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...keeping teams you lead in top gear
2-day clinic on team-building tools to form, reform and transform your teams
presented by
Bill Cropper
Most of us work in teams - fewer of us know how to make teams work well
Whatever kind of team we work in, we can all find them at times confounding, time-consuming, frustrating and, sometimes, just plain exhausting. Teamworking does have challenges, as well as rewards.
We naturally form teams to achieve things together we can’t do alone. Yet working well together doesn’t come so naturally. We have to learn how to do this.
Some teams succeed while many others fail. Why is that? There are many reasons, but one stands out – they lack resonant leaders who know how to resource and support them.
The capacity to build strong, vibrant teams is widely seen as a crucial component of great leadership. But being able to master this trait continues to elude many leaders.
Those who can’t or won’t engage their teams in conversations, empower them to share ideas and establish mutual purpose and cohesive identity, miss out on harnessing the collective energy and performance benefits of teamworking.
Teamworking skills are vital for everyone. For leaders, the ability to get people to work in well with each other is an absolute necessity. It makes all the difference for productive performance that people fit in, get along and collaborate effectively together.
Whatever kind of team we work in, we can all find them at times confounding, time-consuming, frustrating and, sometimes, just plain exhausting.
Teamworking does have challenges, as well as rewards.
We naturally form teams to achieve things together we can’t do alone. Yet working well together doesn’t come so naturally. We have to learn how to do this.
Some teams succeed while many others fail. Why is that? There are many reasons, but one stands out – they lack resonant leaders who know how to resource and support them.
The capacity to build strong, vibrant teams is widely seen as a crucial component of great leadership. But being able to master this trait continues to elude many leaders.
Those who can’t or won’t engage their teams in conversations, empower them to share ideas and establish mutual purpose and cohesive identity, miss out on harnessing the collective energy and performance benefits of teamworking.
Teamworking skills are vital for everyone. For leaders, the ability to get people to work in well with each other is an absolute necessity. It makes all the difference for productive performance that people fit in, get along and collaborate effectively together.
To stay in top gear, teams need maintenance, fine-tuning or even, from time-to-time, a total makeover
Like everything else, teams do break down or don’t work as well as they could, from time-to-time. They need maintaining, revitalising or even re-shaping now and again. Many ‘failure-factors’ in teams lead to frustration and conflict. With disharmony, teams fragment or stagnate and diminished performance is inevitable.
Any time a group of people come together to work on a task, whether they’re an intact work team or an occasional committee, team-working comes into play. We may try to promote the sentiment “we’re all on the same team”, yet far too often, teams struggle to find ways to function together effectively.
“We just don’t seem to work very well together as a team! Everyone does their own thing. We’re not on the same page about what’s important; we don’t share information, help each other out, and the way we’re behaving and treating each other is getting out of control… What we need is team-building!”
Sound familiar? While team-building’s essential to refocus and re-energise, what that means to different people can vary greatly. Team-building isn’t one single thing – and it doesn’t come as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ package. But all team-building has one overarching aim: to find ways to work better together.
Like everything else, teams do break down or don’t work as well as they could, from time-to-time. They need maintaining, revitalising or even re-shaping now and again. Many ‘failure-factors’ in teams lead to frustration and conflict. With disharmony, teams fragment or stagnate and diminished performance is inevitable.
Any time a group of people come together to work on a task, whether they’re an intact work team or an occasional committee, team-working comes into play. We may try to promote the sentiment “we’re all on the same team”, yet far too often, teams struggle to find ways to function together effectively.
“We just don’t seem to work very well together as a team! Everyone does their own thing. We’re not on the same page about what’s important; we don’t share information, help each other out, and the way we’re behaving and treating each other is getting out of control… What we need is team-building!”
Sound familiar? While team-building’s essential to refocus and re-energise, what that means to different people can vary greatly. Team-building isn’t one single thing – and it doesn’t come as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ package. But all team-building has one overarching aim: to find ways to work better together.
That’s where Building Better Teams comes in...
Whether you’re a leader forming a new team, looking to revitalise your team or wanting to take them to the next level for a stand-out performance, our 2-day Building Better Teams Toolkit training for leaders provides you with tools, steps, strategies and tangible actions to work through with your teams, to tune-up the way you work together, top-up your own leadership and remove some of the barriers that get in the way of performing well.
Underlying this clinic and our overall approach to teambuilding, we think working better together and Building Better Teams is about…
- Making the most of your team’s talents by finding ways to work together more collectively, collaboratively and constructively.
- Dealing with issues, concerns and processes like patterns of behaviour, interaction, communication, roles and relationships that affect how well a team works together.
- Working on both the social and emotional team intelligences that create self-awareness and connectivity, as well as the conversational mastery in the team that always has a positive team-building effect
- Equipping people with the emotional, conversational and relational skills they need to be better team-players and build healthy team cultures capable of delivering a superior team performance
"My senior team all got a lot out of this very valuable toolkit-style workshop. Structure, delivery and content very engaging, informative, well-balanced and well-managed. We all went away with a better understanding of the principles behind building high-performing teams and the extensive take-away toolkit enables ongoing re-engagement with key team performance topics. I'd strongly recommend doing one of Bill's Building Better Teams sessions."
Matt Brien
Northern Wildlife Operations
Highlights to expect from attending this energising, uplifting clinic:
Rate your team effectiveness against
10 Team Functionality Dimensions
Learn key steps, issues & choices critical to forming & sustaining successful teams
Identify new operating principles and team enhancement ideas
Explore tools to remedy team dysfunctions and collaborate more effectively
Complete a Team Action Plan for back-at-work teambuilding activities
Are you ready to step up to your leader role of moulding strong teams & supporting their performance for continuing success?
Learning to work better together starts with leaders making time to sit down with their team to talk about teamwork challenges, priorities and directions. We all know teams don’t change or improve just by attending a workshop or having a one-off meeting. The real work of building better teams starts when we can:
- Identify with our team, feel a part of it, want to be in it, and take responsibility to make it work. We’re willing to put our strengths and talents to work and are committed to the success of the entire team.
- Raise issues openly with each other, forget the past and make fresh commitments to new ways of working better together.
In the end, working in teams won’t always guarantee more satisfaction or better work performance. But lack of teamwork always guarantees dissatisfaction and poor performance
10 Dimensions for Building higher-functioning Teams
What can help lift the level at which your team functions? Before you can help your team refocus and re-energise, leaders need to identify what the most critical issues and challenges affecting the team currently are.
Underscoring our teambuilding approach, we use a framework of 10 Team Functionality Dimensions to help leaders and teams assess how they are working together now and what the priority areas might be for resolving issues and improving team functionality moving forward.
A first tool in your Building Better Teams Toolkit is a team survey based on these dimensions to use as a start-point for working with your teams. For a summary, see our Article on the 10 Team Functionality Dimensions and how they contribute to building higher-functioning teams.
What does my team need to work on?
What makes one team work better than another?
What will best fit our context and the personalities that make up our team?
What steps, strategies and approaches might get us to where we need to be?
We often find that people feel a need for team-building but the specific outcomes or areas they want to focus on remain vague and insubstantial.
- The clearer you are on what you want to get out of team-building, the more effective it is.
- If you want team-building to work, you need to identify what to work on first – and it may not be the most obvious thing.
- You also have to demonstrate to the team that it relates directly to real work results they care about and on top of that, it benefits them.
The contributors to the troubles most teams encounter from time to time are many and varied. But whether remote-working or right here, many challenges teams face remain the same.
- How can we connect better?
- What can we do to get on the same page to work effectively together?
- How can we make our meetings more constructive
- How do we handle disruptive emotions or difficult team moments?
- What do we need to change to work more as one-team?
- How we can we share the workload better and support each other more?
- How can we get everyone to agree on the same principles, goals and directions?
Your team works in a particular context and culture. It’s important to also take that into account in thinking about what’s going on in the team and what you want to accomplish. The Building Better Teams Toolkit we provide you with in our clinic can help you consider and discuss questions like these.
How can we connect better?
What can we do to get on the same page to work effectively together?
How can we make our meetings more constructive?
How do we handle disruptive emotions or difficult team moments?
What do we need to change to work more as one-team?
How we can we share the workload better and support each other more?
How can we get everyone to agree on the same principles, goals and directions?
Your team works in a particular context and culture. It’s important to also take that into account in thinking about what’s going on in the team and what you want to accomplish. The Building Better Teams Toolkit we provide you with in our clinic can help you consider and discuss questions like these.
What to expect from attending Building Better Teams
In this 2-day practical clinic we delve into key principles and a variety of tools you can use to guide and support your teams to better understand what’s happening now, to prioritise issues that need to be resolved and agree what you can all do to work more effectively together.
Backed by a comprehensive Building Better Teams Toolkit for leaders (and optional Working Better Together Pocket Guide for team members) some of the steps you might take after attending this clinic include…
- Assess team effectiveness against 10 Team Functionality Dimensions
- Help teams understand principles and choices for sustaining successful teams
- Discuss and agree on teamworking issues to prioritise
- Identify team improvement ideas, new norms and operating principles
- Agree on shared visions, goals, commitment and accountability
- Create a Team-building Action Plan for back-at-work activities
- Use tools to remedy dysfunctions and eliminate obstacles to good teamwork
- Foster better team relations, cohesion and working more as one team
“The WBT Clinic was excellent and flowed well - very relevant to leaders who want to engage better with their teams. Great facilitation, great activities and great guide that’s good for a refresh. You got the group engaged, created an easy-going climate, and could relate easily. I’m going to share these concepts with the team I lead and put some of the guide’s content into action.”
Olivia F
Queensland Health
In a safe and supportive setting, we explore topics and try-out tools to help you:
Agree Shared Vision
Foster shared vision, common goals and accountability
Diagnose Success & Failure Factors
Use 10 dimensions to make teamwork more functional and effective
Create a Positive Team Cuture
Agree expectations & behaviours that support a positive team culture
Manage Team Relationships
Encourage connectivity, respect & emotionally intelligent interactions
Deal with Difficult Team Moments
Remedy dysfunctions that get in the way of good teamwork
Inspire Cohesion & Collaboration
Break-down boundaries to working together as one-team
Facilitate Better Conversations
More skillful team conversations, meetings and interactions
Plan Team-building Sessions
Map team learning activities and back-at-work tools practise
“Well worth attending. I was very engaged and I took away some positive ideas and actions I can put in place back at work with our teams. What we covered was clear, tools were relevant and Bill seemed very experienced in the content he was presenting.”
Angie B
Magistrates Court FNQ
Is this clinic right for you?
This clinic can benefit anyone who leads teams – from director level down – who wants to work on improving team functionality in areas such as developing shared visions, new team designs, establishing operating principles, agreeing workroles and decision-making practices, improving connectivity or remedying team dysfunctions.
It’s also useful if you’d like to know more about planning and facilitating teambuilding sessions, or some guidance on steps to reform and revitalise teams.
Building Better Teams Toolkit
complimentary when attending our clinic
Take-away a 200-page Team Action Toolkit filled with tools, tips and over 55 team activities to work through with your teams to improve team functionality, culture and communication.
You’ll also have an opportunity to purchase copies of our Working Better Together Pocket Guide as after-course support for team members to work through together.
Sound reasons to choose a Change Forum clinic
- Interactive, engaging learning in a safe small group setting
- Relevant and relatable to your real workplace challenges
- Contemporary concepts – practical steps and models to follow
- Personal self-assessment score-cards to facilitate goal-setting
- Down-to-earth, hands-on activities, tools and topics tailored for you
- Comprehensive self-coaching toolkits for back-at-work action
- Fee-free transfers if unforeseen personal events prevent attendance
“A very engaging workshop, really well constructed with constant involvement and so many great activities to help us understand issues we need to work on as a team. You were very captivating and it was a great opportunity to talk about how we function, focus on real issues in our team and then apply tools we’d just discussed to these situations. Thank you again for your fantastic workshop. I thoroughly enjoyed it.”
Vanessa Moulday
Latrobe University
Would you like your whole team to work on Working Better Together?
We guide you in-house through team-building together...
In addition to our public programs and general leadership consulting work, we receive regular requests to run tailored teamwork and team-building programs for intact work teams wanting to build a more positive, cohesive team culture, handle conflict constructively and build more emotionally positive team climates.
If you want to help your whole team work together on improving team functionaility, I’d be pleased to have a conversation with you about ways we can tailor our comprehensive Working Better Together modules to your particular team context. Or shape one of our more extended Tools for Taking Team Action options to your team’s development needs.
The clearer you are on what you want to get out of team-building, the more effective it is. For a full profile of our team-building services with tips on considerations for planning your next team-building session, take a look through our Working Better Together Prospectus.
Our free FactFiles and Articles include a selection of topical tips on key teamworking aspects like Designing Teams, Leading Teams and Emotional Intelligence in Teams.
If dates or locations for our Building Better Teams public clinics don’t suit or you have 10 or more people interested in attending, an on-site clinic may be more economical and a better fit your cultural context or team-working challenges.
Call me, Bill Cropper, on 0429-687 513 to talk over your learning interests or team challenges.
Or use our in-house enquiry form to send me a message and I’ll get in touch with you…
Would you or your team benefit from Personalised Coaching?
Individual or small group coaching support can be a really useful adjunct to team toolkit sessions to help people work through specific issues relevant to their particular team. Coaching can also benefit leaders and managers to help them provide better support and deal with team issues more effectively. Coaching sessions can be run in parallel to whole-team learning activities or stand-alone.
I've been coaching leaders at all levels for many years, both individually and as part of extended action-learning programs. If you'd like to explore some ideas about ways I can help you and your team, see Bill Cropper Coaching online for a profile of my approach and some coaching tips to think about. Your call is always welcome when you're ready to have a chat - let me know how to get in touch...
I've been coaching leaders at all levels for many years, both individually and as part of extended action-learning programs. If you'd like to explore some ideas about ways I can help you and your team, see Bill Cropper Coaching online for a profile of my approach and some coaching tips to think about. Your call is always welcome when you're ready to have a chat - let me know how to get in touch...
About Your Facilitator...
Bill Cropper
Founder - The Change Forum
“I’ve invested more than 25 years helping leaders to build better teams. Whether remote or right here, many challenges teams face remain the same: How can we connect better? How do we handle disruptive emotions or difficult team moments? How can we make our meetings more constructive, work more as one-team or ensure our visions, values and directions are shared?
Keeping teams on-track together calls for constant maintenance. I’ve had substantial team facilitation experience on crucial team-working aspects in hundreds of different organisations – government agencies, schools, hospitals, environmental protection, statutory authorities, councils and NGOs.
I work onsite with your leader groups and teams, customising learning based on an extensive suite of Working Better Together sessions we mix and match, or Building Better Teams Toolkit sessions to prepare your leaders for running teambuilding sessions with their teams. So why not have a chat?”
What people say about working with Bill...
“Our team day was invaluable. It actually made me more self-aware. Content was really interesting and I took away some great tools I’ve already used. You're a very engaging speaker who showed a thorough understanding of how to explain things well to people who didn’t have much prior knowledge of the concepts. You got the whole team involved and made it a comfortable relaxed learning environment. And you kept it interesting. Thanks again! I really enjoyed the day.”
“Totally worth the time and delivered well. I felt we all benefited from this very effective and well-communicated workshop. I felt included, engaged and safe to contribute and felt I also got more from the communication within the group. Bill showed us lots of positive and useful strategies and has a great understanding of his subject. It was good to see how well the group bonded and we achieved a lot of positives on the day I plan to continue with. I’d definitely recommend this workshop to others.”
“I felt the day was more beneficial than any other teambuilding day I've ever attended. Even though operating with an emergent agenda, we started the process of addressing key issues. You did a fantastic job. It is not an easy thing to come into a group of people, read the vibe and work through issues as they are raised.”
Cost & Registration
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The fine print...
- Prices include GST… Payment due on registration. Pay by Card or EFT
- Pay online or on invoice within 10 days and prior to attendance
- Fees are non-refundable^ but may be transferred to an alternative event up to 14 days prior
- Minimum numbers required at The Change Forum’s discretion
- If we cancel or postpone, full refund is available if reschedule doesn't suit
- Registrants are added to our mailing list but can choose to unsubscribe after the event
- Venue: CBD or centrally located venues confirmed on registration
- Inclusions: Tuition, Guidebook, Certificate plus for in-person events: lunch/refreshments
- Timing: On-location: 8.30am-4.45pm Online: 9.00am-12.00pm and/or 1.00-4.00pm
^Please do not attend live workshops if you are sick with Covid-19, flu or similar viruses. If you cannot send someone else in your place an alternative delivery arrangement will be made
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Coaching Better Leaders... Building Better Teams
The Change Forum offers a variety of 1 and 2-day coaching clinics in selected regional centres.
Visit our on-line Course Calendar from time-to-time for updates on what’s coming up next
We offer individual Leadership Coaching in person & by phone
Our full range of Leadership learning & Team-building programs can be delivered in-house on request
Contact us any time for a chat about ways we might be able to help you
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Email:
BILL CROPPER
0429 687 513
0429 687 591 or 07 4068 7591
consult@thechangeforum.com
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