Team Performance

The Context: In today's business landscape, the lion share of time and efforts of all employees is spent in team activities. These activities present opportunities to brainstorm solutions to problems, to make decisions, to plan projects and to assess progress in enterprise wide initiatives.

Team meetings and team interactions either lubricate or impede the organizational engine. These are the events that may trigger conflict or build trust. The members of the team face innumerable challenges in making their team perform well.  Leaders and organizations that help teams perform better exponentially increase their opportunities for organizational success.

The Solution: At NovAspire, Inc. we utilize our knowledge and skills to observe teams in action. We use multifaceted assessment tools to measure the effectiveness of team processes and diagnose the barriers for performance. We then facilitate actions and interventions to get the team to a higher level of performance. We connect the team with its leader/sponsor through practical recommendations and suggestions for the team’s success.

Multi-rater team assessment.  As executives need the benefit of feedback to assess their effectiveness, teams also stand to benefit a look in the mirror. That look often can catalyze changes that need to be made for the improvement of team functioning. Collection of anonymous data becomes the catalyst for delivering needed feedback to the participants. We present the collective data and feedback to the team. We ensure an environment of trust and respect as we  stimulate conversations, so that team members come up with suggestions for the improvement of team processes and results.

Representative interventions we use include:

• Building team cohesion. Cementing the contract of the team with the sponsoring executive, defining outcomes, clarifying roles, facilitating decision making protocols and coaching on how to manage conflicts.
• Coaching teams in project management.  Helping the team to pick the right team member for the right job, creating strategies on how to handle challenging events such as meetings with internal or external customers. Also, utilizing force field analysis, to identify and leverage allies while neutralizing forces opposing the project.
• Communications coaching.  Making sure that team members have the competencies of soliciting and providing feedback to teammates and staff or customers external to the team.  Observing for the content and the dynamics of how information is shared in the team and finding opportunities for increased effectiveness of communications among team members.  Facilitating the protocol of communications between the team and its leader/sponsor.
• Coaching teams in how to plan, prepare, and hold effective meetings. Coaching participants to contribute to the meeting agenda, and introducing rotation of meeting facilitation, when feasible. Coaching team facilitators how to engage everyone and secure their input.