From Moments to Momentum: Linking Teams Through Purpose, Feedback, and Coherence

January Series: Teaming That Holds: Building the Infrastructure for Sustainable Leadership

Estimated read time: ~9 minutes

Teaming holds implementation together. When it’s unclear, the system absorbs the cost in time, trust, and emotional labor.

In so many schools and districts, quality teaming shows up in moments.

• A leadership team utilizes a decision-making protocol to instill change.
• An Early Warning System Team uses data to pinpoint the right intervention for a student.
• A PLC identifies a Tier 1 need and adjusts the course.

However, another year goes by, and the system feels largely the same as it always has. Stagnant. Unchanged. It’s not because the professionals in the system, or even the individual teams, are lacking in skill. It is because good teaming in isolation rarely snowballs into momentum that moves the whole system forward. A strong team, on its own, cannot outrun a fragmented system. Asking a team to function in a siloed, highly departmentalized structure is like asking a relay team to win a race without allowing handoffs. When systems are fragmented, teams work harder and hope the other legs of the race are running in the same direction and at the expected pace. In this final Community Learning Entry of our January series, Teaming That Holds, we explore how systems move from moments of excellence to sustained momentum—by intentionally linking teams through purpose, feedback, and coherence.

Linked Teaming in Plain Terms: Coherence, Not More Meetings

In education, we often use the language of systems so casually that we lose sight of how the whole actually functions. Bryk and colleagues (2015) remind us that the performance of any social system is “the product of interactions among the people engaged with it, the tools and materials they have at their disposal, and the processes through which these people and resources come together to do work.”

In other words, performance is relational and structural. To understand coherence, football comes to mind, especially this time of year. Success is not determined solely by offense, defense, special teams, or the scout team. It is determined by how well each component is aligned toward a shared purpose and how effectively information moves among them.

Coherence is not achieved by adding conversation. It is achieved by ensuring that the structure supports alignment. Meadows (2008) defines feedback loops as the structures through which systems learn and adapt. Information circulates, influences decisions, and produces behaviors. When feedback loops are clear, predictable, and trusted, systems improve. When they are inconsistent or invisible, fragmentation increases. In a coherent educational system:

• Teams know what information they are responsible for communicating.
• They know where it goes next.
• They know who is expected to act.
• They know how decisions influence practice.

Predictability fosters psychological safety over time. When feedback loops are strong, staff understand how decisions are made and what happens next. When loops are unclear, systems compensate by adding meetings, admiring the problem, or relying on informal relationships that complicate decision-making.

Connect.
Where do staff experience communication breakdowns in your system?

We Don’t Need Extra. We Need Alignment.

When fragmentation appears, the reflex is often to add:

• Another meeting
• Another committee
• Another initiative
• Another position

Adding meetings rarely creates coherence. In fact, unnecessary meetings can introduce confusion and disrupt teams already working toward a unified vision. Educators are busy; efficiency and clarity matter. What systems need is not expansion. They need alignment.

Why Systems Assign Responsibilities Before Naming Teams

The responsibilities and decision pathways utilized by those teams are. Effective systems should respond to the messy by clarifying responsibilities first, before deciding how teams are organized.

I once worked with a district that was experiencing significant siloing and fragmentation. We worked through a teaming inventory to discover a truly astronomical number of teams; the purpose of several, eluded leadership. There were so many teams that administrative representation on these teams was impossible, and the administrators were burning out fast trying to make the impossible happen. Great educators and great teams were working independently of one another, in a system of interdependence.

It would be like the running backs’ coaches on a football team’s coaching staff training techniques and execution for an offensive scheme that may or may not align with the blocking system being taught to the offensive line by their coaches, as well as the quarterbacks and their coaches. Resulting will likely be a lot of false starts, missed blocking assignments, tackles for loss, and significant frustration.

It was clear that we needed to begin the necessary lift of defining the purpose of each team and finding redundancies, gaps, and work that no longer served the needs of the system. The leadership team, especially the administrator, felt the task was daunting. He was worried that the professionals in the system would respond to changing how they’ve been operating. As an outsider, I was thinking the professionals would likely appreciate the clarity and cohesion that the changes would bring. In hindsight, I think we were both right.

In hindsight, they were right to anticipate tension. But professionals also appreciated the clarity that emerged.

• Clarity reduces emotional labor.
• Clarity protects people.
• Clarity strengthens coherence.

Reflect. 

Do current teams still align with the work the system needs to do?  

What’s in a Name?

Try not to get hung up on the name of a team. Team names are labels and do not guarantee coherence. Starting with responsibilities instead of structures reduces confusion about:

• Who owns what work
• Where decisions are made
• How communication flows

Effective systems clarify the buckets of work that must be done:

• Monitoring system health
• Responding to individual student needs
• Strengthening Tier 1 instruction
• Designing professional learning
• Evaluating implementation fidelity
• Communicating decisions across levels

Leaders can design team structures that are fit for purpose rather than the other way around. Single teams can serve multiple purposes or a single purpose. The key is that it is both well-defined and understood within the system. Check out this Linked Teaming Map + Team Inventory & Feedback Loop Builder to help build the structure and account for the feedback loops that are necessary to ensure team health. Team names are labels. They do not guarantee alignment.

Leadership’s Role in Sustaining Coherence

What ultimately determines whether a system moves from moments to momentum is not the presence of strong teams, but leadership that designs coherence that lasts. Fixsen and colleagues (2005) remind us that effective implementation requires both fidelity and adaptation. Leaders must attend to structure, not just tasks. Leadership is not about attending every meeting.
It is about:

• Clarifying purpose
• Defining responsibilities
• Protecting feedback loops
• Ensuring information reliably leads to action

Fixsen et al. (2005) remind us that effective implementation requires both fidelity and adaptation. When leaders are able to attend to coherence, rather than tasks, teams are empowered to move beyond isolated excellence and begin to generate sustained improvement – not through more meetings, but through clearer responsibility, stronger feedback loops, and leadership that sees the whole system. 

Reflect. Connect. Grow.

Reflect (Sense-Making): 
Where has fragmentation become “just the way we do business”?

Connect (Systems Awareness): 
How do staff perceive the functionality of feedback loops, especially decision-making pathways?

Grow (Intentional Direction): 
What responsibilities should be clarified, redesigned, or released to increase coherence?

Looking Ahead: From Teaming to Data

Throughout this January series, we have built the infrastructure for sustainable leadership:

• Entry 1: What makes a team actually function
• Entry 2: Clarity as equity
• Entry 3: Psychological safety as daily practice
• Entry 4: Norms as living agreements

This entry links it all together. Because once leaders map:

• Buckets of work
• Decision pathways
• Feedback loops

The next natural question emerges: What information should be central to every meeting? As we move into February, our Learning Entries will shift toward data, not as compliance, but as coherence. A mentor once told me that data should be central to every meeting. The most productive meetings I’ve experienced reflected that truth. Connect with us as you strengthen your teams. Let’s explore how data can illuminate, and not overwhelm, the powerful work happening every day in our schools.

References

Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to improve: How America’s schools can get better at getting better. Harvard Education Press.

Fixsen, D. L., Naoom, S. F., Blase, K. A., Friedman, R. M., & Wallace, F. (2005). Implementation research: A synthesis of the literature. University of South Florida.

Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Salas, E., Reyes, D. L., & McDaniel, S. H. (2018). The science of teamwork: Progress, reflections, and the road ahead. American Psychologist, 73(4), 593–600.

Wageman, R., Hackman, J. R., & Lehman, E. (2005). Team diagnostic survey: Development of an instrument. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 41(4), 373–398.

About the Author

This learning entry was written by a leader who models the practices shared throughout this series. Erin Potter is a school psychologist by training and a systems coach with over 15 years of experience supporting schools in building effective, sustainable multi-tiered systems of support. She currently serves in a state-level leadership role and continues her journey impacting education through Making Champions of Change. Check out her full Leader and Learner Profile!