Team Development

In many organizations, the executive team is defined by job title and responsibility within the hierarchy, not by behaviour or outcomes.  Often they are a “team” in name only and function primarily as autonomous department heads managing “silos” within the broad organizational structure.  Many executives have little training or understanding of how to function as an effective team, in the true sense of the word.

“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” (Katzenbach & Smith, The wisdom of Teams)

The individual members of an effective executive team must be “technically” competent for the role and responsibilities they hold and be capable of communicating to other team members how their skills/experience contribute to the mission/goals of the organization.  In addition, each person must exhibit the “behavioural” competencies required of an executive team member and a functional team leader.  These behavioural competencies are critical to team and individual success.  They require an understanding of the organization culture, human behaviour, communication, relationship development, dealing with disappointment and conflict, accountability and decision-making.

My approach to team development involves the following activities:

• Develop an understanding of the organization mission, history, culture, structure and key management processes.
• Review the individual roles, responsibilities and technical/behavioural competencies of each team member.
• Identify and discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of the team structure and management processes through employee opinion surveys followed up by individual interviews with executive team members and selected employees.
• Provide feedback to the executive team and discuss broad development goals.
• Suggest strategies to address any individual development needs with respect to technical competencies.
• Design and deliver a series of workshops for executive team members to facilitate learning with respect to behavioural competencies development.
• Facilitation of a regularly scheduled and structured executive team process to apply and integrate what has been learned.