Lanny Goodman

Organizations by definition, need people to work well together- new teams, established teams, and teams who need to work well with other teams.  Building teamwork can be a priority in a variety of organizational situations such as:

Building a more positive and healthy workplace climate or increasing morale in difficult times

Introducing new leadership, new ways of operating

Interdepartmental cooperation and collaboration

Integration/combination of various persons or departments

Fixing a stuck or problem team

Re-orient team dynamics or culture

Inspire commitment and effort

Increase skills and effectiveness

Overcoming resistance to change

Reward and recognition

Each of these rationale for teamwork require a different approach, emphasis and focus to achieve or correct, with the essential task being to influence or change human behavior for a more productive result.

Clarifying Teamwork goals and objectives. 

Organizational change, pressures, complaints and conflict will produce many tangible symptoms which demand some kind of intervention but can easily be misinterpreted.  Accurate diagnosis through teamwork assessment is the preferred way to create baseline metrics of as many as fifty specific attributes of teamwork from communication and problem solving styles to satisfaction with the team leader and achievement of the team's tasks and objectives. 

An anonymous self assessment works best, as with the Aquarius Training & Development Teamwork Assessment for Intact Work Groupsİ.  The power of the teamwork assessment process is not only the accurate identification of issues and challenges as the team themselves see them, but their prioritization and relative impact as well.  Team development interventions are then based upon specific targets which can be re-measured to confirm the effectiveness of team training and other interventions afterwards.

How To Do It: The art and science of experiential team building

As an abstraction that is often hard to articulate, teamwork rarely gets the attention is deserves as an essential element of organizational performance.  As a result, teamwork development efforts are often under pressure to solve group problems, teach new skills, integrate members, achieve growth and facilitate commitment - all in very short periods of time.  Today's economy demands a high return on investment when employees are taken off the job to focus on working better together. 

As validated by hundreds of thousands of experiences, the experiential learning approach to team development is the most effective way to build teamwork rapidly and efficiently.  When professionally designed, and artfully delivered, experiential team development programs provide the means to shift individual and group behaviors in powerful ways.

Just because a team is having an experience, doesn't mean that team development is happening.  The company picnic or company golf outing seldom create more than a relaxing, informal time together.  Experiential team development programs are designed to do much more.  Through a series of specifically structured activities and exercises, group discussions, facilitated processes and shared high energy experiences, teams can achieve significant growth.

Open Dialogue

Receptivity to change is often linked to creating a safe and tactful atmosphere that welcomes discussion of issues and problems objectively and constructively.  Addressing the water under the bridge, and shifting towards a willingness to move forward  can happen quickly with well structured experiential programs.  An offsite location, professional facilitation, unfamiliar exercises that promote inclusion of everyone, self assessment instruments and ample communication are all elements that promote openness and participation and help team members to take an active role and ultimately ownership of their own group development.

Group Process Awareness

By it's definition, experiential team learning is designed for participation by everyone on the team. Much of experiential team development involves the use of structured team problem solving and role playing exercises and simulations.   Unfamiliar tasks and setting help eliminate traditional positional influence within the group hierarchy, and encourage the group's collective instincts to emerge.  The group is encouraged to look at their performance objectively after each exercise, without the penalty factors of workplace performance. The group can quickly identify productive vs. unproductive team behaviors, draw conclusions about their behavior and the results of the exercise and see similarities between how they operated together in the exercise and similar behaviors at work.  The result is an increased self-awareness of the group's own team processes, and an increasing willingness to explore more effective and satisfying ways of working together.

Skills Building

Specific exercises are designed to provide the experience of introducing new team skills and to try them on for size in a non-threatening environment.  Teams experience a cause-effect relationship between the practice of each new skill and the different results they get from each exercise.  With teamwork pre-assessment specific skill development needs are built into multi-dimensional exercises that can include everything from problem solving and decision making, team brainstorming techniques to team leadership styles. 

Individual Self Awareness

When delivered well, experiential team learning will also include a healthy examination and increased self awareness of each individual's impact on the effectiveness of the team. While the team builds appreciation for the diversity and strengths within the group,  individuals will learn how to better fit their unique skills and contributions to the rhythm and needs of the team.

Relationship Building

Another benefit of the experiential learning process is the ability to pair unlikely teammates or those with a conflict history together in various exercises in the attempt to resolve differences and to build a new appreciation for one another.  This can also be an important objective when the need is to foster collaboration between groups, departments, divisions, between upper management and subordinates or with vendors and key customers.  The experiential learning process can be manipulated as needed to create highly intentional opportunities for connection with one another. 

The High Adventure Shared Experience

Symbolism and Messaging

Use of symbolic role playing exercises and metaphorical activity structure allow organizational themes to be highly integrated with additional learning and messaging on many levels simultaneously.  This can be especially appropriate when teams are merging or forming a new identity together, when specific themes and issues such as competitiveness, achievement, change or execution need to be emphasized.  Although many experiential team programs are supplemented by didactic lecture and specific knowledge transfer, the learning is more powerful and memorable when symbolic activities are integrated based upon the learn-by-doing approach. 

Transference

Ultimately, behavioral change in teams is an individual choice.  The experiential team development program creates the atmosphere, sequence, and specific focus to prepare for and address objectives for evolution and growth. the key to successful programs is the application of new knowledge, skills, methodology and behavior back at the workplace where different results will be generated. 

Re-measurement/Return On Investment

The ATD Intact Work Group Teamwork Assessment yields specific metrics that can be re-measured after the experiential program to show specific % improvement.  Additionally, action plans can be reported back on after 30-60 days and supported with short meetings to maintain the focus on team development and effectiveness.

No better option for team development

When looking across the range of training and development interventions for work groups, it is obvious that no other approach touches so many dimensions- and in so short of a time.  Well facilitated experiential team development programs are catalystic events that include powerful change and learning, with improvements in relationships as well as individual commitment to better individual functioning within the team.