Everything requires teamwork and nothing is more short-lived and subject to change than a team. The complexity, speed and interconnection of our world are constantly challenging us to work together with others. At the same time, we have barely found our way of cooperating when suddenly our manager gets replaced, or new colleagues join in, or others leave…

To be creative and effective, it is a human need to get to know each other in order to build trust and efficient cooperation. This is where coaches are asked to accelerate the teambuilding process. Some of the teams I’m coaching are scattered all over the planet. With them I establish appropriate conditions that in a short time frame enable them to figure out an efficient working strategy acceptable to all.

Spend time together

Often these requirements translate into a 2-day workshop out of the office, once or twice a year. These meetings allow reflection on cooperation aspects to take place within the group: which vision or ambition do we embody? When, how do we meet and what for? How do we make decisions? How do we deal with conflicts? Part of the workshop focuses on the development of team members’ relationships: knowing each other, becoming aware of each other’s crucial challenges, learning how to receive and give feedback, organizing cooperation in pairs or by threes.

My proposal for off-site teamwork

Needless to say, I suggest a very specific agenda for your team. Usually I prepare team workshops through 1-on-1 meetings with each participant in order to get to know each other and understand everyone’s issues and expectations. After that, I’ll choose methods, exercises, and scenarios best suited to the overall team’s issues. Our agenda will include plenary sessions, time in small groups, in pairs as well as an individual. There will be little or no use of PowerPoint. I prefer we use post-its, colored pencils, balls, etc. in other words, a detour through pictures and playful exercises as a shortcut towards new awareness and the desire to change. We work with an explicit pertinent framework that provides meaning and safeguards.

Generally, such team workshops will result in the implementation of decisions and concrete commitments on how to achieve the agreed upon action plan.

In order to work efficiently and with pleasure, your team needs to invest time in building together your vision, your way of working, the mutual commitments between members, the system for adaptation and evolution, the rollout to the whole organization.

I first believed that a high performing team was a team with a good boss.
Then I believed that a high performing team is a team with clear goals.
After that, I believed that a high performing team is a team, which has no conflicts.
Still later I believed that a high performing team is a team where the member are not too different from one another.
In the end, I have come to the conclusion that in order to reach high performance, a team needs to be able to express fears and needs and renounces to be right a priori.

Will Schutz