TEAM DEVELOPMENT

Overview

Today’s modern work environment can be quite dynamic, and at times exhausting. Therefore our approach seeks to not only increases a team’s collective ability to address the challenges they face but also fortify them energetically. People report feeling an increased sense of growth and renewal in their work following our engagements. They leave feeling refreshed and better equipped to manage the increasingly complex and dynamic circumstances facing their organization.

What’s the Dream?

Team development is a deliberate and intentional partnership that promotes growth and change. We start by helping clients identify and pursue their team’s dream. “What is your team’s compelling purpose?” is often asked early in an engagement, as is the provocative question “From the perspective of your key stakeholders, who do you all need to become?”. In all our development activities, we take both an “outside-in” and “inside-out” approach. Such strategies help teams advance to the next stage of their evolution.

What’s the Plan?

Teams actualize their dreams by formulating concrete, down-to-earth action plans. We help them get clear about their collective strengths and the opportunities for change that lay before them. Plans also identify small, daily behaviors that if enacted, over time add up to meaningful change. Often our engagements also involve our offering the team mini skill-building modules, useful books and diagnostic tools. Overall, you can count on us to create a thoughtful, high quality experience to promote a team’s development.

What’s the Process?

Our team development process has six steps. Overall, the approach can be summarized as “data-driven” and “engaging.” It has been our experience that the development of the team leader goes hand-in-hand with the development of the team. Therefore, we offer 1-on-1 coaching to the leader, particularly before a team (re)launch event, as part of our team development initiative. We also include bespoke skill-building modules to target particular developmental areas when necessary.

TEAM

Development Process

In this section we describe the specific process we use to create tailored teambuilding programs. This process is illustrated by the 6-box figure below. It begins with the initial contact between the team lead and the C Global consultant. All of our tailored team programs include a combination of learning elements, leverage data and leading edge assessment tools, and real time exploration of team dynamics.

Team Development Process

1

MEETING & INTRO

2

DATA COLLECTION
& ASSESSMENT

3

DESIGN

4

FACILITATION OF THE PROGRAM

5

LEADER FOLLOW-UP

6

TEAM FOLLOW UP
(3-6 months)

TEAM

Coaching Tools

Leaders today need to learn how to transform their organizations from “top-down” hierarchical structures into “flatter” agile organizations, or risk extinction. Realizing this transformation requires a shift from focusing on developing “heroic” individual leaders to teams. In other words, coaches need to know how to coach leaders in developing strong teams. The best-researched and validated instrument available today to diagnose the effectiveness of a team is the Team Diagnostic Survey (TDS). The TDS, created by Harvard professors Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman, identifies six factors that account for 80% of the variance in team performance. It is important for external and internal coaches to be familiar with these six factors, so that they can coach and advise executives on why their teams are not achieving the results they seek. Without this information, coaches and leaders may be seduced into discussing group dynamics and personality conflicts, rather than focusing on what may be a “structural” problem with the way the team is designed.

C Global consultants have been trained personally by Dr. Ruth Wageman in the TDS, and can coach teams using the six factors. They also have been trained in other team coaching methodologies such as Team Advantage, which is detailed below.

Team Advantage Methodology

EXAMPLE

A major division in a large organization embarked on an ambitious journey to explore realignment using an “Agile” team coaching methodology. Four meetings over the course of nine weeks were split up into three “sprints”. Each sprint involved identification of strategic drivers and tasks for the team. At the end of every sprint the team reported out the “points” they achieved, and engaged in a retrospective conversation to enhance their capacity to perform even better during the following sprint. As a result, the team achieved progressively higher scores during every sprint. They also maintained high team morale despite the tremendously sensitive challenge they were facing. By the end of the process a comprehensive recommendations report was authored based on 30+ interviews conducted by the team. The Chief Information Officer stated the results “Vastly exceeded his expectations.

Research has shown that employees learn best through doing and while having fun. We deploy a “game method” that leverages the principles of sport and action learning—known to yield significant results while improving the way teams work. Two coaches guide a team (between 5 to 15 people) to achieve an extraordinary goal that can be directly tied to a key business objective. The time frame is 16 weeks. A launch sequence of two three-hour events will orient the team to the “game” and help the participants develop a “playbook.” Individual coaching will occur with the team leader throughout the engagement, and 12 weekly 60-minute coaching calls (virtual or telephone) ensure accountability and progress on the ‘playbook’ as well as to continue the team’s learning. The project ends with a team celebration of individual and collective accomplishments.

A strength of Team Advantage is its impact on employee engagement. Employees learn and have fun while delivering a concrete, meaningful achievement to the organization. Teams are often transformed by the experience and can later use what they learned to replicate the process on their own. In other words, an important outcome of this program is that it builds the capacity of managers to coach their own team towards high performance and also for teams to have a shared approach to teaming.

Is C Global a “Good Fit”?

Trust is the cornerstone for all productive coaching and consulting relationships. You can count on us to be personal, direct, and discrete when discussing the challenges you and your organization are facing. To see if C Global’s approach fits with your organization’s needs, we suggest scheduling a free 30-minute “good fit” conversation.