Teamwork Skills Training for Managers and Professionals

How the skills you'll practise on this course will make you much more successful at developing teamwork

Here's a case study of how this course helped someone who had been told that she needed to be more effective in developing her teamwork. She was a senior manager, earmarked for promotion, very task oriented, very analytical and logical. She knew she wasn’t getting the best out of some of her team and that some of them were unhappy, but she didn’t know how to tackle it. There were complaints from people who felt that she had a down on them, that she put them under pressure and didn’t seem to care. Her boss, for the sake of her career, was keen for her both to succeed and to be seen to succeed in overcoming the problem.

Her approach before coming on this teamwork skills training course

She was secretly sensitive to emotional atmosphere but uncomfortable when feelings were openly displayed either by herself or by others. She was sharply aware of people’s feelings, and actually cared a great deal when they felt bad. But whenever she tried to get to the bottom of their problems she made them feel worse, first because she stuck exclusively to facts and showed no interest in their feelings, and second because she never revealed her own feelings, which left them guessing and seemed to imply that she disapproved. They consequently perceived her as cold, unfeeling and intimidating. When she discovered this it was a shock to her, because it was so different from how she thought of herself. To overcome the problem she was going to have to learn how to talk both about her own feelings and other people’s feelings, and after a lifetime of keeping feelings out of her conversations this was not going to be easy.

Mental habits that were getting in the way of her teamwork skills

It was bound to be difficult initially for her to learn to talk about feelings. That's because the habit of avoiding feelings was based on a fear that many people share, that if feelings are expressed they get out of control. The habit was based on two common assumptions, first, that if you want to be, and be seen to be, competent and professional you have to stick to reason, fact and logic and avoid “becoming emotional” or “irrational”, and, second, that the way to avoid being emotional or irrational is to prevent feelings from being expressed. What actually happens when you try to prevent feelings from being expressed is the very thing you are trying to avoid. The feelings build up inside and you end up being even more tense and even more at odds with the people around you. That's exactly what she was experiencing.

New teamwork skills that made her more successful at developing teamwork in her team

First she needed help to think about her underlying assumptions and fears so that she could challenge them. Then she needed to be shown a calm, safe and professional method of discussing her own and other people’s feelings. Then she needed opportunities to practise doing it in a safe and confidential atmosphere where she could take the risk of doing something she was nervous of doing at work, until she began to feel less uncomfortable doing it. Finally she needed to start to put it into practice back at work. When she did so she was enormously relieved and encouraged, because she found her team responded warmly to her. By learning to communicate about feelings she had learned how to create an atmosphere of mutual understanding, respect and trust in her department.

How she put into practice the teamwork skills she had learned on this training course

She called the team together and told them she had been learning some valuable lessons about her own style of management and its effect on people.  She said she could now see how her style had created tension and problems for them, but that she wanted to change her style, and was now asking for their help in doing so.  She said she thought everyone would benefit if they could develop better teamwork in the department.

She invited them to take part in a meeting to discuss teamwork in the department, what was getting in the way, and how those obstacles could be overcome. She invited them to be honest, promising that nothing they said would be held against them. Before launching into the discussion she asked them to take five minutes to think quietly on their own and make a private note of their thoughts.  The questions she asked them to think about were:-

• How satisfied are you with our teamwork? (Please score your satisfaction on a scale of 0-100.)
• What's behind your score? (In other words, what specifically are you satisfied with, and what specifically are you dissatisfied with?)

When everyone had finished writing she invited them to jump in and speak. She listened with empathy to each one as they spoke, with the result that even though some tough things were being said, a very relaxed and encouraging atmosphere was created in the meeting. What came out of the discussion was a list of the main obstacles to teamwork in the department. She then invited the group to put their minds together on this question:-

• What practical steps can we take to remove these obstacles in order to be more successful as a team?

If you can get your team honestly discussing these simple questions together, no holds barred, there's  your team building.

More reasons why you might benefit from this teamwork skills training course

• You need to turn a group of separate individuals into an effective team, but you're not sure how to go about it.
• You need your team to be more positive, imaginative and creative, to be more open to change, less stuck in a rut.
• You'd like to produce a more mutually encouraging and helpful team atmosphere in your department. You think that would be both more productive and more fun.
• The current atmosphere in the department is not getting the best out of the team.