Working with Teams

Teams, groups or units inside a larger system, often reflect and act as a microcosm of the whole. My work is to help the team understand their environment, their task, their skills, and the blockages that limit their energy.

The need for team development happens differently and can be vocalised at either inception, mid life or at the closure of a project. Managers or team members may express their concerns the following ways:

• We are a new team, and want to develop good ways of working together
• I am a new manager and want to share my ideas, and plans, without devaluing existing work
• I have a completely new team, how can I build trust?
• We are a new project group. How can we start to work together?
• My management style has been called helpful, how and what should I change?
• We are a new team, and want to develop good ways of working together
• Our team has discovered we have completely different ideas about the way we work
• My department seem despondent and demoralised, I would like to fix it.
• Our project has to close how can we say goodbye, in a memorable way?
• I want to leave my team, how can I leave without disruption?

Ways of working

All of these scenarios could be fixed in any number of ways. My practice is to explore the issues, suggest ways forward, socialize the ideas with the group, and only then act with them to make the change., I prefer to focus on current work, and deal with concrete issues. This means genuine communication to help the team, and the work, improve. E.g:

• Techniques for New team development
• New manager strategies for communication and team integration
• Guidelines for developing specialist project groups