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Leading Teams to High Performance Workshop

Good managers have always fostered teamwork. But highly effective leaders harness the power of teams for dramatically higher results. Teams that are effectively organized and led, have produced extraordinary improvements in productivity, customer service, quality, process management, innovation, cost effectiveness, job satisfaction, morale, and financial performance.

Teams can be an extremely effective way to harness the full energy, experience, and expertise dispersed throughout organizations. But calling a group of people a team doesn't make it one. Too many groups are usually just a collection of individuals who meet periodically. They’re too often poorly focused, weakly led project groups, committees, task forces, or councils. One study, for example, found that only 13 percent of teams received high ratings. Another extensive study of teams found that in more than half the teams studied, “team members give up.”

The "Leading High-Performance Teams" workshop helps participants understand the power and problems of teams, launch and sustain new teams or renew and refocus existing teams, develop vital team leadership and effectiveness skills, and use team assessment and measurement tools.

"Success though teams needs a leadership shift from 'what can I get out of this team to meet my needs' to 'what can I provide the team so we can achieve our goal."

This experience is designed to challenge leaders to freshly examine their attitude to leadership and assumptions about teamwork, understand the impact they have on team performance and then strengthen their leadership effectiveness. Drawing upon lessons from the wild, where effective leadership and team-working is still the difference between life, death and species survival enhances key learning points and insights. This workshop is a highly interactive and practical experience!

Target Participation

Leaders at all levels in a business that wants to be better equipped to lead teams and deal effectively with the issues and challenges inherent in teams.

What Participants Gain From This Powerful Workshop

• Ideas and inspiration for increased personal teamwork
• Practical tools, techniques, and ideas for leading a high-performance team/organization
• Reflection time to reassess personal and professional priorities
• Discover how to shift their team’s culture toward much stronger teamwork and collaboration
• Understand and apply the power of emotional intelligence
• Pinpoint personal leadership gaps and priorities to be addressed and set action plans
• Strengthened team dynamics and processes
• Team/organization agreement on leadership strengths and improvement opportunities
• Establish personal, team, or organization improvement plans
• Reframe and refocus team behaviors
• Recharged, reenergized, and reinspired
• Common languages/approaches for a more “leaderful” team or organization
• Practical insights for coaching and developing team members
• Understanding your role as a leader
• Identifying and leveraging talent within the team
• Engaging and motivating the team with shared vision and values
• Establishing clear objectives and standards of performance for your team
• Measuring and managing team performance
• Managing and using conflict and challenge

Introduction

A lively, fast-paced introduction that sets the tone for the workshop and grabs immediate attention and interest. Includes: review of agenda, ground rules, expectation-setting and a team ‘icebreaker’ exercise providing data on current team and leadership behaviour.

Introducing the High Performance Team

High performance teamwork demands full-blooded commitment – there are no passive bystanders.

This session introduces the concept of the high performance team, in which fusion and cohesion between individuals is required; and contrasts it with a group, which basically remains a collection of individuals.

We examine the typical challenges and opportunities confronting team members, and view them in relationship to the current status of participants’ own teams.

Leading a High Performance Team

What does leadership mean? We examine the personal and business expectations and assumptions brought to leadership.

We compare the traditional leadership role with that of the high performing team leader, and assess the personal costs and benefits of each.

The concept of situational leadership is brought to life, with participants examining their current styles and diagnosing which style is appropriate in different situations.

Leadership Diagnostic

This session examines two common barriers to high performance – managing issues and exchanging feedback.

Tools, insights and processes are provided to take back into the workplace, thus setting the scene for leaders to review their own diagnostic report, identifying the issues to tackle and the strengths to hold on to.

Getting Started with Teams

Tools, tips and processes are provided to ensure that from the moment a team is created, it has a fighting chance of success.

Topics covered include: Selecting Your Team; Welcoming New Members; Team Health Checklist; Contracting.

The Journey to High Performance

So what does it take to convert a collection of individuals into a high performing team?

Participants are introduced to the nine essential elements that must be managed to ensure the effective building of teams and sustaining of high performance. Up to six of the nine elements will be studied in depth during this workshop.

Scenarios to Face

A series of typical leadership scenarios challenge participants to work through how they would respond today and how they need to respond to get the best out of others.

Living the 9 Essential Elements for High Performance

Day two consists of a series of practical sessions equipping leaders with the tools and insights to ensure that their teams can accomplish and sustain the nine essential elements for high performance: Purpose; Commitment; Trust; Capability; Accountability; Principles; Creativity and Responsiveness & Recognition.

Conclusions and Closure for a Team

How teams are disbanded, and the individual efforts of team members reviewed and recognized, can significantly impact the willingness of an individual to join a fresh team. So this is about making the goodbyes as great as the welcomes.

Taking It Back to the Business

Leaders create a “Re-Entry Plan” to ensure that the skills and insights they have acquired can be appropriately introduced into the workplace and applied.

The Team Performance Chart

Engaging

The elements of the engaging stage create the foundation on which high performance teams can be built. These elements are:

Purpose - The fundamental reason behind creating the team and committing valuable business resources to support it achieving its goals

Commitment - A conscious decision taken individually and collectively by the team to dedicate time and energy to achieve the purpose and goals set by the business

Trust - An acceptance by all those involved in meeting the team goals that foster a level of reliance on the characteristics and integrity of the others is essential to the success of the team

Enabling

The enabling stage provides the core requirements for how the team will operate and how individuals will contribute to that operation. These core requirements are:

Capability - The skill, knowledge and capacity of the individuals, stakeholders and team to perform the required tasks to the agreed timescale to ensure the goal is achieved.

Accountability - The acceptance by all parties of the responsibilities of individuals, stakeholders and the team in the achievement of the team's goals.

Principles - The agreed "rules", processes and norms which help shape and govern how the team works together to achieve its goals. These principles provide the glue which keeps the team "together" providing the necessary clarity and structure from which greater creativity, efficiency and risk taking can emerge.

Energizing

The elements of energizing provide the team with the fuel to overcome obstacles and create innovative solutions on the route to success. These elements are:

Creativity - The fostering of a team culture and environment which stimulates the creation, capture and implementation of innovative ideas

Responsiveness - The capacity of individuals and the team to react positively and effectively to unforeseen obstacles or changes.

Recognition - The continuous appreciation of individual and group efforts which contribute to the building of the team or the achievement of the goal.