Faculty Career Development Series

Description

How can your team accelerate its effectiveness in working together to achieve your shared goals? In this session, we will examine three key “Enabling Conditions” from the Six Conditions for Team Effectiveness Framework:

1. Sound Structure/Work Design,
2. Supportive Context/Organizational Support, and
3. Team Coaching.

At the end of this session, you will have a clearer idea of how each of these enabling conditions contributes to team development and effectiveness, as well as practical ways to make improvements.

This is the third session of the 2025–2026 Team Science Seminar Series. Scroll down to register!

Learning Objectives

At the end of the session, participants will be able to:

1.  Define the three enabling conditions of team effectiveness from the Six Conditions Framework.
2. Assess your team’s enabling conditions.
3. Identify 2–3 practical strategies to improve your team’s enabling conditions

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About the Speakers

Brenda K. Zierler, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Informatics in the University of Washington (UW) School of Nursing and co-lead of the ITHS Team Science Module. Dr. Zierler conducts interdisciplinary research that advances the fields of interprofessional collaborative practice, team science, implementation science, and quality improvement to improve team and patient outcomes. Dr. Zierler teaches Team Science and Leadership in the PhD program and Quality Improvement, Patient Safety and Informatics in the undergraduate nursing program. Her primary appointment is in the UW School of Nursing but she holds three adjunct appointments – two in the UW School of Medicine (Department of Surgery, Division of Vascular Surgery & Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education) and one in the UW School of Public Health (Department of Health Systems and Population Health).

Erin Abu-Rish Blakeney, PhD, RN, is a co-lead of the ITHS Team Science Module and Research Associate Professor in the Department of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Informatics at the UW School of Nursing. Dr. Blakeney’s program of research focuses on how teams work together and how their teamwork influences the production of new knowledge and translation of research into practice along the entire classroom to bench to bedside spectrum. She has nearly 15 years of experience developing, implementing, and evaluating team approaches to interdisciplinary education, healthcare, and research.

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Description

How can you leverage and build on the six conditions (a real team, a compelling purpose, the right people, an enabling structure, a supportive organizational context, and expert coaching) in the Team Effectiveness Conditions Framework to support your team as a collaborative leader?  The six team conditions of the Team Effectiveness Conditions Framework focuses on aspects of your team that are modifiable predictors associated with team effectiveness; in this session we will build on this framework by focusing on ways to support yourself and your team at any stage of development.  

This is the fourth session of the 2025–2026 Team Science Seminar Series. Scroll down to register!

Learning Objectives

At the end of the session, participants will be able to:

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About the Speakers

Erin Abu-Rish Blakeney, PhD, RN, is a co-lead of the ITHS Team Science Module and Research Associate Professor in the Department of Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Informatics at the UW School of Nursing. Dr. Blakeney’s program of research focuses on how teams work together and how their teamwork influences the production of new knowledge and translation of research into practice along the entire classroom to bench to bedside spectrum. She has nearly 15 years of experience developing, implementing, and evaluating team approaches to interdisciplinary education, healthcare, and research.

Jennifer Sprecher is Director of Strategy Development and Deployment with the School of Nursing. Ms. Sprecher works with organizations to achieve excellence through Strategy development, Lean Project Management, balanced scorecards, change management, benchmarking, team problem solving, team and leadership coaching.

Ms. Sprecher is a strong team facilitator, called upon to facilitate high-level teams where interaction and reaching objectives are critical. Sample facilitations include strategic planning, building collaborations, designing and developing new services, products and processes, implementing process improvements, implementing research studies and creating new research centers. She has worked extensively in the past few years within the arena of team science and applying team concepts to innovative development and research teams.

Before the UW School of Nursing, Ms. Sprecher focused exclusively on health research in the Institute of Translational Health Sciences, also within the University of WA. Prior to the UW, she spent 7 years as Executive Director of the Washington State Quality Award (WSQA), a Baldrige-based non-profit organization. With a background in Industrial Engineering, Ms. Sprecher has been working with process improvement for over 25 years using continuous process improvement methods including Lean, Lean-Sigma, Plan Do Check Act and 6S (5S workplace organization combined with Safety) and Total Quality Management.

Ms. Sprecher has a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering, a Master’s of Science in Management Systems, is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and an International Coaching Federation ACC certified Leadership Coach.

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