Avoiding the trap of ‘teams’
Team is more than just a word
People don’t understand teams very well. They often wrongly assume a collection of highly-skilled individuals with a common objective, in any environment, ‘makes’ a team. Our teamwork and collaboration services provide solutions to the most common challenges we hear from leaders in the course of our work: How can groups of talented people be converted into the high-functioning teams essential for sustained success through times of disruption?
Our services for creating high-performing teams
A key first step in creating teams is understanding the shape of teamwork and collaboration within an organisation’s culture. Our Organisational Diagnostic gathers data to identify the root causes of team-related challenges. APS utilises qualitative and quantitative data to form recommendations and an implementation plan for transforming groups into optimal teams.
Leading Remote Teams is one of our 3-session Connected Leaders Series that focuses specifically on how leaders need to adapt their management style to accommodate the new world of Working From Home. This session supports leaders with the ongoing challenge of leading remote teams by enhancing technical, interpersonal, and operational expertise.
The Big Question
Our Big Question format provides 25 minutes of insights and 30 minutes of Q&A around a topic co-created with you on a subject that is contextually relevant to your organisation. Want to know the characteristics of optimal teams and how to embed them? Are there new collaboration challenges because of at-home working? The Big Question can address these questions and more.
Our Developing High Performing Teams masterclass teaches leaders how to apply an operational model that will develop the individuals they lead into teams, paving the way for high performance. Other sessions cover areas that may not at first seem to have a direct link to improving teamwork — ranging from inclusive leadership to techniques for managing difficult conversations.
When a more robust intervention for improving teamwork is required, we turn to our Anatomy of a Team workshop. Anatomy of a Team is an interactive session where participants learn about the inherent functional advantages of ‘optimised’ teams versus ‘high-functioning’ ones. The nature of the course will leave managers with an understanding of how they need to evolve to be a team leader, and leave leaders with the imperative to transform their groups into teams.
Our clients often need strategic support and insight for channeling efforts to improve teamwork and collaboration across their organisation. We can provide advisory to any stakeholders, including Board and C-Suite level. We are routinely called upon by People Leaders to provide an external voice to help drive internal culture objectives.
Speeches by John Amaechi provide thought-leadership and insight into the performance advantages gained by creating high-performing optimal teams. Our Everyday Jedi can provide a much-needed jump-start to your collaboration efforts and understanding about why creating actual teams helps organisations win.
Most people in work don’t realise that they are not, and probably never have been, on a fully-optimised team. There are functional and behavioural differences between ‘self-directed workers’ and ‘optimised teams.’ Our services can help identify where specific business functions sit on our groups-to-teams continuum and devise solutions to help move towards optimal teamwork.