Case story
Research Values are Team Values: a Way of Working
The Collaborative Research on Empowerment and Wellbeing (CREW) team in far north Queensland focuses on building the capacity of communities and primary health care centres to provide everyday support for social and emotional wellbeing, as well as culturally appropriate and accessible mental health services. The team works with many Indigenous community-controlled, government and other non-government organisations, and university collaborators. It has joint leadership of the Empowerment Research Program with James Cook University.
The team writes about team values, relationships and processes.
Our team values come from a number of important qualities – Honesty, Integrity, Pride, Respect, Love and Laughter…
From its beginnings, the CREW team has operated mainly on a collective leadership basis. Each member of the team has been encouraged to consider their contribution to the team’s direction and way of working to be that of a uniquely valued leader. Each individual brings knowledge, experience, skills and perspectives into the complex work and linkages the team has built. This mechanism has served the team well, is consistent with a group empowerment philosophy and is highly valued by the entire CREW team.
A Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework is used as the basis for working together, setting our strategic directions as well as working out difficulties, conflicts and moving forward together. Regular PAR discussions occur with 4 main questions following identification of what the situation is:
1. What have been the highlights?
2. What have been the challenges?
3. What did we learn?
4. Where to next?
Always starting with positive stories and experiences, talking about some of the challenges that made situations not so easy and then of course, asking what did we learn and what will we do to improve for next time.
Through this process, the team gains an understanding of each others feelings and emotions, creating safe spaces and trust within the group. It also allows us to move forward without holding to resentment and eliminates negative energy within the group.
Here are some quotes from our team:
Usually when there is tension in the group or someone senses an individual is displaying signs of stress or slackness, a team member will call a PAR session. For me, this process is very cleansing, it allows me to talk about the stresses in my job or even in my life and together with the rest of my team and the support that they provide in that particular safe space, I am able to come up with solutions for my stress and move forward. When this occurs, I am then able to get back in and do my job to the best of my ability. We are a deadly team and I look forward to going to work everyday!
Using the PAR framework within our team has been very beneficial to me both professionally and personally. Working in such a safe space gives me the confidence to go outside my comfort zone and face the challenges associated with this kind of research. I feel that I have grown since I’ve started working with these great people and all the credit is to the sharing of knowledge and support that occurs.