Genuine Team Building With “Team and Leadership DNA®”
Teams, projects and organisations tend to succeed or fail one relationship at a time.
Understanding the dynamics of how this occurs is absolutely vital to the success of teams and leaders whether in the business, sporting or military realms.
In all such fields of human activity it is people functioning as leaders and teams “one relationship at a time” that will dictate long-term success or failure. With so much written about team building, teamwork and leadership it can be a little overwhelming, and also a bit like Mark Twain’s quote that asserts “everybody talks about the weather, but nobody actually does anything about it”.
People talk a lot about team building, teams, leaders and relationships but still seem to fall into the same patterns and dysfunctions when the pressure is on. How can teams and leaders therefore be developed in a truly “sustainable” way to build lasting relationships for high performance and “Sustainable Teaming™” across the full lifespan of a team or project?
It takes more than just simplistic team building games to do this reliably.
We find that delivering well thought out interventions based on accurate diagnostics, pragmatic delivery and a professional blend of theory and experiential learning matched to real world outcomes does the trick.
Of course no programme is a “magic cure all” but team building that is well thought out can accelerate and smooth a team and leaders journey through the forming, storming, norming and performing that takes place as teams develop.
Measuring the “Team DNA” as part of the team building diagnostic process is about identifying as accurately as possible the unique clusters of behavior that all people project when working within a team. The Belbin Team Role Model serves this purpose best.
These behavioural clusters in the Belbin Model have discernable strengths and contributions. They also have allowable weaknesses that represent the “flipside of the coin” to the strengths projected by a certain “team role” type.
Being open and honest about these (in a professional and non threating way) helps people understand themselves and others, and also helps avoid unnecessary friction, disappointments and cognitive bias that can damage decision-making and relationships in the team building process.
Once a team’s natural behavioural clusters have been accurately identified and mapped then certain patterns can be identified that will usually underpin observed areas of strength that the team has, along with areas of stated or unstated struggle.
Teams usually know these by intuition, yet still find it hard to objectify and put their finger on what the root causes are. Based upon accurate data, the “Team DNA” can be explored in creative workshops and with advanced business simulations and experiences that mirror the real world pressures and challenges a team may face.
This draws out both the contributions and the weaknesses arising from the behavioral clusters present within the team for observation and review. This is a team building process, but its not a team building process that is entirely reliant upon mere fun and games (though that can be integral to the process at some stages as well).
Well facilitated reviews and discussions then enable people and teams to pragmatically explore strategies for “real world” that allow them to best project strengths while identifying and catching their individual and collective weaknesses when planning and executing in real situations.
When teams are under pressure people still revert to projecting their weaknesses, but with increased awareness, can usually catch themselves and others before it damages team decision-making, relationships and execution.
A final team audit process enables us to capture some genuine “lessons learned” and also commit to actual milestones for follow through and review to ensure that the learning is not lost, but rather is carried into the life of the team ongoing as another “tool in the toolbox” for the team to better solve its own problems and develop its performance.
Team DNA, Leadership DNA and Sustainable Teaming are all Registered Trademarks of Sabre Corporate Development.