Building Better Teams

Course details

• Take Your Office Skills to the Next Level,and Gain the vital skills you need to BE a team player.
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Teams have become a principle building block of successful organizations. This workshop is a basic course for team leaders and team members, designed to focus on the characteristics of an effective team player and the elements of an effective team. You will leave the workshop with plans for your personal development as a team player and ideas for developing your back-home team.

A critical element of this workshop is the Glen Parker Team Player Survey (PTPS), an 18 item self-assessment instrument that will help you identify your primary team player style, help you increase your personal effectiveness in team situations, and help you effectively develop your group into a high performing team

Workshop Topics

• The PTPS will give you useful feedback about your team player style.
• Identify ways you will want to change to improve your team player style.
• Better understand and appreciate differences among team members.
• Identify those ways your team must improve to be more effective.
• Develop an action plan for those improvements

Course Outline

• Your team player style
• The strengths of each style
• The challenges for each style
• Establishing team norms
• Building team trust
• Working through the stages of team development
• Communication skills
• Introduction and Course Overview
• You will spend the first part of the day getting to know participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Students will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.
• Defining Teams
• To get started, you will guide participants to define what a team is and what different kinds of teams there are. You will also have participants demonstrate synergy through a simple exercise.
• Establishing Team Norms
• This session will look at some of the benefits and pitfalls of teams. We will also discuss establishing team norms: ground rules that a team can use to help them work together.
• Working as a Team
• During this session, you will have participants look at a tool called the Gradients of Agreement. You will also discuss how it can help them interact with their teammates.
• Glenn Parker Team Survey
• During this session, participants will complete a survey constructed by Glenn Parker, a business consultant who has done a great deal of research on teams. This survey will help participants identify their team player style. Participants will then work in small groups to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their style.
• Building Team Trust
• Trust is one of those mainstay virtues. It is the bond that allows any kind of significant relationship to exist between people. In small groups, participants will discuss some basic ways to establish and build trust on their team.
• The Stages of Team Development
• Every group of people, whether they are a team or just a group working together, grows and evolves. We will spend this session looking at Tuckman and Jensen’s four stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, and performing.
• Towers
• Another way of looking at team development is the TORI model. Participants will experience this model through a fun exercise.
• Communication
• If a team is going to succeed, they must be able to communicate well with each other. This session will cover some basic principles of communication.
• Becoming a Good Team Player
• There are some skills that participants can develop to become better team players. In this session, we will discuss some Really Useful Attitudes and some Really Useless Attitudes.
• Workshop Wrap-Up
• At the end of the day, students will have an opportunity to ask questions and fill out an action plan.