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Looking back at the first-ever DrupalCon Teamwork and Leadership Workshop

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The Drupal Community Working Group (CWG), with support from the Drupal Association, organized and held the first-ever Teamwork and Leadership Workshop at DrupalCon Nashville on April 10, 2018. The goal of the three-hour workshop was to explore teamwork, leadership, and followership in the context of the Drupal community as well as to help provide support and resources for people in the Drupal community who work alongside others in teams and/or may find themselves in positions of responsibility or leadership. Additionally, we hoped to expand the base of people who can step into leadership positions in the Drupal community, and to help those who may already be in those positions be more effective.

The workshop was led by Drupal Association board chair Adam Goodman, who generously donated his time. Adam is the head of Northwestern University’s Center for Leadership, and he works as an executive coach and advisor to senior executives and boards of directors at dozens of companies and organizations around the world. 

As part of the planning for the workshop, Adam asked us to enlist a number of facilitators to help with the various workshop exercises. In addition to three CWG members (Jordana Fung, George Demet, and Mike Anello), the following community members also facilitated: Donna Benjamin, Shyamala Rajaram, Gábor Hojtsy, Angie Byron, and Tiffany Farriss. The facilitators met with Adam prior to the workshop to understand what would be expected of them. 

We wanted to make sure that we invited a diverse range of people to the workshop who are doing awesome work with Drupal around the world, including those whose efforts may not be as well-known or recognized (yet).  We set an internal goal of at least 50% of attendees to be from populations historically underrepresented at DrupalCon, including those who self-identify as women, non-gender binary, people of color, and/or people who are not from Europe, the United States, or Canada.. To this end, prior to the public registration period, we sent out invitations to 64 community members, 75% of whom were from an under-represented cohort. We invited people who are involved in all aspects of the community including (but not limited to) event organizers, sprint organizers, project maintainers, as well as past and current Aaron Winborn Award nominees. At the workshop, there were a total of 50 attendees (there were a total of 60 seats available), with approximately 64% from underrepresented cohorts. 

Attendees were seated at round tables of approximately 10 people per table. The first half of the workshop was focused on large group exercises that focused on helping attendees think about what it meant to be a leader and a team member. We talked about keeping perspective as team members and not jumping to conclusions about each other's behaviors based on an often (extremely) limited set of data. The second half of the workshop focused on smaller group exercises in which individuals responded to various prompts and then discussed them as a small (table-sized) group. 

A few days after the workshop, we asked the attendees to complete an 11-question follow-up survey. Of the 50 attendees, we had 17 responses for a 33% response rate. We asked what their expectations were for the workshop; representative responses included:

I thought it would be a workshop on leadership, but I was surprised by the approach to the Drupal community.

Didn't know what to expect. So...none

The fact that we had multiple responses indicating that the expectations were not clear tells us that we need to do a better job in communicating exactly what the goals and activities of the workshop will be in the future. 

On a scale of 1-5, 73% of respondents indicated that the workshop met their expectations (via a rating of 4 or 5). 

We also asked respondents to share an insight from the workshop. Responses included:

Transition planning for responsibilities you take on and having a plan in place before even taking on the responsibility.

The need to know why each person on the team is present (their motivation) and the importance of unified movement toward a goal.

I hadn't written out what leadership looked like to me before, so I found that part of the exercise to be quite helpful.

The survey also found that the attendees found more value in the smaller group exercises than the large group exercises (81.3% vs. 60%), with 81.3% indicated they'd be interested in attending future similar workshops.

Many of the open ended responses indicated that some attendees were hoping for more practical, hands-on advice for specific situations. In addition, several of the responses felt that parts of the exercises felt rushed, and wished there was more time. Finally, several attendees commented on the appropriateness of some of the imagery used in one of the workshop exercises, for which the CWG made a public apology following the event. We have gone through all of the comments relating to aspects of the event that were considered negative or unhelpful and will take this into consideration on how we can improve the workshop for the future.

Overall, we feel the workshop was a success, and something that has been long overdue for the Drupal community. We've been discussing how we can make similar content available to everyone in the community, not just DrupalCon attendees. We're open to ideas for future workshops on these topics (and format), let us know if you have any ideas.
 

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