Team Development to Build Productivity, Innovation, Creativity, Agility, and Safety (the PICAS Factors)

Building Team Relationships and Operating Processes to Enable Strong Results

D&I issue

Do any of these team development or team operation situations sound familiar?

We have a great diverse team. We need to boost its productivity and innovation.
I need some team building here.
How do I improve my leadership team’s effectiveness?
An executive needs coaching to lead a new diverse or global team.
How can I build team motivation and cohesion?

Conflict is hurting the team; communication and teamwork are broken.
We need to communicate better around here.
We have too many silos in this organization; we need better teamwork.
How do I overcome some team members' difficult behavior and reduce team conflict?

Teams must focus both on "what" they need to get done and "how" they will work together. Most teams neglect the "how" dimension, which has three layers as shown below:

A summary of the three layers of building blocks for successful teams

When teams neglect the "how," they fail to develop deeper relationships and mutual trust. This leads to ineffective communication, lack of teamwork, and insufficient alignment on the team’s business purpose and method of operation. In short, its operating work processes are insufficient to meet the team's needs.

The business impact may be profound. The unpleasant possibilities include: The team fails to meet its schedule. Productivity, innovation, and quality suffer. Morale sinks. People feel demotivated.

D&I solution

Effective team building and development avoids or eliminates these problems. This enables the team to move beyond "conflict resolution strategies" to harness their diverse perspectives and styles to build productivity and innovation and improve the team's business results!

teams_development_conflict_management

Developing strong relationships enables more-authentic communication and a deeper understanding of each other's needs and perspectives. This in turn builds trust, as indicated in the first figure above. The base of strong relationships and trust allow a team to examine its operating processes. By then members will naturally want to ensure that "how" the team works meets the needs of every member and maximizes productivity and innovation.

Listen to Peter Bye, President of MDB Group, discuss these issues in a blog radio interview about virtual teams, although the comments are relevant for all teams (11:35 flash audio or podcast):

Listen to an audio overview
Subscribe to a podcast

To maximize productivity, innovation, creativity, agility, and safety (the PICAS factors), all teams must address both their intercultural expertise in working with people of different backgrounds and their "operating processes."

MDB Group can assist you with all aspects of team development:

Intercultural Expertise	Team Operating Processes
Build their skills at working with people having different perspectives, ideas, approaches to interacting with colleagues and doing their work, and communication styles.	Reach "alignment" on the issue being addressed and the needed business outcomes. Decide how they will discuss issues, include everyone’s input, and make decisions.
MDB Group uses the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and the Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™ (CWQ) to help a team achieve its needed level of expertise in working with each other and actually drawing upon the team's diversity to achieve its goals: IDI measures and guides development of the team's general mindset regarding diversity and cultural difference. CWQ helps the team become more aware of and make effective use of their culturally-based preferences and tendencies (CBTs).	MDB Group uses the Team Process Questionnaire System (TPQS) to help a team accelerate its development of efficient, effective, culturally-appropriate team operating processes: The Organizational Team Process Questionnaire (OTPQ) and the Global version (GTPQ) focus the team on measuring and continually building its effectiveness and productivity. OTPQ is optimized for teams located entirely within one country and GTPQ is optimized for cross-cultural or global teams.

This is important for all teams, whether consolidated at one geographic location or spread across the globe, whether working together for the first time or having already completed many projects successfully. Each team requires different training depending upon its make-up and history of previous work.

Skill building and development should be integrated with working on the assigned project. This may be done either with a dedicated development meeting or with periodic coaching and development sessions that are part of ongoing team facilitation.

See also: Leverage constructive conflict to build teamwork.

Or just call us or send us your request now!

Sample D&I results

See representative results achieved by MDB Group's principals at Team Building and Development.

Next steps

Please call us so that together we can start building your team’s effectiveness
.

Your business success is our most important objective

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Resource Links

Spotlight on Training & Development

Our D&I training, development, coaching, and keynotes will enable and engage teams to deliver meaningful business results.

MDB Group has special capabilities dedicated to CEOs, senior executives, and Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) and other D&I practitioners. We offer D&I speakers for keynotes, plenary sessions, executive briefings, and more.

Our collaborative up-front planning process helps ensure that we meet your specific business needs. Visit these pages to learn more:

Spotlight on Building Inclusion

Almost all organizations say they want a more-inclusive workplace. Some can define what this looks like. Very few organizations achieve anything close to “full inclusion". Why? It takes a change in mindset about diversity and cultural difference.

Growing an organization and its business through full inclusion typically demands some mix of the PICAS factors (Productivity, Innovation, Creativity, Agility, and Safety). Full inclusion requires cultural and behavioral change from the CEO to the newest employee. To learn more visit these pages: