Our travels took us to the beautiful island of Oahu to meet with some regional leaders and UBT co-leads. Their hospitality was outstanding and it is clear why Hawaii is called “paradise.”

The Hawaii region is the newest to join the Partnership and has the advantage of learning from the experience of other regions. In fact, some UBT consultants recently met with their colleagues in San Diego. Hawaii will have 18 percent of their partnership employees on UBTs or represented by UBTs by year’s end. By the end of 2011, the region plans to have 60 percent of their coalition represented staff on or represented by a UBT.

Sharing successful practices

We often hear from representative UBTs, that communicating with team members who are not at the UBT meetings can be challenging. Hawaii faces this same issue. Some represented teams post meeting minutes in the department, create a shared folder on Lotus Notes or provide a brief voicemail to update all members of the team. In some instances, everyone at a UBT meeting has a responsibility to meet with specific team members to catch them up and get their input for the next meeting. A goal is for everyone on a UBT to be involved in the decision-making process.

Evolving roles

We met four sets of UBT co-leads who described the change that occurs as UBTs develop. The union co-leads all spoke of feeling more ownership for their departments, more empowered to make suggestions for improvement, of being more excited to come to work every day. They said their relationships with their managers are more collegial now, as they take on a shared accountability for the success of the department. These experiences absolutely reflect the goals of unit-based teams. 

If you are a co-lead of a unit-based team, you should be experiencing the same changes. If not, it’s a good time to talk with your co-lead to figure out why not. The co-leads we met with recognized that these changing roles are not yet shared by all members of their teams, but they recognized this to be an opportunity for change.

Select your union co-lead

In Hawaii, the team members pick their union co-lead. This practice should be universal. When the team picks its union representative, there is trust by the team and accountability. Some regions continue to struggle with this process and hopefully can learn how to do this process successfully from regions like Hawaii.

All of these areas are part of team development. Progress along the Path to Performance is a process, not a one-time event.  It takes commitment and perseverance to continue to put the effort into making this work and accepting that there will be bumps in the road. 

We wish each of you a very happy Thanksgiving and want you to know that all of your efforts are appreciated by our members!