Today’s disruptive business environment has changed how we design and lead organizations. Teams, rather than individuals, are now the building blocks of enterprise success. Leading teams through constant change, however, requires new tools and strategies.
CLA has developed a comprehensive set of solutions to help leaders build high-performing teams in a faster-paced, more complex business landscape.
What Is a Team?
A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, shared performance goals, and an approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. That last element, mutual accountability, is what separates a true team from a group of individuals who happen to report to the same leader.
What Makes Teams Successful
Successful teams combine high engagement with high impact. In our experience, that success rests on five areas:
| Area | What It Includes |
|---|---|
| Connection | Trust, conflict management, communication |
| Attitude | Optimism, competitive spirit, growth mindset |
| Direction | Purpose, priorities, role clarity |
| Adaptability | Customer focus, collaboration, experimentation |
| Performance | Accountability, commitment, decision-making |
Underlying all five is psychological safety. When team members feel safe to speak up, take risks, and admit mistakes, every other capability becomes easier to build.
A Five-Phase Team Development Process
CLA partners with teams using a research-based, five-phase process in which team members work together to explore, prioritize, and address development opportunities.
1. Orient. We start with a chartering meeting with the team leader to define the program’s scope. We then hold an orientation meeting with the full team to review the process, responsibilities, and timing. The result is shared alignment on goals, approach, and role expectations.
2. Discover. We conduct one-on-one interviews with team members and administer a web-based team assessment, with optional individual personality assessments. This gives us an in-depth understanding of the team’s strengths and development opportunities.
3. Align. After sharing preliminary findings with the team leader, we facilitate an alignment workshop where the team explores the assessment results together. The team agrees on specific development opportunities, success measures, targets, and an action plan.
4. Develop. Over roughly six months, we provide ongoing team coaching and development workshops tailored to the team’s needs. Pulse assessments measure progress so the team can pivot as needed, and team members share insights with their own teams. The goal is measurable improvement in both team dynamics and the business outcomes the team has prioritized.
5. Sustain. A transition meeting reviews progress and lessons learned, pinpoints future improvement opportunities, and sets next steps. We reconvene about six weeks later to assess progress, celebrate successes, and refine the team’s action plan.
Tools That Make Team Dynamics Visible
We draw on a set of science-based tools to give teams objective insight into how they work:
- RallyBright Team Platform. Our strategic partner’s web-based platform analyzes a team’s strengths, vulnerabilities, and the behaviors that drive them. Leaders and team members can compare results to benchmarks, build action plans, and track improvement over time.
- ConvoLens. This application lets a team coach capture meeting behaviors that build or erode psychological safety, such as inclusion and interruptions, inquiry versus advocacy, and problem versus solution focus. The data is analyzed in real time, giving the team new insight into its dynamics.
- Team Network Analysis. If formal structures are the theory of how work gets done, informal networks are the real-world practice. Team network analysis shows how team members actually work together to solve problems, share information, and make decisions.
- Self-Service High-Performing Team Toolkit. To scale team development across an entire organization, we build customized toolkits and resource guides that team leaders and members can use on their own.
The Results
In one engagement, the CPG division of a Fortune 100 life sciences company set a goal of increasing sales by 10% through innovative product packaging. The cross-functional team responsible, spanning R&D, marketing, supply chain, and finance, was struggling to execute.
Over nine months, we worked with the team to define and adopt new ways of working. The team improved cross-functional collaboration by 105%, cut new product cycle time by a month and a half, and ultimately increased net sales by $70 million.
Let’s Talk
Contemporary Leadership Advisors has helped hundreds of leadership teams across industries and functions work more effectively. To learn how we can help your teams perform at their best, email us at inquiries@contemporaryleadership.com.