I honestly believe that in this day and age of information ubiquity and nanosecond change, teamwork remains the one sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped. Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Do you lead a team that has the expertise to accomplish great things, but is stalled due to communication missteps and misunderstandings? If so, you are not alone.
Too often team conflict and unhealthy team dynamics occur simply because people don’t understand each other. Being human means it’s sometimes hard to understand and work with people that are different from us. Yet, effective teamwork requires mutual understanding and effortless communication.
Team members need to understand each other – the way their teammates think, their values, their drive and aims, their strengths and blind spots, and the why behind their behaviors. With awareness, team members can develop an appreciation of differences, learn to pull back misplaced negative thoughts, and more readily leverage differences for team strength.
But great teamwork is a process which develops over time. As the renowned organizational consultant, Patrick Lencioni has said, “…more than anything else, teamwork comes down to courage and persistence.”
It takes time to create a high performing team. Picking the right people for a team is a start, but high performance requires team members to devote consistent and conscious effort to two distinct areas of teaming: Work Processes and Interpersonal Dynamics – we help you to implement the Healthy side of teaming.
Psychological safety is desired by most team members, but it is difficult to achieve. Teams are made up of individuals who have different talents, perspectives, and work styles, which if not mutually understood, lead to misunderstanding, poor communication, lack of trust and a slowdown in work place productivity impacting the bottom line.
Timothy Clark, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety
We partner with key stakeholders to pick the right tools and and team assessment processes to map a plan for team development that opens interpersonal awareness, builds trust and helps teams to pinpoint their strengths and gaps. Within the context of larger organizational goals, your team will realize healthy interpersonal dynamics, including:
- Building interpersonal trust
- Appreciation, respect and leveraging of differences
- Open and honest communication
- Strategies and techniques for idea generation
- Agreed upon behavioral norms
- Healthy debate and airing of differences
With healthy interpersonal dynamics and a team culture of trust, we can help you drive forward with more effective teamwork including:
- Clarity of team roles and responsibilities
- Team alignment around vision and mission
- Accountability for behavior and results
- Conflict management and resolution
- Collaborative problem sovling
- Productive meeting management
- Strategies for team development