Teams and the people within them




Teams and the people within them Unlock your buried treasure We run interactive workshops which help team members to see themselves and others more clearly and to decide how to move forward. Don't feel limited by the list of services - other workshops can be arranged depending on your needs. The list below is a fairly flexible selection which packages our change management skills in ways to make them available and useful for all types of teams Actalpha emotional intelligence framework Target your team-building Teams & personality Team fast-track form-storm-norm-perform Conflict resolution Workshop facilitation Actalpha emotional intelligence framework All of our help with people and teams addresses one or more components of this straightforward framework. What forms the foundation of this is an understanding of self as the basis for understanding others and for influencing. We can introduce you to this through our course on Better Projects by understanding personality-type (click for more details). We can also run tailored in-house programmes to address particular emotional intelligence competences; please contact Mike Cashman for more information. Target your team-building Use the Actalpha PROACTIVE © Team Effectiveness Model to decide what you really need to work on as a team, so you can target your team-building activities on what you really need to improve. The PROACTIVE © Team Competence Model Achievement *Promise-keepers* *Result-driven* *One Common Goal* Communication *Active External Marketing* *Communicating Openly* Ways of Working *Targeted Roles & Processes* *Innovation & Initiative* Interactions *Valuing and Empowering each other* *Effective Direction-setting Leadership* *Take the time to find out where you really want to go as a team, and getting there is much easier!* Team & personality Understanding yourself and others within the team Why is it so hard to make real changes in your life - and what can you do about it? Why is it other people have different approaches, and we can't see eye to eye? What gets in the way of reaching agreement and taking action? Why do we sometimes keep struggling with issues that some others take in their stride? Be more in tune: with colleagues, with your partner, with your children This workshop can give you an initial understanding of personality-type^[1] and of how this knowledge can empower change.^[2] We also now run a 2-day course on Better Projects by understanding personality-type* (click for more details)* Objective: Understand personality types Understand the gifts and contribution of each personality type to the whole team Understand the possibilities (and challenges) of personal change from a personality-type perspective Recognise new ways to tackle problematic situations Workshop content Introduction to personality type Exercises to understand personality-type Pointers for further exploration Personality-type and problem-solving Exploration of personal growth constraints and options - path to wisdom and emotional intelligence? Team fast-track form-storm-norm-perform For teams that need to operate at peak performance ! Do we know what we are seeking to do (what would happen if the team was not here?) Do we feel we have the capabilities to achieve it? Do you ever think "logically, there should be no difficulty in achieving what we need - so why is it so difficult?" Of course it's not just logic. You need a balance, for example between logic and feeling analysis and decision detail and big picture reflection and interaction Logic alone will not create a high-performing team. There are issues which are much less tangible - trust, synergy, energy, fun, courage, excitement, shared experience. Our approach to developing teamwork is very individual, and targeted at producing outcomes for you and your team. The approach will be tailored to your needs. The mix of individual and group work will be what suits you. The extent to which you work on real business problems, with our help, and the extent to which we bring in teamwork exercises will be what we agree with you. The teamwork development programme can include elements of the following: discovery together of personality-type and its impact within the team outdoor or indoor personal development personal feedback - opportunity to share personal insights with the team to increase chances of a win-win What will not alter, if we are involved, is that we will look to achieve multiple positive outcomes in three areas: business results business capability fulfilled individuals You should engage our help if you agree that all three of these are important We can offer you a fast-paced team learning experience that can include commitment to agreed team purpose, personality-type understanding, and practical application immediately on a short focused team project – large-scale outdoor activities can make this learning more immediate and real. With team review and feedback, the learning is applied rapidly to the work environment. Discover: An increased awareness of yourself and others Enhanced level of trust, honesty and openness within the team How to organise a team in unfamiliar situations – short projects that will be important to the team in a low-risk environment Effective identification of skills, knowledge and aspirations that will help to achieve the intended results How to give colleagues feedback that they invite and welcome *A memorable and enjoyable learning experience!* Conflict resolution A few words from Mike Cashman to explain a possible approach: As an active manager with a large team and multi-million pound projects to run, you don't always feel you have the time to give to address personal issues and interpersonal conflicts. You may not find the space and time to listen in the way that you would when acting as a counsellor. I've done both, so I speak from experience. But I have increasingly seen the value of bringing into the workplace approaches drawn from counselling that seek to understand people's viewpoints thoroughly. I've found the following steps very effective when there is real hurt and frustration: To ask for permission to use the knowledge of that hurt to avoid the circumstances of it happening again To ensure 2-way understanding of each party's viewpoint, typically as part of a "workshop for understanding" To watch the understanding swiftly turn to resolution To see how healing this can then be for the original hurt. People give permission (step 1) not for their own benefit, but to avoid others suffering the same way. Yet they find healing (step 4) despite their expectations. It's very rewarding to see people who had become very frustrated subsequently able to move on past their frustration, with stronger working relationships. Frustrations can always arise, even when you are working hard towards a common goal - perhaps especially when you are working hard towards a common goal. If those frustrations are upsetting the working environment, or the people in it, please do something about it quickly! We can help, and as always we will work for outcomes for individuals, for capability and for business results. We can use this approach with customer-supplier conflicts as well as internal conflicts. Workshop facilitation The workshops we facilitate (including all the workshops mentioned elsewhere on the site) are characterised by energy involvement pace honesty feeling courage innovation visibility fun These are crucial to the success of the workshops, and we have ways of ensuring that such characteristics are included. We can teach you how to do this too. People who work together on a plan are committed to making it work. Project Boards who take part in the process support the plan. We have facilitated workshops for many different purposes, for example: to define and initiate a project to identify project assurance guidelines to agree a rapid development method to define quality policy to produce a communication strategy to get Project Board agreement to an approach to define an overall plan for a 400-person development programme to bring together customer and supplier in a difficult relationship in order to agree a change programme to achieve win-win outcomes Some workshops needed only an hour; some took several days, and were planned like mini-projects. But in every case, the workshop resulted in an agreed way forward. Often the workshop is a key to unlock hidden barriers to progress. [1] The phrase “personality-type” is used here to refer to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI ™ ). Myers Briggs Type Indicator™ and MBTI™ are trademarks of Consulting Psychologists Press Inc; in Europe these trademarks are licensed to OPP Ltd. Actalpha personality-type workshops are led by one or more qualified assessors of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator ® who have signed up to the OPP Ltd code of ethics for the use of the MBTI ® assessment [Go back] [2] It is easy to be discouraged by personality-type theory if it is taught - incorrectly - in a deterministic way (in other words “you will always react this way because of your personality-type”) . We fundamentally agree with the Centre for Applications of Psychological Type in viewing a knowledge of personality-type as empowering, not constraining. [Go back]