Team Development - A Fresh Approach!

I have been experimenting lately with a new form of team development combining three successful and time tested methodologies:

• Action Research
• Story Editing / Story Prompting
• The Drexler Sibbet Model

Here’s the technique in a nutshell:

• The team and the team leader contracts with me to create an experiment to improve their team performance significantly
• We all agree to use an Action Research Design and to jointly design and conduct the research and the intervention.
• We make use of the Drexler Sibbet Team Performance Inventory to collect and publish the “current reality” for the team. This inventory reports how well the team has resolved the critical issues relative to developing a high performance culture. It also significant insights into current group dynamics that may be helping or hindering team performance. Finally it helps to create a positive and safe atmosphere where tough discussion topics can be aired and resolved. This work typically takes one day.
• The second day we frame up where we are and where we want to go. To get there we use several powerful story-editing techniques that we have developed over years of practice. These exercises, performed in small groups, create a reframing experience for the team, based on positive norms developed in small groups. Our experience has been that the norms created in the small groups carry over to the large group. The story-editing sets in motion a series of positive actions based on  strengths that enables the team to redirect itself and create highly positive outcomes. The team acts together to bring the new story into being. The whole process is fueled by discovery combined with creation. Its differs dramatically from the old problem solving / team building approaches.

The entire process takes two days. We do all the data collection and story editing around the real work the team must do. We are seeing extraordinary results.