Issue
Do any of these situations sound familiar?
- We have a great diverse team, and we need to boost
its productivity and innovation.
- I need some team building here.
- How do I improve my leadership team’s effectiveness?
- An executive needs coaching to help ensure success leading
a new diverse or global team.
- Conflict is reducing team effectiveness; communication
and teamwork are broken.
- We need to communicate better around here.
- We have too many silos in this organization; we need
better teamwork.
- How do I overcome some team members' difficult behavior,
reduce team conflict, and build team cohesion?
- We need to improve communications and decision making.
Many teams experience one or more of these conditions.
Why are these problems so common? Typically
it’s
a combination of
ineffective communication,
lack
of teamwork,
and
insufficient alignment on the
team’s business
purpose and method of operation.
People fail
to agree on both what the team will do and how they
will work together to get the job done. They may lack the
skills and competencies needed to communicate and work
well with people of different cultural backgrounds
What is the business impact? The unpleasant possibilities
include: The team fails to meet its schedule. Productivity,
innovation, and quality suffers. Morale sinks. People feel
demotivated.
Solution
Effective team building and development avoids or eliminates
these team conflict problems. This is central to effective
conflict resolution strategies in teams.
It is a common tendency in the U.S. business
world that when people come together for a project or task
they immediately get to work “tackling the problem
at hand." After all, "that is what they are being paid
to do." Devoting time to anything else "just delays the
solution." This thinking frequently leads to the problems
identified above.
Teams must address three aspects of their work:
- Build their skills at working
with people having different perspectives, ideas, approaches to doing their work,
and communication styles.
- Decide how they will
discuss issues, include everyone’s
input, and make decisions.
- Reaching
a common understanding of the issue being addressed and the needed business outcome.
We refer to the latter two aspects above as the team's “operating
processes”.
This is important for all teams,
whether consolidated at one geographic location or spread
across the globe, whether working together for the first
time or having already completed many projects successfully.
Each team will need different training depending upon its
make-up and history of previous work.
Skill building and development should
be integrated with working on the assigned project. This
can be done either with a dedicated high-benefit development
meeting or with periodic coaching and development sessions
that are part of ongoing team facilitation.
For building skills in working with people having diverse
perspectives, MDB Group recommends development and coaching
based on the
Intercultural
Development Inventory (IDI).
IDI is a theory-based diagnostic instrument that measures
how well a team experiences cultural difference. It indicates
individual and team competence in communicating
with people of different backgrounds, cultures, or perspectives.
IDI also provides a guide to individual and team development
plans.
MDB Group is certified to provide this outstanding instrument
as part of our team development services.
See also: Leverage
constructive conflict to build teamwork.
Or just
call
us or
send
us your request now!
Sample results
See representative results achieved by MDB Group's principals
at
Team Building and Development.
Related links
Team building and development helps improve productivity,
innovation, and creativity. It also helps reduce turnover.
Click the links below for more insight:
