Why team development?
In the modern workplace, nobody works in a bubble – the capacity to work well in a team is an essential skill. And yet not every team works well or reaches its potential. Indeed, some teams face problems that impact performance, cohesion, relationships and wellbeing. This can frustrate team leaders, impact team members’ motivation and performance, and slow down progress.
Our approach to team development brings the science of psychology to life for team members, providing the insights and skills they need to foster mutual awareness, boost cooperation and facilitate team effectiveness.
What is team development?
Team development includes all the intentional activities that contribute to team effectiveness, communication, collaboration and performance. This includes work to boost mutual understanding and awareness, flexibility of working style, alignment with working processes and values, and clarification of mission and objectives.
The phrase ‘team development’ can bring back unpleasant memories of uncomfortable ‘trust-building’ exercises, over-sharing of personal information and inappropriately-chosen outdoor pursuits. We take a very different approach.
When we work with a team, we have the following goals in mind:
- Building individual and collective self-awareness
- Building interpersonal trust and collective psychological safety
- Identifying what works and what needs to change
- Getting commitment for action and setting out next steps
Regardless of the topic at hand, it’s key that team members feel they’re working with someone professional and experienced and you can be sure that our facilitators have years of experience working with teams across industries and continents.
Our workshops don’t involve running building rafts or running around muddy fields – although that can be fun! Instead we design workshops that focus on working style, interpersonal support and learning more about each other.
They are definitely fun, and nobody gets wet!
What's included?
1.
We start by working with our clients to identify the core aims and objectives of the team development session, learn more about the team's organisational context, and recent past.
2.
We then agree some of the practicalities like location for the workshop, duration and resources required.
3.
After this, we design an interactive session that mixes presentation of concepts and skills, practical exploration of the topics, application of the skills, discussion and agreement of next steps and a commitment to action.
4.
We follow-up by digitally sharing any resources used in the workshop, in addition to any resources requested by the team to develop their understanding.
5.
We can also schedule a follow-up online session to check in on progress, answer outstanding questions and provide a level of accountability to support action!
Who can benefit from team development?
The important thing to understand about team development is that it needs to be based on the team’s needs and context. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for team development, but some of the contexts in which we support teams include:
- Newly-formed teams, where the need is about building trust and good working relationships.
- Teams that have emerged from a re-organisation, where the focus is on clarifying a new purpose, mission or focus.
- Teams undergoing change, where the focus is on maintaining focus, collaboration and performance during the change process.
- Teams where wellbeing has been an issue, either due to overwhelm, stress, or change, where the focus is on rebuilding resilience and a sustainable approach to work.
- Senior leadership teams, where the focus is on building effective relationships and setting a direction for the organisation.
- Geographically remote teams, where the focus is on agreeing ways of working to remove distance as an obstacle to collaboration and effectiveness.
Client success stories
We asked Richard to design and run a team development away day, in preparation for an upcoming organisational change. Richard spent time getting to know and understand our requirements, interviewed key senior team members and demonstrated an empathy for our organisational context. He designed a workshop that ensured everyone contributed, allowed for open and challenging debate and helped us focus on the actionable changes we’d like to make as a team. We found the session to be extremely valuable and I would be very happy to recommend Richard to any organisation looking for a professionally facilitated team workshop.