Team Building

By clearing away barriers to success, helping a team understand the value of each team member, and focusing on an agreed upon target, we forge efficient, interdependent teams that strive as functional wholes to meet their goals. Our methods include processes that allow us to deal within any level of an organization.

Here are some examples of the various issues resolved though our processes. Click on any of the following for the full story.

We taught a team of tax attorneys how to be perceived as business players.

We broke within a university team a long-standing communication bottleneck that was based on suffering in silence.

We empowered a team of nursing managers to confront the complicated politics of a large teaching hospital.

We taught tolerance and listening skills to members of a multi-ethnic, family-run company.

We brought a team of creative loners into the corporate fold.

We solved a multi-national team's email communication problems.

We taught a team of tax attorneys how to be perceived as
business players.

We worked with a team of seventeen tax attorneys at a large oil company who were excellent at their work but not perceived as business people. They floundered when asked to participate in cross-functional meetings. Through role play, using the coach and the VP of the tax department as trainers, we were able to show the group what a business answer sounds like, as opposed to a financial answer. These team members exceeded our expectations in their ability to deal in the complicated political environment that emerges when policy-level members of the organization are present at a meeting. << Back to the top.

We broke within a university team a long-standing communication bottleneck that was based on suffering in silence.

In a large university system we dealt with a team of professionals whose communication had broken down. Since the average length of service of the team members exceeded ten years, our interview process took longer than usual because everyone had a great deal to say. When we all met to work through the feedback, the team at first felt embarrassed but then relieved as we resolved one issue after another. As a result, they became very adept at eliminating their major issues by making a commitment to speak to each other truthfully and courteously as issues arose, rather than letting them age and fester.
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We empowered a team of nursing managers to confront the complicated politics of a large teaching hospital.

We took a team of high-ranking nurse managers and taught them how to be perceived as true managerial professionals within their medical community. The areas we covered were: training their nurses to be professional with doctors who could sometimes be arrogant under pressure; how to act as intermediaries between the patients and staff; and how to motivate nurses who were working longer hours in increasingly complex political situations. This group proved amazingly adept at solving their own problems, once they overcame their reluctance to express those problems fully.
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We taught tolerance and listening skills to members of a multi-ethnic, family-run company.

We helped a circuit board manufacturing plant that suffered from severe cultural friction. The owners and senior management were from the Far East, the middle management was from the Middle East, and the workers in the factory were Mexican-American. Although this was actually quite a warm and successful environment, we had to straighten out the complicated relationship between the five Asian brothers at the top level, including their confusing and conflicting directives to their staffs. We also dealt with middle management's style of loudly voiced commands and last minute madness, and the workers' style of completely disregarding all managers who became irate and raised their voices. We solved these problems by pulling together input from all participants and organizing it for the senior managers to review and strategize. The senior managers quickly put in place clear job descriptions and organization charts, and also initiated and adhered to a policy of courtesy and preparedness at all times.
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We brought a team of creative loners into the corporate fold.

We took a team of young, high-flying creative people who interacted well with each other but poorly with the rest of the corporation and made them more politically conscious. We used 360° feedback to bring the voice of the rest of the organization into the team. When they realized the seriousness and the consistency of the negative messages they were sending to others outside the department, they used their energy and creativity to immediately begin to build bridges to others in their division and to the rest of the corporation. As a result, they became more productive in their communication and more motivated by their improved relationships with others.
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We solved a multi-national team's email communication problems.

We brought together a multi-cultural, French-American team with complicated diversity issues. First, we resolved the protocol issues caused by the logistics of international communication. Since the team mainly communicated through email, we then moved on to the diversity issues that were causing people to misunderstand each other. We encouraged more direct phone contact when the issues on the table caused personal disagreement. We also put some rules in place that eliminated the use of capital letters and flaming. As a result, the team was able to eliminate the irritating barriers to effective communication and became more productive.
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