student Support Team (SST) meetings. One fun and creative way to do this would be to write up story arcs to tell your tales. Here is a blog post describing this approach. Do note that this also connects to a blog post where I wrote that we should also make time for discussions of the students who are not on our student of concern list. Our middle and high-achieving students deserve our attention with the understanding that our stories might not have anything to do with academics. 

• Strength Spotting - Share an example of someone applying one or more of the Character Strengths. (Positive Emotions Pillar)

• Weekly or Monthly Friday Clothing Statements - Floral, sports team jersey, cultural heritages, etc. Fridays in which the team comes up with a clothing theme for everyone to wear. In other words, have fun and be a little goofy. Your students will love it!

• 7 Traits of Highly Effective Teams. Review this framework to get each other's take on the list. Possibly put your own list together and rate how you are doing in your team's effectiveness. 

• 3 Keys to Workplace Communication. Review and design your own.  

• 12 Ground Rules for Effective Meetings. Review and design your own.   

• After any challenging event, look to have a ‘post-challenge’ debriefing. Design your own debriefing protocol or see if a Critical Friends Group (CFG) one will work. 

• Analyze which Big 5 personality traits (link to the assessment) best support the running of each protocol, routine, meeting situation, etc. in how you manage your meetings. Work to utilize your team members where their personality traits most fit the task. 

• Blind Spots - Teammates share their known blind spots and if comfortable, ask for ones they are not seeing. 

• Brainstorming to Save Your School and the World - Look to meet at a team member's home for drinks. Bring two big poster sheets, Post-Its, and markers. Title one poster “The World” and the other “Name of School”. Each team member writes a couple of world challenges and a couple of school challenges on Post-Its to be displayed on the posters. The team then decides on one world and one school challenge which is then written at the top of each poster. Team members then use the Post-Its to write the steps needed (one step per Post-It) to solve the challenge numbering them 1,2,3… to be added randomly to the assigned challenge poster. Once all the steps are up on each board the team members gather around one board at a time and discuss which steps they can agree on and in which order they should be followed.

• Building Closeness - Choose from a list of questions that the team is comfortable responding to. 

• Building Positive Self Talk - Share a self-talk mantra (e.g., I am determined...giving it a shot...present...) and/or ask your teammates for help in developing one. It can involve PosPsych tenets or not. :) (Positive Emotions and Engagement Pillars)

• Busting Negative Self Talk - Share something your inner voice (embedded over time) is telling you that you are trying to move away from. (Positive Emotions and Engagement Pillars)

• Compliments Project - Adapt to meet the needs of your team. 

• Continuum Dialogue - Critical Friends Group (CFG) continuum dialogue protocol sharing one’s stance on educational topics. Here is the original full list of CFG protocols. 

• Core Values> Choose from the following list of core values and draw from your own list of values to share how you are living some of them. Honesty - Accepting Others as They Are - Collaborating with Others - Persevering Through Challenges - Being Accountable - Being Physically Healthy - Authentic Relationships - Caring for Others - Not Judging Others - Contributing to Something Greater than Oneself - Humility - Seeking to Understand - Balance in Life - Seeking Novelty and Adventure - Self Acceptance - Resolving Differences - Appreciating and Seeking Out Beauty (Multiple Pillars)

• Creating A Culture of Accountability - Six Seconds provides a helpful article on The 4 Checkpoints of Accountable Communication to assist teams with accountability and communication. Another approach to accountability and professional growth is to review the Lominger 67 Competencies that are used in the business world. The team can use them in multiple ways. One would be to choose a few competencies each week to review and discuss how each person is doing in performing them. Goals could be set to individually work on some of them, where needed. 

• Creating Metaphors - Try the CFG creating metaphors protocol filling in the blank to “When I am at my best as a (teacher, librarian, principal), I am _________________________. 

• Compass Points - Try the CFG compass points protocol. Use the points/stances to share one’s beliefs. Look to discuss team scenarios and how each member might respond from their point on the compass. 

• Effective and Well Team Rubric - Design a rubric and periodically assess the effectiveness and wellbeing of your team. Here is a sample of effectiveness to get you started to adapt and then add sections on team wellness. 

• Emotional Intelligence - Go to the Emotional Intelligence page of this site to try some of the classroom strategies that could assist your team to strengthen individual and team emotional intelligence. One activity depending on the trust level is to go through the Putchik Wheel of emotions with team members sharing stories of when they experienced specific emotions. 

• Fill Your Bucket or Cup - What nourishes your body, mind, or soul? Have each team member complete this worksheet to then share out. (Positive Emotions Pillar)

• Finding Your Ikigai - Explore together by responding to the following questions provided by Positive Psychology via this article. Team members can also take an Ikigai inventory to help with the process. (Multiple Pillars)

Do what you love:

• 1. What did you enjoy doing as a child or in your early adult years?

  2. What do you do now in your spare time that makes you happy?

Do what you are good at:

• 3. Do you know your strengths and skills? What are they?

  4. What do people ask you to help them with?

Do something the world needs:

• 5. What and who inspires you?

  6. What makes you annoyed or frustrated?

Do something you can be paid for:

• 7. What service or product could you sell (what would people pay you for)?

  8. What job could you do?

• How Is Your PERMAH? - Periodically build in the meeting protocol of asking each other about the state of his/her PERMAH!

• Identity Strength/Skill and Sharing - One approach is to identify categories of personal and/or professional skill sets and the strengths that support them. An example might be that a team member is a curriculum designer which draws on the strengths of creativity, teamwork, and hope. Share something in one’s comfort zone and possibly something in one’s vulnerable zone. Develop a couple of response protocols to engage team members to validate identities. Example - Susan is thinking about playing the Spanish guitar at open mic night at a local bar. She has done a lot with the thinking routines and would like to use them in the next unit. David Bott explains in his blog how engaging the “vulnerability loop” leads to relationship and trust building. 

• Mission Statement - Go to the Character Strengths page for the PRIME strategy of creating a mission statement to see how it might work for your team to develop one. 

• Positive Emotions Toolkit - Choose from the following to find ways to decrease uncomfortable emotions and increase positive ones. (Positive Emotions)

  1. Habituating Gratitude - What are ways that you stop, reflect, and appreciate as a daily practice?

  2. Identify Your Positive Purpose - What is one of your day-to-day purposes? What is one of your life's connections to meaningful activities? 

  3. Live Mindfully - What are some techniques you use to live mindfully? 

  4. Nurture Relationships - Describe an experience in a relationship when the relationship was nurtured. 

  5. Recognize and Counter Unhelpful Thinking - How do you “catch” unhelpful thinking? How do you counteract it? 

  6. Savior Life- What actions (experiences) bring positive emotions into your life? What step(s) can you take to have more of those experiences? 

• Salon Discussion Time - Team members think of a couple of “juicy” educational topics that could lead to a rich philosophical discussion. Write the topics on separate note cards. The note cards are put in a bowl and one is chosen to chat about. The team decides ahead of time how long the chat will be. 

• Self-Actualizing Moment - Describe a peak experience from your life. (Engagement and Meaning Pillars) 

• Showcase and Celebration Time - Set up periodic times for team members to share a teaching practice, specific lesson and/or activity, etc. that worked really well. Also, look to visit each other's rooms to view lessons in action while also setting aside time for each team member to share his/her classroom to showcase bulletin boards, learning pods, samples of student work, etc. 

• Strengthening Connections - Spending time to check in with one another can be scaffolded by going beyond the usual "how are you?". One approach is to engage in four different areas of questions that are likely to lead to higher-quality connections. The four high categories of questions help to 1) communicate interest in the other persons; 2) bring forth positive emotions in others (e.g., gratitude, care) 3. provide support to others, and/or 4) uncover common ground (e.g., shared history and interests). These types of questions help to build connection because they nurture mutual respect and deeper understanding, build trust and safety, further common understanding of interests, and help people to share and engage at a deeper depth with each other. Here is a background article that provides sample questions for all four areas. 

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