The power of a team is manifest when its impact is greater than the sum of the impact of its individual members. This impact can be anywhere from changing the world to leading an organisation to implementing a project. This impact happens when the team has a shared enunciated purpose that has meaning for the entire team, when this purpose resonates with each member of the team, when each member is able to see the value and impact the team’s work can have, and when this impact is deeply aligned to the individuals values and aspirations. It is then that magic happens.
The first step in my work with teams is to understand the expectations stakeholders have of the team, and how well the team is currently meeting those expectations. This understanding takes the form of conversations with supervisors, peer groups, internal (and maybe external) customers, suppliers, direct reports, and most importantly, team members.
The program design is dependent on the outcome of these conversations. However, given that change takes time, the design is always a multi-intervention program spread out over a number of months, maybe even over a year. The design approach depends on the team, its role, and expected program outcomes. We could take the route of team coaching, where I coach the team through its change journey. We could also take the route of using group projects as a means of change, where the group focuses its energy on organisational change projects as a means of moving towards its objective, or we could base the intervention on a team model, such as Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
Whichever route we take, we always begin with an intervention where the team enunciates its purpose and crafts its work charter. This takes the form of a two-day offsite (or, in the world of COVID, four sessions of four hours each over consecutive days online). In this session we work towards the team building deeper bonds of trust amongst itself, team members understanding themselves and enunciating their own purpose, and then coming together jointly to enunciate the teams purpose, areas of focus, desired culture, and means of measurement. The team charter that emerges at the end of this session is a number of things to the team. It is a source of pride and meaning around the work they have chosen to do. It is also the framework within which all the rest of our work happens. And, most importantly, it is the source of energy for the team in times of doubt or ambiguity, both of which we encounter multiple times on the road towards change.
Beyond this, the work with the team differs depending on the route taken, as described above. However, all designs include multiple team interventions at intervals of about 3 months, and other add-on interventions including one on one coaching, attending team meetings and giving feedback, shadowing the team in meetings etc. The overall objective is to reflect with the team on what has gone, learn from it, bring in external feedback as relevant, set out new actions, and move the cycle of learning forward.