Having smart people with great experience often isn’t enough to tackle the big challenges that organizations face.
To win, those smart people need to work collaboratively, build trusting relationships, articulate clear objectives, understand roles and responsibilities, envision a path forward, align resources and interests, and then get things done. It sounds straightforward, but it rarely is. With lots of different ideas, interests, strengths, challenges, and egos involved, the path can be very murky.
Customized team development helps teams operate more effectively.
Together, the team and Boda coaches navigate both the dynamics of the team and real business issues. We don’t just teach the theory of how teams work or why they get stuck. We take a hands-on approach, working through the team’s actual priorities and challenges, and asking them to be aware of the content of the discussions as well as the way they are having them. The focus is on what’s happening today, what the team needs to accomplish, and how the team needs to operate to achieve its goals.
We examine the gap between the team’s current reality and where they need to go. Then we help close the gap.
The result is a team with a shared purpose, stronger relationships, a better way of working with each other, and renewed optimism about what’s possible.
This process takes time. It’s one thing to understand how mindset and behavior need to change, and another to make the new mindset and behavior your standard operating procedure. It takes iteration: discovery, idea generation, experimentation, dialogue, feedback, course correction, re-envisioning the end goal, modifying plans, and more feedback.
“Individual reasoning and talent contribute far less to team success than one might expect. The best way to build a great team is not to select individuals for their smarts or accomplishments but to learn how they communicate and to shape and guide the team so that it follows successful communication patterns.”
– Sandy Pentland, MIT, Harvard Business Review
Team development is valuable when a team:
- Experiences a composition change—intentionally or unintentionally
- Gets a new leader
- Pursues a new opportunity or challenge
- Isn’t working well together
- Experiences a failure, setback, or challenge
- Wants to change how it operates
Regardless of the reason a team embarks on team development, the results are the same: