The Team Effectiveness Program:
Scaling your Teams and Organization for Growth
This program is a proven methodology for building high performance teams. It consists of a sequence of activities that chart the course to maximum effectiveness.
All teams need to communicate effectively. Our 4 Block Communication Model is a simple and proven approach for having effective meetings and interactions. It provides a common language for teams to manage the complexity of group dynamics during more challenging team interactions in sample areas such as:
- Visioning
- Strategic Planning
- Complex Problem Solving
- Difficult Conversations (one on one and in groups)
- The Team Development program is available for individual teams or larger organization-wide implementation.
Team Development
High functioning teams are disciplined in developing strong relationships and results. We provide a simple process for helping teams work through the natural phases of development in the appropriate sequence:
Relationships of Trust First – Teams need to establish a baseline of trust in order to effectively tap into each person’s strengths. This requires a focused and intentional approach to understanding who is on the team, what matters most to them, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to best collaborate and communicate with each other. We fast-track this process by introducing simple tools for understanding personality differences that foster healthy and productive relationships.
Once this baseline of trust is developed, teams and individuals can raise difficult issues directly and openly so that inevitable conflicts are surfaced and resolved in a positive way. Many teams who do not make it through this first stage of relationship building will experience turf-ism, gaps and redundancies in work, poor decision-making, or aggressive behavior that damages relationships and effective communication.
Quality Agreements – With strong relationships and open communication in place, teams make real agreements around shared objectives, decision-making rights, and accountability. Contrast this to a typical top driven Management By Objective (MBO) process that becomes an exercise in writing and tracking information that does not guide the achievement of aligned results.
Quality Results – As teams execute on quality agreements, they begin to achieve sustainable results and are able to move more quickly as they maintain open communication on progress. This virtuous cycle of respect, truth-telling, explicit agreement making and ongoing communication allow teams to stay nimble and focused as they navigate through the challenges of hitting their goals.
The goal of the Team Development process has three parts:
- To strengthen existing and required capabilities necessary to conduct the business of the organization
- To minimize or eliminate performance barriers that surface in the form of team conflicts, interpersonal differences, and communication breakdowns
- To serve as an example of a high performing team, and as a building block in the process of creating a high performance culture
