Executive Team Building...



Business Challenge

Senior executives know that conflict over issues is natural and even necessary. Executive teams that challenge one another’s thinking develop a more complete understanding of their choices, create a richer range of options and ultimately make better decisions. The challenge is to keep the team working together without degenerating into interpersonal conflict.


Program

A highly interactive workshop and follow-on coaching provide the basic skills necessary to become both a successful team member and an interactive team leader. The program covers the stages of team development so that a firm basis of trust is established within the team.

The process begins with extensive up front assessment, including one-on-one interviews with leadership and members of representative sections of the organization further down. Following assessment and review of results, PeopleSavvy works with senior leadership to establish a written, objective outcome list for the workshop and the follow-on process. These include a set of behavior guidelines for leadership.

The workshop itself is participatory and experiential. Periodic follow-on consists of one-on-one telephone coaching, conference calls as needed and short workshop sessions. Follow-on tracks action plans and progress throughout the organization in establishing greater cross-functional closure, coordination, performance and accountability.


Key Content

The following are content highlights of the Executive Team Building program:
  • Leverage a proven model of effective interpersonal skills that is based on two decades of research. 
  • Analyze real-time job situations and challenges 
  • Practice and enhance effective interpersonal skills in one-on-one and group opportunities 
  • Gain immediate feedback and coaching from both peers and SCG coaches. Throughout the learning session, executives will acquire insight on how their interactions impact others and how they can enhance their skills to get the desired results. After the session, executive coaches can provide personal follow up, advice and confidential guidance around future interaction challenges. 
  • Executive team issues and how to resolve them 
  • The team life cycle Group process - both task and maintenance functions 
  • Team roles 
  • Communication skills 
  • Team conflict resolution

Target Audience

Executive Team Building is for the senior executive team.


Outcomes

In addition to realizing immediate improvements to critical discussions and employee interactions, the organization will gain the following long-term benefits:
  • Increased commitment at all levels of the organization to executing the business strategy and goals 
  • Higher levels of belief and trust in executives 
  • Reduced turnover of high-performing talent 
  • Decreased executive failure and derailment, providing longer-term stability at the top of the organization 
  • Identification of benefits and characteristics of an effective executive team 
  • Enhanced group communication and problem-solving skills that boosts team productivity 
  • Assessment of your own effectiveness as a team member 
  • Identification of key issues that affect executive teams 
  • Resolution of non-team behaviors that occur in executive teams 
  • Resolution of conflict in a team environment 
  • Identification of success factors for executive teams Analyze team performance and measure team effectiveness 
  • Establishment of increased coordination, closure and accountability within the leadership team

Working with current objectives, leadership reviews and uses all information and skills necessary to earn trust with each other and the organization at large. Leadership creates specific, cross-functional action plans for successful execution. Participants learn which climate and cultural elements exist today in the organization that impede and enhance trust-based performance. Participants then create and practice the elements for improvement, and establish the basis for getting buy-in in stages from the entire organization.

The result is a major and immediate improvement in leadership performance, coordination and success. It establishes the basis for a major and nearly immediate improvement in true leadership and accountability organization-wide.


Program Duration

We have found over the years that the process requires very little training time but must be followed closely for 18-24 months.

Assessment can often be accomplished over a two-week period. Foundation workshops for the senior management group are 1-2 days. In person follow-up sessions for senior management are usually bimonthly or quarterly for 2 hours or so. PeopleSavvy usually provides telephone coaching and conferencing in between these sessions.

Foundation workshops for groups and departments further down the organization (the buy-in process) usually last one day. Follow-up sessions for these groups and departments are usually one half-day and are scheduled twice a year for one to two years.

The Executive's Role in Team Building

We do not see team building as an event, but as a process, even though off-site team-building "events" can be useful tools for kicking off a change process and/or disrupting harmful and negative group behavior patterns that occur in everyday work life in the office or at client sites.

Teams, like houses, must be constructed one step at a time. The most important thing an executive who wants to build a team can do is to practice the principles of executive community on a consistent basis. This means always looking for ways to gather and then put to use input and suggestions from staff, creating harmony between different divisions and departments of the organization, acting as a responsible member of the management team, and partnering with other executives, within and outside the organization, to achieve the objectives of the long-term corporate strategy and vision.


Our Role in Team Building

As external consultants, we see our role as finding creative ways to partner with our clients on the inside of their organization to create community and teamwork at all levels. In addition to our executive and assessment processes that create the readiness infrastructure for successful organizational change management, we custom design and present off-site events that are designed to examine current team functioning, paint a picture for what it could be like, and collaborate to concretely move people toward their collective vision.

We use a wide variety of tools and processes, including role plays, dialogue, games, and other forms of interactive, experiential team building activities. As always, we rely heavily on assessment instruments both before and after these events to ensure that we are basing our intervention on real understanding.



  Contact us for more info