The intent of this organizational leadership project was to explore how the teams at Jewish Family Service Calgary (JFSC) could meet the organizational goal of providing comprehensive care to individuals and families and to address client issues simultaneously to the best of the ability of the agency and its teams (Jewish Family Service Calgary [JFSC], 2009b), through the practices of teamwork and collaborative capacity. The JFSC is a team-based, charitable, nonprofit organization that functions as a broadly-based social support and safety net to families and individuals in need (JFSC, 2009b). Guided by its mission to strengthen the community by helping individuals and families in need (JFSC, 2009e), the teams at JFSC strive to meet their goal, which has not changed in over 49 years.
Teamwork and collaborative capacity have emerged as important facilitators for the JFSC teams to enhance their current team-based framework. Mathieu and Rapp (2009) emphasized that teamwork is a set of actions and behaviours that contribute to a team‘s ability to achieve a specific, shared, and valued organizational goal. DeChurch and Mesmer-Magnus (2010) agreed, and added that the success of teamwork hinges on collaborative capacity (i.e., how individual members of a team enhance each other‘s performance and productivity by sharing resources and by exchanging knowledge and information for the mutual benefit of the team and organization). To achieve their organizational goal, the JFSC teams needed to identify their strengths and explore opportunities to build upon existing teamwork and collaborative capacity.
My interest in the JFSC organization arose from my involvement as a sponsor since 2004. Curious to learn how the JFSC organization meets its organizational goal in a time of financial constraint, I contacted their Executive Director and discovered that we have a mutual