THE TRAINING PRACTICE | 04 472 6267 | OFFICE@TRAININGPRACTICE.CO.NZ
Team development
Great teams create great results. They provide psychological safety and ensure every team member can have a voice
Great teams create great results. They provide psychological safety and ensure every team member can have a voice.
At the heart of great teams is individual team member self-awareness, collective team unity, and honest and open dialogue. We draw on a wide variety of different approaches to ensure you can successfully develop individual team members and your overall team.
We work with you to build teams from scratch, rejuvenate teams, and get teams engaged for the conversations they need to have.
Build great teams
Teams need to work out their hardware: agreeing their challenge, allocating tasks, and recognising achievements, failures and the things that have stalled. This is the what and when.
But the software is vital: agreeing purpose, creating psychological safety, and truly collaborating.
We don’t advocate a single model to build great teams. Two models that we frequently use are Lencioni’s five team dysfunctions and Winter’s five shares.
​
Lencioni’s five dysfunctions
-
Lack of trust
-
Fear of conflict
-
Lack of commitment
-
Lack of accountability
-
No clear results
Winter’s five team shares
-
Share the big picture
-
Share the reality
-
Share the air
-
Share the load
-
Share the wins and losses
These models are great foundations, but they are just the start. Great teams need great team conversations. And these may be triggered by an assessment, activities or specific prompts.
If you are working in an agile environment, talk to us about building an agile team.
Be a great team member
Great team members know themselves well and also know how to manage and moderate themselves. They recognise their social presence, reputation and how they affect others. They’re not sole operators. They understand others’ strengths and how to work well with, and influence, different styles and mindsets.
Great team members recognise their own contribution and reflect on their performance. They acknowledge their mistakes and apologise if needed. They can safely raise sensitive issues and don’t let things fester. They’re also tenacious enough to hold others accountable. They really listen. And they can judge when to subordinate their agenda for the good of the team.
Teaming
Team members need to work in all sorts of teams, with all sorts of people, with all sorts of agendas, and in all sorts of roles. That’s a big ask—and yet it’s what’s needed in complex environments. That’s teaming.
Teaming is about people working collaboratively, when boundaries are soft, team membership is fluid and uncertainty is high. Team members need a high degree of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Teaming means respecting others, signing up for different team structures and ways of working, and managing conflicts.
Leading remote teams
Trust, and open and honest communication, are at the heart of leading successful remote teams. Setting and managing expectations, building relationships (spending time on the software) and agreeing the hardware (tasks and direction) are both critical. Leaders need to set ground rules and create predictability for how they lead and how they communicate.
Are all team members remote or just some? Either group may feel disadvantaged for different reasons. So it is vital to create and maintain an open and collaborative environment.
Our latest thinking on team development
Kristen Gyorgak
Event
22 February 2024
Tea & Toast: Build better habits
For many of us the New Year means new habits...or at least -- we tell ourselves that we'll develop new habits and then fail. How can we build atomic habits that help us, and how do we break the bad habits that are unhelpful? Join Kristen for our first Tea & Toast in 2024 to reflect on this, and more.