This course teaches managers and their employees the basic techniques necessary to transform traditional Command/Control work groups into bon fide work teams. It is the instructional part of any team building effort, where all players have to learn the basic techniques by which teams evolve, and the various roles and responsibilities each person must now assume.

Complete Course Description

PURPOSE OF THE COURSE: This course introduces leaders and their team members to a set of discrete skills, tools, and techniques which help people decide what team format is likely to work for them and how they can bring that work arrangement successfully into being. It shows them a set of activities and practices that reliably produce the spirit and outcomes that most people think about when they speak of “working together as a team.”

WHAT THE COURSE COVERS: This workshop covers the following topics:

1. How teams differ from other work groups: This unit demonstrates the key characteristics a team has to have to qualify as a team It shows the various formats a team can take, and provides ground rules for choosing one format over another.



2. The work of a team: A work group doesn’t become a team simply by proclaiming itself one. This unit demonstrates the continuing effort that transforms a random group of people into a cohesive working unit with an identifiable character and purpose which drives the group and which everybody owns.



3. Roles and styles: This unit is about the allocation of power, the setting of boundaries, and the taking of responsibility. It defines the duties of the team leader, the contributions of the team members, and the sensible limits around each.



4. How teams manage their meetings: If teams want to make sure that their energy doesn’t get dissipated through talk, their meetings must be razor sharp. This unit shows how meetings are organized and conducted such that their discussions constitute civilized discourse rather than win-lose power struggles and mindless debates.



5. How teams solve problems and make decisions: This unit demonstrates a quick and simply group problem-solving model, and the style of talk that tends to produce good outcomes and decisions.



6. How teams manage conflict and give feedback: This unit shows how effective teams manage differences in a way that doesn’t destroy the cohesion of the group. Feedback is a vital part of this process. Participants learn how to tell other players about the things they are doing that either help or hinder the team processes discussed above, and to do so in a way that is not devastating or threatening.



7. How teams develop trust: We spend a limited amount of time showing how teams treat each other with honesty and respect, the basic linchpins of trust. We spend more time confronting the three largest threats to trust: ambition, control, and driven Type-A behavior.



8. How Change tests a team’s competency and will: The true test of a team’s efforts is how it responds when some internal or external change upsets its carefully constructed apple cart. This unit shows how change is ideally introduced into a group and then successfully managed.



9. How team players make personal and group commitments: In this final modules, participants assess what they have learned, commit themselves to certain relevant activities, and then plan how they will measure and maintain a sense of progress.

• It is a one-day course.



• If it starts at 9:00AM, it typically concludes about 4:30, including an hour for lunch.



• The skills of this workshop are learned through active participation is group exercises, role plays, and other simulations.



• Participants receive a variety of relevant handouts and references during the day.



• The class is limited to 25 people.