Learn how to:

• Assess your teams’ strengths and vulnerabilities
• Create effective team management practices and design dynamic meetings for maximum creativity
• Build “communications patience” to enhance problem solving and team IQ
• Select the right team members for a task
• Develop a conflict-handling protocol to help your team surface and handle conflicts

a) Introduction

We start with an introduction to our Team Effectiveness Model, which identifies the core processes and skills that lead to group success. Teams may use the model as a diagnostic tool for assessing how well they are doing and where they need to improve.
You will explore:

• What is a team? How do you quickly progress from a collection of individuals to a real team?
• The Team Effectiveness Model: critical process skills necessary for high performance

Next we explore the heart of group effective- ness, which lies in the ability of team members to reflect on and build their skills at working together. Teams often find it difficult to examine their behaviour openly. They need a facilitator to guide, coach, and lead them.

You will learn:

• The essential role of the team facilitator
• Facilitation skills to help teams mature and develop
• Skills for participative and focused team meetings

b) Building Winning Team Management Practices

Team management practices help team members organize for success. Through a series of structured and stimulating exercises, you and your fellow "team members" will have critical conversations about purpose, vision, roles, and responsibilities to create a foundation for real teamwork. Be prepared: we will put you through your paces.

Learn how to:

• Identify the key components of team management practices: task, social, and commitment
• Create a team charter to build effective team management practices
• Design a group meeting for creating your team charter

c) Developing Problem-Solving Skills for Ingenious Solutions

Problem solving – the ability of members to identify the right problem, collect relevant data, generate creative options, and develop synergistic solutions – is the number one factor contributing to team effectiveness. Teams that are good problem solvers do two things well. First, they have patient communicators; members work hard to understand others and to be understood. Second, they follow a systematic process for identifying a problem and generating the best solution.

These are some of the instincts you will develop in this portion of this program:

• Communications patience: Listening to understand others, exploring assumptions, and remaining open to new ideas
• Synergy: The ability of team members to build on ideas, foster diverse views, rely on facts and not hunches, and create solutions that are better than the members can produce individually
• Action learning: Using an action learning process to expertly collect data, analyse the situation, and plan next steps

d) Developing Conflict-Handling Skills

Groups adept at handling conflict do not avoid thorny issues; they confront them like warriors. Conflict is viewed as a normal and healthy aspect of working together. Members surface diverse views and feel safe to examine other ideas without fear of retribution. Members are careful not to personalize conflicts. It is the idea that is scrutinized, not the person.

You will learn:

• How to analyze the causes of conflict and design interventions that move members to resolution
• How to assess your team's conflict handling style
• How to develop a conflict handling protocol for managing disruptive behaviours respectfully
• Facilitation skills for promoting healthy conflict and managing disruptive conflict
• Processes for helping members with diverse views develop workable options and solutions

e) Creating a Group-Friendly Climate

The recurring message of the week: the organization has a crucial role in creating a supportive climate that enables teams to succeed. Managers must strike the delicate balance between clearly defining the ends yet being flexible and supportive around the means.

Learn senior management's critical role in:

• Preparing your organization for successful teams
• Providing direction and support for teams: purpose, authority, scope, boundaries, barriers
• Measurement, communication, and alignment

Interactive learning

You and your learning colleagues will participate in a number of experiential, out-of-the-seat exercises that you can use back at your organizations.

Takeaways

• Team Benchmarks Assessment of one of your teams
• Building Smart Teams: A Roadmap to High Performance, by Dr. Carol Beatty and Brenda Barker Scott
• Team Effectiveness Gap Analyzer

Organizational benefits

• Create groups of varying sizes that are enabled and aligned to the organization’s mission and strategy
• Build synergies and release latent energy in the organization
• Realize real results with staying power
• Inculcate shared ownership of complex challenges

This program is designed for team leaders, facilitators, and coaches who want to learn a proven methodology for implementing and supporting teams that excel.

Job titles and organizations of some recent attendees:

• Senior Officer, Performance Improvement, Ontario Power Generation
• Director of Human Resources for Energy,Mines and Resources, Government of the Yukon
• Manager, Agency Coordination, Ministry of Government and Consumer Services
• Manager, Training and Development, Capgemni Inc
• Manager Labour Relations, Canadian Pacific Railway
• Employment Relations Officer, The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
• OE Consultant, Irving Oil Refinery
• OE Consultant, Irving Oil Limited
• Director, Organization Development, Bloorview Kids Rehab
• Consultant, Leadership and Organizational Development, LCBO
• Deputy Warden, Correctional Services of Canada

Brenda Barker Scott

Brenda Barker Scott has extensive experience in all aspects of organizational development acquired over a twenty-year career in teaching and consulting. When working with leadership teams she combines strong theoretical knowledge with practical methodologies to ensure that the right people are engaged in the right conversations to design robust and workable solutions.

Brenda is an instructor on a number of the Queen's IRC programs including Building Smart Teams, Organization Development Foundations, Organizational Design and Organization Learning. A frequent presenter, Brenda has been a keynote speaker for the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Conference Board of Canada, the Human Resources Planners Association of Ontario and the Canadian Institute for Health Research.

Brenda is co-author of Building Smart Teams: A Roadmap to High Performance. She is a graduate of Queen's University and lives in Kingston with her husband and two sons.

Brenda presents at the following IRC program(s): OD Foundations, Organizational Design, Organizational Learning, Building Smart Teams

Kingston: Four Points (Sep 25-28, 2012)

Queen's University IRC is proud to hold this session at Four Points by Sheraton Hotel, located at 285 King Street East, in historic downtown Kingston. Hotel rooms are available to participants at a special rate until one month prior to the program. Following your registration for the program, we will provide you with an unique link for hotel reservations. For more information on the hotel visit http://www.fourpointskingston.com/.