Educators and supervisors in a daycare center are particularly stressed. Teamwork is an important success factor that is often neglected. Well then - Echometer is a spin-off of the psychological faculty of the University of Münster and supports teams in developing themselves sustainably.

Children, as lovely as they are, can be damned exhausting. As an educator, it is difficult to keep your head clear in everyday daycare life. And it gets even harder if the educator team doesn't work. Often, constant high levels of stress create tensions between the educators, which can be solved better or worse. Management may be able to help with such agreements.

In general, it is extremely important that you build a team of educators that every team member can rely on and in which everyone supports each other - classic team development (not always through training) just in the daycare. In this article we will show you how you can create good team hygiene and, moreover, one lasting change Promotes team development.

Team development in the daycare - create the basis through the retro method

Do kindergarten educators (or kindergarten educators) dare to address problems openly? Do team members report when they are overloaded? It depends on the management - or it depends largely on the psychological (i.e. perceived) security in the daycare team. 

If this basis is created, problems are addressed openly and you work as a team in a beneficial way and together to find solutions. If psychological security is again not given, one speaks behind the back of the other - more about each other than instead of each other. 

A tip to get better here: Always criticize yourself in the first step - what could you have done differently in a situation? If you openly discuss your behavior with the team, there is a good chance that the others will also open up - which by definition is a first step in the right direction.

Make yourself clear: Everyone in the team is either part of the problem or part of the solution - encourage everyone to become part of the solution.

Creating sustainability through a routine

So that the effect of a clarifying conversation in the team does not fizzle out, you as a day care team should create a space for you to talk about the cooperation regularly. In modern companies, teams use so-called “retrospectives” as a method, in which teams have the space to reflect on how the collaboration went. Exemplary questions for appropriately designed retrospectives can be:

• What went particularly well in the last week?
• What went not so well?
• What are you thankful for?
• What would you have wished for?

Our tip: You do not need any further training (nor any specialist work) as a basis - do your own daycare retrospectives with all educators! Think about which questions you want to reflect on regularly and take the time to make the retrospective (in short: retro) routine for the whole team. The prerequisite for this is, of course, that the management is behind it. 

It is important to note that from retro to retro you try to improve yourself in small steps in order to reach your goal more quickly in the end - which means that by definition you are faster at the end! This is illustrated by the following picture:

Team development daycare: how we can help

You want to try out retros, promote your cooperation, but don't know exactly how? Then we can help you with the conception. Echometer is one Spin-off of the psychological faculty the University of Münster. We have developed a tool for the retro method that helps teams to develop themselves sustainably with the help of retrospectives. 

Our “digital” team coach asks specific questions to the team, which anonymously evaluates the questions digitally. The results of this are then discussed in the retrospectives, i.e. joint team workshops (approximately every two weeks). The moderation of the retrospective is supported by our tool, so that the internal arrangements are easy for you.

What happens with it? Due to the special conception of the method, team development, communication and the well-being of the employees are regularly discussed, which makes the team feel valued - and there is a continuous improvement process that makes daycare life (or maybe also kindergarten life) easier and that promotes well-being.

That sounds interesting to you? Then sign up for a non-binding online demo a, we'll show you the tool - and if you want, we'll start with a free trial month.