Team Development: leads to Better team functioning

Kate was contracted to work with a multi-disciplinary leadership team that was low performance, adversarial, and not able to come to agreement on any topic, resulting in the inability to move forward on even basic low priority tasks.

She was able to turn this team around to cohesion and improved functioning in less than a year. The leadership team change model was based on achievement of identified outcomes, and then working backwards to the current situation.

Initial steps were to build a trusting relationship with the team lead (the client), while not being seen as overly aligned with any one person. Initial strategies focused on regaining control of meetings and interactions between team members, for example by structuring the agenda and planning enough time for each person to speak forced tensions and feelings to the surface. The client was coached on how to manage the tension and feelings, including when to be direct about the underlying barriers to better team functioning.

Kate was able to facilitate the entire team through tension points to resolution, resulting in progressive improvements in functioning. This became pertinent as the team then was tasked with difficult decisions regarding sustainability of outcomes.