Team Developement
Client challenge
“Our senior management team are not delivering on their objectives. I need them to work with me as a cohesive unit toward a common goal.”
Our response
Norms get established quickly in teams and, once established are hard to change. Approaches that take teams out of their work context and into a different, exciting and challenging environment often fail to produce sustainable change when people return to work. What these approaches fail to realise is the extent to which context shapes behaviour.
Our approach
We believe that teams need to think and learn together as they engage in their day jobs. We use and teach a ‘systems orientated’ approach to team development.
Just some of the ways we might work with you
- Collecting data from team members and other stakeholders to identify what is getting in the way of progress
- Designing away days or workshops to introduce key concepts, create a forum for dialogue, explore experiences, build a shared vision, create strategies, plan actions and build support
- Telephone and email support between events to keep the momentum and stimulate discussion
- Coaching for the team leader
- Mapping the team’s communication patterns using SAVI ® (System for Analysing Verbal Interactions) and helping them shift to patterns that will help them achieve their goals
- Using a creative technique for resolving conflict
- Teaching the group to learn about team dynamics and the phases of group development.
Benefits of this approach
- Stops the blame game and teaches that we are active participants in creating the systems we are living in.
- Makes it easier to diagnose root causes and not waste time on irrelevant issues or issues that are beyond the groups’ capacity to deal with at the time.
- Behaviours of each phase are identifiable. Members can chart their progress and recognise their successes.
- Teaches leaders and members about group dynamics and emotional intelligence so that they can approach change with curiosity rather than with anxiety.
- It is a transparent process that depends for its success on the members learning to apply the principles themselves so that they quickly become self-facilitating rather than becoming dependent on external help.
- Conflicts are resolved and creativity released.
It is practical. Members learn as they work together to identify and achieve their goals.
To examine an associated case study read our
Team Development Case Study