Cultivating Teams

Team-based work structures provide agility, innovative thinking, and resilience for your business.

Yet, it’s tricky to move from work accomplished by individual contributors to team-based work processes. We make it work – with careful analysis, thoughtful planning, ingenuity, and a meticulous roll-out. We can’t get sloppy here.

For teams to fulfill their potential, leaders must shift in how they lead and manage. With our help, managers learn new team-focused ways to use the skills that helped them succeed in a more traditional environment .

We use the following proven tools, techniques, and processes to help you design and develop effective teams, team members and team leadership.

Team Building and Team Development

We know teams. We understand team behavior and team dynamics. We know how teams increase in maturity and productivity. We offer developmental tools and opportunities to accelerate productivity and optimal team and individual well-being. Through workshops, guided team processes, and coaching for teams and individuals, we launch and develop collaborative teams.

Shared Leadership and Team Leadership Development

Complex work teams can’t achieve the level of performance the business needs unless everyone knows when and how to step into leadership and how to share leadership with others. Leadership on a collaborative team differs from traditional command and control practices. It’s mission-focused, facilitative, collaborative, and inclusive. Every team member steps up to lead when the team calls for them to direct, guide or evaluate the work or how the work gets done.

We coach teams to foster shared leadership practices and provide training in collaborative leadership models. For more on sharing leadership, read Sharon’s article “So What is Shared Leadership Anyway” (download pdf: 125k).

Key Development Strategies

Management Development

Team-based organizations depend on integrated management, which means effective, well-prepared managers who understand how their roles have changed. Developing managers is a process, not an event (or a one-time workshop). We provide the framework and expertise so you can integrate coaching, mentoring, job rotation options, workflow analysis, and supervisory and manager training into a system that works for leading and managing teams.

Interpersonal Communication and Feedback

High performance relies on highly saturated, multi-channel communication. Creating productive working relationship flows from the ability to communicate effectively among team members and other individuals. We offer coaching, mentoring and training in all types of interpersonal communication and feedback skills.

Facilitation and Facilitation Training

We provide the experienced preparation and facilitation you need for critical, complex, or potentially combustible team meetings. We create a space in which large groups learn, think, and decide together, using a variety of methods, including Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry Summits, Participative Design, World Cafe, and other large group methods.

We provide training for team leaders and team members to get good at facilitating their own regular meetings.