TEAM DEVELOPMENT

SHAPING COOPERATION

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COMMITMENT AND COOPERATION
TO ACHIEVE COMMON GOALS

The central reason for the existence of organizations and companies is to shape people’s cooperation in such a way that the total output is more than the sum of individual contributions. As long as the cooperation works well, all employees are committed and fulfilled. The result: good performance.

Often enough, though, team performance does not match expectations, cooperation falters and everyone in the team feels less satisfied. In the worst case, this can lead to recriminations and conflicts. The solution: Effective team development measures allow teams to return to their old strengths, to grow beyond them and reach a completely new level of performance.

WHY TEAM DEVELOPMENT IS SO IMPORTANT

There are many reasons in favour of investing in team development, and they often occur together:

  • Optimal support of new teams or team constellations
  • Strengthening of cooperation and commitment in the team
  • Improving conflict management within the team
  • Establishing a common learning basis
  • Addressing social and emotional aspects in an effective way
  • Overcoming concrete challenges, e.g. resource bottlenecks or implementation of virtual teams
  • Creating a better working atmosphere , and enhancing employer competitiveness

Teams and individuals are having to meet more and more often in changing team constellations. The reason: Both operational work and project work is now more flexible than ever - in some cases across departments or even beyond the boundaries of the company. So it makes a lot of sense to promote skills and establish measures that quickly lead to good performance.

ONE TEAM, MANY ASPECTS: ACHIEVING MORE TOGETHER

We accompany and advise teams and their managers to enable sustainable and effective cooperation. We do this by concentrating on the relationships between the team members, their individual personalities, the culture of cooperation and the goals of the respective team. Team development design can vary according to context. From on-site support in everyday work to team coaching, training and workshops for specific occasions – there are many different ways of providing for beneficial impulses.

Analysis
OCI ANALYSIS

Use the OCI© for cultural analysis and improvement in your team, department or company. Let our accredited Human Synergistics consultants support your work.

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CIDPARTNERS: TEAM DEVELOPMENT AS A TEAM DISCIPLINE

Our work brings us into contact with many teams. We meet people with different professional and cultural backgrounds and different talents and characters. For us, this diversity and the resulting wealth of perspectives is an important driver for innovation and problem solving. At the same time, it is important to make diversity work for the team and to release energy through well-designed cooperation.

We have gained hands-on experience of a wide range of real teamwork in a variety of industries. So we know a lot about the challenges and difficulties of team building and teamwork. Regardless of where your team stands: We support you in developing cooperation and activating potential.

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We look forward to hearing from you if you have any questions, would like to learn more about our services or would like to get to know us.

STEP BY STEP: HOW WE DESIGN OUR WORK WITH TEAMS

  • Establish contact and find out where the team currently stands
  • Focus on intentions and goals and gain an understanding of the context
  • Plan and iteratively implement interventions
  • Impart skills and methods and supervise their initial implementation
  • Resolve conflicts or issues hanging over from the past (if necessary)
  • Establish reflection loops and systematically anchor continuous development within the team

An important aspect: We also individually accompany and advise the respective managers as required, because leadership (e.g. by the team leader) also plays a decisive role in team development.

OUR WORK WITH TEAMS

High-Performance
LEARN MORE

Peak power as a result of good cooperation does not come about by magic. Performance has been the subject of much research and there is a lot of reliable information available. Is your team ready for the next level?
Virtual
Teams
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Across locations, across company borders, in different countries or in the context of a home office: virtual cooperation is on the rise. We help you to achieve successful virtual teamwork.
Team Coaching
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Team coaching is all about supporting a new or established team in terms of cooperation in the pursuit of the common goals.

TEN SUCCESS FACTORS FOR GOOD TEAMWORK

Turning a group of people into a genuine team delivering high performance is no easy task. Integrating these ten success factors into your team development programme is a reliable recipe:

1. TRUST, APPRECIATION AND RESPECT

Trust forms the basis for good teamwork. Building trust sounds easy, but maintaining and cultivating the trust that has already been built up requires mutual respect and consideration. A lack of trust in the team inevitably leads to a decline in communication, openness and multi-perspectivity. This weakens innovation and problem-solving skills.

2. A COMMON UNDERSTANDING OF OBJECTIVES

Pulling together is easiest if everyone pulls in the same direction. In our experience, a common understanding of goals is not always possible - often because goals can change rapidly in today's fast-paced world. Appropriate meeting formats contribute to a common understanding of goals, as do frameworks specifically designed to achieve them such as OKRs: Objectives and Key Results (a goal management system that helps organizations and their members implement strategies).

3. OPEN EXCHANGE

Asking questions often entails questioning the status quo or revealing gaps in one’s own knowledge. In good teams this is no problem, because there is a culture of trust and the old adage that “There is no such thing as a wrong question ...” is taken seriously. Because the right question at the right time may lead to a change in course, avoid extra work or duplication of effort and it stimulates thinking and innovation. The more occasions for open exchange and communication within the team, the better. The right format leads to effective focussing and prevents timewasting.

4. CAPACITY TO MANAGE CONFLICT

How easy is it for people in a team to deal with different perspectives and to think through thoughts that do not correspond to their own? Or do new ideas regularly get sidelined? Only when all perspectives are openly discussed and the thoughts of everyone in the team are listened to respectfully is effective decision-making possible. Even if this does not fully correspond with one's own convictions.

5. DIVERSITY

How do my colleagues really tick? What triggers which reaction in whom? What should I pay attention to? Which tasks in the team should be the responsibility of whom? The more different people are, the more important it is to know what is important to them. With the appropriate analysis instruments, even sensitive topics – for instance ones involving different cultural backgrounds – can be discussed and common vocabularies can be found. And by the way: Learning more about oneself is fun and promotes one’s own personal development.

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Dominique Wirl has a fine feeling for interpersonal interaction and keeps the big picture in view even in confusing moments.

Dominique Wirl

Consultant

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6. PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

Building personal relationships and finding trust in each other is a process that goes through different phases again and again. Awareness of these phases is important for understanding what is happening in the team. The Tuckman phase model (Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing) can be used as an orientation, for example. Team-building activities make the phases visible and can accelerate the transition to high-performance team phases. The team-building activities for the team in question should be selected according to needs.

7. GOOD WORKING ENVIRONMENT

A team depends on a suitable working environment. The team itself knows best what is suitable. It is enormously helpful in many contexts to review and develop the working environment at regular intervals. Involving the team itself is especially important here.

8. JOINT DECISION MAKING

Countless small and large decisions are made every working day. It is important that all necessary information is readily available to the decision-makers. Regardless of how the decision-making process is precisely designed, it should be known to all so that everyone can participate. In order to promote collective intelligence, it can be beneficial to review existing decision-making processes and align them with the needs of the team.

9. REGULAR EXCHANGE

Regular retrospectives create learning loops and allow everyone in the team to get involved and address open issues and needs. Such loops can help to prevent unhelpful behaviour patterns from developing.

10. NEUTRAL VIEW FROM OUTSIDE

Social systems are complex and interrelationships and behavioural patterns are not always directly recognizable from ‘inside the box’, hence the expression ‘operational blindness’. Letting an impartial observer air their views can reveal new perspectives and open up new approaches to solutions, especially in terms of team development.