Team building skills training

What we mean by team building is not the process of assembling a new team by recruiting a good combination of personality types and strengths.  That’s not our field.  The team building we’re talking about how to optimise the performance of your existing team. 

Our approach to team building is simple and practical.  Invite the team to do its own trouble-shooting, in other words to run team meetings which concentrate on answering two questions:

1. What specific obstacles, if any, are preventing us from working really well as a team?
2. How can we overcome those obstacles?

What might prevent this approach from working?  A common answer to this question is lack of basic communicating skills - they haven’t learned how to:

• talk and listen effectively to each other,
• confront problems and difficulties together in an atmosphere of mutual respect and understanding,
• resolve disagreements creatively. 

The result is they’re paralysed by disagreements and difficulties.  If that’s the case, training them in basic communicating skills would be a good start to team building.  The skills taught by the Skills with People course are simple and powerfully on the nail for team building.  You could attend the Skills with People course yourself and then, perhaps, with the skills and insights you have acquired, coach the team yourself. 

Alternatively, after you’ve been through the course yourself, ask us to do some in-company communication skills training for the team.  After that both you and they will be ready to go ahead with the team building plan.  See Skills with People course contents. (See also Team development).