I have spend the better part of the past ten years building on how I encourage my team to take ownership of their environment. It is constantly envolved as I continued my professional development and continued to grow as a leader.
I have lead senior educators and more junior educators as well as trainee's, new to early childhood education. However, I found that the more approachable I was, the more I listened to their ideas, the more ownership each would take in the service and the environment.
It can be as simple as approaching the lead educators, provide cover on the floor so they can review individual children and map out behaviour strategies. Showing that I value and see them as the experts in their environment.
It could be a trainee coming of a practial placement that approaches me and shared that she, and two other trainees were reflecting on face washers and how they go through a lot of wipes on days that it's a messy lunch and share how anothe service used face washers.
I could quickly take over and say great idea and jump straight in or I can encourage them to do a bit of research and collaboration with the rest of the team to find an effective way they will use face washers.
1. What policies do we have that say howthey are to be laundered to ensure we are following our procedures?
2. Talk with each educator and let me know the outcome of these conversations.
3. How they are going to ensure that the laundry is done on time every day and not left for the late people to be always responsible for doing as they are busy already in other cleaning and packing
away.
These two examples are great, practical ways to share ownership throughout the team.
How do you build a sense of ownership within your team?