Team Development

TEAM DEVELOPMENT

Effective Teamwork: Unlocking Your Organization’s Full Potential

In today’s organizational landscape, teams have become the cornerstone of productivity. They are the driving force behind success, yet many organizations fail to address the critical factors that contribute to effective teamwork. This oversight can impede progress and hinder the collective potential of talented individuals.

Merely assembling a group of skilled individuals does not guarantee optimal performance as a team. Are you aware of how your organization’s teams perform? Assessing their effectiveness is crucial for maximizing productivity.

But how can you ensure a new team starts off on the right foot? What about valuable team members who may be perceived as problematic? How can the frustrations within a team be minimized? And if a team is already broken, how can it be fixed? Moreover, how can you ensure seamless collaboration when combining multiple teams? In today’s era, virtual teams also pose unique challenges—how can they be built to unleash their maximum potential?

When organizations seek my assistance in team development, I employ a structured and methodical approach. By conducting thorough interviews with both the team leader and members, I gain valuable insights into the existing dynamics, identify what is working and what is not. Additionally, a team assessment survey provides objective data, enriching our understanding further. This comprehensive process allows me to offer constructive feedback to both the leader and the team, and to tailor team improvement activities that precisely target the identified areas for growth. The outcome is enhanced team effectiveness and heightened satisfaction among team members.

I am certified in two evidence-based assessment tools focused on developing high-performing teams,The Rocket Model , and Hogan Assessment . These powerful tools help evaluate teams and provide feedback to start the right conversation to get everyone pulling in the same direction. Whether assessing C-Suite teams and Boards, forming new teams, onboarding team members, training leaders in team development, identifying high-potential individuals, or cultivating effective teamwork throughout an entire organization, using a data-based assessment consistently delivers impactful insights.

Together, let’s unlock the full potential of your organization’s teams. By prioritizing effective teamwork, we can elevate productivity, foster engagement, and achieve remarkable results. Contact me today to embark on this transformative journey.

Your team is comprised of a talented group of individuals with bright minds and impressive intellectual abilities. They possess excellent interpersonal skills and boast high emotional intelligence (EQ). However, despite these qualities, they may still struggle to effectively collaborate and produce desired outcomes as a cohesive unit. What could be missing is the understanding and implementation of the key elements that foster the development of a high-performing team. Research indicates that only 20% of teams can be classified as high-performing, while leaders assess a mere 10% of their teams as truly effective. Teams need to understand the factors that contribute to team effectiveness, get feedback on these variables, and then address the areas that need work. To bridge this gap, teams must grasp the crucial factors that contribute to team effectiveness. Gathering feedback on these variables is equally essential, allowing teams to identify areas that require improvement. This is where a formal assessment comes into play, offering a structured, evidence-based framework to address these factors accurately. By utilizing the Hogan or Team Assessment Survey, you’ll receive valuable feedback on these factors, specific to your team. The survey results pinpoint the areas where your team falls short and provide tailored recommendations and activities to enhance team cohesion and performance.

Start your journey towards becoming a high-performing team today!

The Team Assessment Survey measures the eight components of The Rocket Model:

  • Context: Are there shared assumptions about the team’s operating environment?
  • Mission: Is there a consensus among team members regarding the mission, and is it clearly defined?
  • Talent: Does the team possess the right mix of skills, experience, and capabilities? Is the team size appropriate? Are roles and responsibilities well-defined?
  • Norms: Are the team’s communication norms and meeting practices productive? Are there unspoken rules that require open discussion?
  • Buy-in:Is every team member fully committed to the team’s goals? Do they understand how their individual contributions align with achieving these goals?
  • Resources: Does the team have the necessary resources in terms of type and quantity to achieve success?
  • Courage: Are there conflicts within the team that require resolution? Is there a psychologically safe environment that encourages productive discussions? Do team members have the courage to voice their opinions, and are these opinions heard and respected?
  • Results:Is the team sufficiently focused on achieving results? Do team members understand how the team’s performance is measured?
  • Team vs. Group: Where does the team lie on the continuum between being a truly interdependent team and a mere collection of independent workers? Determining this helps in identifying the most effective leadership approach.

The Hogan Team Report utilizes team members’ individual Hogan profiles to create a picture of how these different personalities interact. It helps to clarify team roles, and the natural fit between them. It also shows what mix of roles exist on the team, and where there might be gaps or redundancies. A hallmark of the Hogan Assessments is the ability to uncover blind spots and potential derailers of effective team functioning. Using these elements it provides recommendations for changes that will improve team performance.

  • Team Roles – addresses five critical team roles that must be filled for a team to work well together
  • Team Derailers – identifies the barriers that are most likely to hinder team performance
  • Team Culture – addresses ten values that can be used to describe team culture, and a measure of how much members’ values are aligned
  • Individual Scores – allows individual members to explore how they can better contribute to the team

Whether you use the Hogan Team Assessment or The Rocket Model Team Assessment Survey, you will get a holistic picture of your team, and how it can be improved.

To ensure a comprehensive assessment, both the team leader and members participate in the survey. Once completed, team members receive aggregated results, while the leader receives their own individual results as well as the team’s overall findings. I will first review the results with the team leader, providing valuable guidance on interpreting the data.

To further enrich the insights gained from a formal assessment, I recommend supplementing the quantitative results with qualitative data obtained through interviews with the leader and team members. By gaining deeper understanding beyond mere numbers, you can enrich the assessment data and uncover valuable nuances within your team’s dynamics.

Together, we’ll develop a plan tailored to your team’s specific needs, identifying the most effective activities to address areas that require improvement as revealed by the assessment and interviews. Our goal is to unlock your team’s hidden potential and foster continuous growth.

Jeffrey Axelbank