Team Assessment and Teambuilding
An increasing number of organizations are emphasizing the use of teams, particularly leadership teams, to help them better respond to the needs of customers and employees. When properly formed, teams can provide amazing benefits to most organizations through the synergies that occur when they are high functioning. Yet, some organizations make the mistake of believing that simply assigning people to a group is all that is necessary to create a high performing team.
Leap Advocates offers organization development consulting services to help work teams improve their ability to produce outstanding results, increase their interpersonal effectiveness and enhancing team relationships.
Challenges
Many clients have identified the following challenges associated with team performance:
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Newly formed teams that are tentative and not high performing.
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Dysfunctional behaviors the block a team from achieving its goals including unresolved conflict that periodically surfaces but does not get addressed.
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Lack of alignment or role clarity among team members resulting in conflict and mediocre results at excessive costs.
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Unsustainable performance among well-established teams that seem to be "burning out".
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Lack of clarity about goals and direction.
Our Approach
While every team is different, we use a multi-phase approach to helping improve overall team effectiveness:
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Assessment to determine the current level of functioning for the team in the form of one-on-one interviews and quantitative surveys.
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Feedback to the team leader on the assessment results in order to build change leadership.
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Agenda design and engagement to build support for the team building activity.
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Facilitation of the team building retreat that includes action planning and next steps.
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Evaluation of impact through post-retreat data collection and reflection on results achieved.
Benefits and Outcomes
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Greater alignment on the team's purpose, direction and goals.
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Enhanced productivity and less non-value added conflict as a result of clearer norms guiding the behavior of team members.
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Greater sense of trust resulting in more openness, enhanced creativity, and more productive debate.
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Increased enthusiasm and alignment with the team vision and direction.
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Accelerated evolution of the team to become more high performing sooner, rather than getting stuck in earlier stages of team development .
Illustrative Client Vignette
Background
The CEO of a large seaport was interested in a 3 day team building retreat for a newly established leadership team of 7 direct reports. Half of the individuals in the group were new to the organization.
Approach
We worked with the client to conduct assessment, feedback, retreat design, facilitaiton, evaluation and follow-up. First, each team member was interviewed and asked to complete a team survey. Once the the data was collected, it was summarized and shared with the CEO for discussion in combination with a draft retreat design. The retreat design was then shared with the entire leadership team for input. Participants was asked to complete pre-work activity and reading prior to the retreat.
During the retreat, the organizational history was reviewed, as well as the team vision and results of the data collection activity. New ground rules or norms were established to support the team. The retreat also addressed the organizational strategic plan and key strategic priorities were identified. Subsequent to the retreat, evaluation data was collected and used to guide the design of a follow-up one day retreat several months later.
Results
As a result of the retreat, the team developed a greater sense of trust of each other, improved focus as a result of identifying key strategic priorities, and a clearly defined action plan for moving key priorities forward.
Relevant Qualifications
Our affiliated consultants bring a variety of educational and
organizational consulting experience that make us
well suited to consult with organizations. In particular, Kevin
Nourse brings the following qualifications
to his work as a team building facilitator:
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"Big 5" consulting and human resources experience with PricewaterhouseCoopers
Consulting.
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MA degree in Human Resource Development; MA degree in Human and Organization Systems.
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Currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program
at the Fielding Graduate Institute in Human
and Organization Development.
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Experience designing and facilitating a 2 day off-site team retreat for the loan servicing function of a financial services organization.
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Experience designing and facilitating a 1 day off-site team retreat for the senior leadership team of a large trade association.
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Experience designing and facilitating a 1 day retreat for a marketing team in a large Fortune 100 pharmaceutical.
Selected Organizational Client List
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American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA)
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Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC)
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AstraZeneca
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NCB, FSB
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Oehm, van Sweden Associates Inc.
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Port of Los Angeles
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US Patents and Trademarks Office
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US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
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Waste Management Inc.
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