The Mystery of Teams

Effective teams — a concept so important — and so difficult — that one very successful organization has a sixteen-week team skills program that is classified as “company confidential.”  The organization considers it to be a competitive advantage.

Because of our career-long affinity for experiential learning, teamwork has always been key to all of our programs,  In one of our programs, The Management Journey, it was an underlying theme for all other topics.  In almost every one of our individual programs, there are team exercises and a focus on team learning.

At the same time, we’ve conducted a wide variety of specific team skills or team-building programs.  We used a wide variety of “team simulations,” those entertaining — but unbelievably powerful when facilitated properly — survival simulations.  We work with assessments of team effectiveness, connections between teamwork and measures of personal or management style.  We’ve even co-facilitated using programs like de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats with professional “ropes course”  facilitators.