Leadership Team Development: A High-Performing, Cohesive Team Produces Results in Norfolk, VA

Proven Team Training and Team Assessment that Enables Cross-Functional Teams to Meet Business Goals in the Norfolk area

Behind every successful company lies a cohesive, streamlined executive team and equally cohesive work teams. When team members at every level work competently with one another, they drive overall growth and create a great working culture where employees can thrive. One of the most effective ways to cultivate success is to invest in a custom team-training program for your managers or cross-functional teams. A tailor-made training program builds on each participant’s strengths, helping your working teams collaborate comfortably and complete projects efficiently.

What Does an Effective Team Look Like?

An effective team is a collaborative unit that's able to work toward a common goal successfully. If your team is dysfunctional in any way, you'll see a failure to meet your goals or a delay in meeting them, as well as fractured relationships and non-productive interaction between team members.

Turnkey Coaching and Development Solution's team development program focusing on the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team provides a highly useful metric by which to evaluate your own work team or leadership team.

Do the members of your team trust one another? Do they communicate with transparency and honesty, or do individuals try to protect themselves, often at the expense of others on the team? Once your team members are able to be vulnerable with each other, they can provide the support needed to reach common goals.
Do the members of your team thrive in an atmosphere of healthy and supportive conflict? Are they able to address ideas constructively and honestly? Teams that are afraid of conflict often hinder their ability to create something exciting and to solve intractable problems, whereas teams that have learned to listen to the alternative points of view that arise during healthy conflict can move on to constructive solutions.
Are the members of your team afraid to commit to decisions? Do they hesitate to come to a conclusion or even to state a clear opinion, perhaps out of fear that they'll be censured or mocked? If your leadership team has all the data and experience it needs, but they can't reach a decision, no plan of action can be executed.
Does your team hold one another accountable for measurable results? Do they meet deadlines effectively, or do you hear countless excuses as to why an action item couldn't be accomplished? Team members that trust each other, that have explored all the options together, and that have committed to a clear and actionable plan are able to encourage each other toward completion because they share a desire for mutual success.
Does your team have its eyes on the final goal? Do the members of your leadership team (or cross-functional team) know what they want to accomplish individually and collectively? Once you have the fundamental team development building blocks in place, your team can achieve the results they once only dreamed of.

In 2012, Google began a new research project in team development, which it dubbed Project Aristotle. The Googlers studied 180 productive, effective teams but couldn't figure out what they had in common. Was it hierarchical structure? No. Did the team members have compatible backgrounds or personality types? Sometimes, but not always. Were all the team members friends who hung out together after work? Again, sometimes.

The Google researchers drilled deeper and deeper, finally discovering the one element that all great teams share: psychological safety.

According to Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, psychological safety is the "shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking." To reach a point of psychological safety, trust is vital, as is the ability to disagree in a healthy manner.
The Project Aristotle researchers then looked at how psychological safety manifests itself in healthy teams, highlighting two defining factors that show up in the give-and-take of the top productive teams.

Social Sensitivity. In top teams, all the members are honest about their emotional states and moods, and they're considerate of each other in this regard.
Turn-taking. All members of an effective team end up participating to the same extent. This is especially crucial when a team is dealing with conflicts.
When psychological safety exists, individual team members are free to bring their very best contributions to the table. The team then becomes greater than the sum of its individual parts, and it is able to deal with conflict in a healthy manner and stay focused on its task.

Grow your business, empower your staff and experience genuine success with a custom-built team development program from Turnkey Coaching & Development Solutions. Talk to an expert today - 281-469-4244.

How Can You Evaluate Your Team?

Your team development program must include a way to assess whether your development efforts are working. The Harvard Business Review recommends paying attention to the team's output and the ability of the team to collaborate, as well as individual assessments of each of the team members.

The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team Progress Report provides a template for just such an assessment, allowing you to pinpoint areas of improvement to celebrate and build on as well as those ways in which your team still needs to improve.

If a team is truly working together in a relationship of mutual accountability, the Progress Report makes that clear. It also shows obstacles to development and paves the way for team members to assess their own collaboration.

Why Team Training Works

We believe team-building is an ongoing process, and more effective teams mean more productive employees. For example, managers usually don't inherently know how to effectively motivate their employees or foster a team that's cohesive and works together well. That's what our research-backed team development program is for. The members of a cohesive team have confidence in its abilities and productiveness. They also:

Have an ability to make sound decisions
Utilize the skills and talents of all members
Celebrate each other's successes
Raise concerns when there are problems
Hold each other accountable for mistakes
Don't waste time with politics, confusion or discussing what doesn't matter

When leaders are properly trained, they have the skills to motivate and inspire their teams, resulting in increased work production and company profitability. And, when team-members understand how to improve their interpersonal effectiveness within the team, the team itself becomes an organization's most prized assets.

This type of staff training is effective because it pinpoints the major pitfalls that exist within ineffective teams and replaces them with positive behaviors. It also motivates team members who may be low performers or disengaged, two unhealthy characteristics of team members.

Where Team-Building Programs Take Place

The answer is — everywhere. We provide client-focused team-building programs all over the country, so chances are, there's a team development program available in your area. The result of your time and investment is a more cohesive, productive team that's able to take on multiple challenges, regardless of your industry.

What We Are and What We Are Not

We are not a company that provides week-long or day-long retreats that HR managers attend with other managers. This is not what the "Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team" philosophy is about. Instead, we deliver customized, focused assistance and team training for intact professional teams. This includes managers and the employees who work for them. We design individual programs to suit each client's requirements and goals to fix major issues that need addressing. A typical session involves between 6 and 40 employees, depending on the size of the organization.

You Can't Put a Price on Effective Communication

The bottom of the pyramid of the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team features a foundation of trust, and the key component of this is good communication. An ineffective teammate doesn't communicate well. In cases like this, team members may not know what is expected of them, resulting in conflict, increased difficulty with accomplishing tasks and, ultimately, a professional team that's unproductive and a poor contributor to the success of the company. This is yet another reason why our team-building and team training solution is valuable.

The Team Development Program That Moves Your Team Forward

The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team leadership team training and development program is tailored to meet your organization's very specific and unique needs and culture. Through training, coaching and team development, you can facilitate trust, strengthen your team members’ ability to deal with conflicts, and their collaborative skills, all of which come together to produce the results you want your executive and work teams to achieve.

When you're able to harness the talents and personalities of your team members to work together cohesively toward a common goal, everyone benefits. Imagine your team making smart decisions together, tapping into each person's special abilities, and staying focused cooperatively to get results. That's the kind of teamwork that provides your organization with the ability to compete at its best.

The best team development strategies help your team understand its individual and group strengths. A customized team development program that focuses on proven processes and factors crucial for success, can help your team make the needed improvements to perform, thrive and succeed at higher levels.