We have been helping teams to increase their productivity for over 25 years, and Team Tune-Up is our most requested program. We have worked to make this program a powerful intervention: one that helps teams increase their productivity, improve their communication, and achieve outstanding results.
One of the facts of working in organizations is that things change, and very often they change rapidly. Leaders move on, team members rotate from one team to another, and new technology appears and disappears. Sometimes, innovation causes disruptions. Team members have to respond to all of this and more.
It’s easy for teams to get off track, lose their focus, and produce diminishing results. Team members can get into irrelevant competition, their roles on the team can be challenged through productivity efforts, and unforeseen consequences can arise out of good intent.
Every so often it’s good for a team to take stock of itself through a rigorous reexamination of its purpose, its productivity engine, and its ability to remain spontaneous. Disciplined execution depends on being clear on the overall purpose and goals of the team, building trust between and among the team members, and executing the work plan flawlessly over and over. Energy follows attention.
Our Team Tune-Up is a structured facilitated process. We help the team members open up a rich and robust dialogue that enables them to build trust while also determining which areas of their work can improve.
We combine the Drexler Sibbet Forrester Team Assessment with our unique facilitation design to help a team assess their Current Reality, create their End Result, and make the choices necessary to achieve the outcome that they want. Every team we have worked with over the past 25 years has made significant progress in productivity. Some have turned their company around, others have improved their work process. All have improved the level of trust, their ability to speak forthrightly, and their willingness to collaborate with each other.
Renew and Restore
A collaborative process, professionally facilitated to help executives rebuild critical relationships.
Executive relationships often become damaged in corporate life. And, just as often, each side looks to affix blame and abdicate responsibility for the issue or issues. The consequences are often devastating to the groups that report to the executives. Sides are drawn, triangulation becomes rampant, and the ultimate result is an amazing amount of time and money gets wasted on irrelevant competition. No one likes to enter into this fray, and often the groups, teams, and even the organization, learns to tolerate the damaged relationship by means of creating bypasses that further waste time and money. Eventually, when it can no longer be tolerated, a higher up makes a very difficult and painful decision. At this point, there appears to be only three options available to the leader:
• A leaves and B stays
• B leaves and A stays
• A and B both leave.
Renew and Restore is directed at the fourth option: A and B not only stay, they decide to renew and restore their relationship and demonstrate what real collaboration looks like. Ultimately, it’s a choice: their choice. Each must make it and each must contribute to creating a new future together.
Creation verses Problem Solving
In Renew and Restore, we help the executives toward creating a new future together, rather than trying to solve their problems. In our view, problem solving involves making things go away. We focus on what we can build together that can serve each of our teams, the organization, and us. We firmly believe that when these crises erupt between executives that neither is to blame but both are equally responsible for defining and designing a new collaborative future together.
The Process –Element B
Each of the executives takes Element B, the behavioral preference indicator. The information gained from Element B helps the executives to understand how they act toward others and how they want others to act towards them. Element B examines three major dimensions: Inclusion, Control, andOpenness. Understanding these preferences creates a springboard for designing a new future together.
The executives discuss their preferences with the aid of the facilitator and learn how their behaviors impact others. We gain knowledge about how much each of the executives:
• Wants to include others and be included by others
• Wants to control others and be controlled by others
• Wants to be open with others and have others be open with him or her
Understanding these dimensions opens the door to understanding of how each executive likes to work. This work sets the stage for building a new future together.
Element W
We assess current reality by making use of another powerful tool: Element W. This exercise provides a non-threatening framework that reduces fear and builds trust. It encourages telling each other the truth and being open. It is of great value to the executives. Together with Element B, the exercises frame current reality and create the possibility of identifying a desired future that both executives can work towards together.
The Dialogue
After completing Element W, the facilitator manages a dialogue between the executives. The dialogue focuses on creating choices for one another, telling each other the truth, and sharing important feelings about each other. The facilitator makes sure the dialogue emphasizes the “here and now” noting progress, discoveries, insights, and observations. The more the executives can explore their feelings, the more they can create pathways to functioning more fully in the future.
Action Planning
Following the Dialogue, the executives complete an Action Plan that identifies their most important learning from the session as well as the specific actions they can take individually and together to renew and restore their critical relationship.
Agreement
The executives make agreements (promises to each other) to follow their plans and report back to the facilitator. They choose a date for coming back together.
Review Progress
The review meeting is celebratory. The executives review their actions and the results they have achieved from renewing and restoring their relationship. The facilitator asks if there are any next steps.
Click the bar below to learn about more of our specific team building programs.
The Best Ever Chèvre Endeavor – Pass the Team Cheese
We are pleased to announce a new way to get introduced to the Drexler Sibbet Team Performance Model. The region where McNeil Consulting is based is known nationally as an award winning “Artisanal Cheese Hotspot.” Over the past ten years, our local farmers have become cheese makers to sustain their farms and in the process they are now making some of the most delicious cheese you’ll find anywhere. We’ve gotten to know some of these farmers and we started sharing our work.
Turns out that cheese making is a great way to learn about teams. It’s an involved process, quality counts, and you have to manage your resources well. You and your team members will discover the art and the science of cheese making while forming your own high performing team in the process. In the making of ‘team cheese,” you can discover interdependencies, work on your style, solve problems, work closely with others, and get feedback on how you contributed to the overall effort.
Working closely with our local amazing cheese aficionados, Al and Catherine Renzi of Yellow Springs Farm, we designed the “Best Ever Chèvre Endeavor,” a team learning experience that extols the joys of cheese making and gives you an in depth understanding of team development, team leadership, and team building.
You will come back to your organization with the an in-depth understanding of the Drexler Sibbet Team Performance Model and a new way to talk about the journey teams make on the way to high performance. You and your team will also get the chance to sample your work while relaxing with a specially paired glass of wine to celebrate your accomplishments. There will be enough cheese for you to bring home a sample of your team’s work to your family, making you a “big cheese” for the day.
The Drexler Sibbet Model is renowned, respected, and used by some of today’s leading organizations, including Nike, Starbucks, and Johnson and Johnson, to name a few. McNeil Consulting has trained an entire generation of team leaders how to move their teams to high performance using this great tool. Elevate your own teambuilding knowledge and skills by contacting us to schedule a session.
Class is limited to six participants. An extra benefit is that for every class your organization sends to this experience, McNeil Consulting will offer one scholarship to a non-profit that would like to spend a day learning about how to build high performing teams.
Click below to learn about our Secret Suppers and Adventures in Cooking experiences.
For our Western Clients:
Celebrate with Your Team by Hosting a Team Building Retreat and an Adventure in Cooking
At McNeil Consulting Inc., we recently connected with two very talented Portlanders who are creating unusual home grown, gourmet experiences in the countryside around Portland. You might consider them as a refreshing alternative to your team’s restaurant outings. They would also be a wonderful addition to developing a unique business retreat dinner. We are really flexible in terms of putting together completely customizable events in a variety of durations and sites such as the beach, riverside, mountains or the countryside. A “Secret Supper” would be a surprise ending to your team-building event.
Try an “Adventure in Cooking” for your next business team building dinner. Click here, to see two examples of dinners and one example workshop (the cheese making one) detailed inside.
Eva Kosmas Flores is running Adventures in Cooking (http://www.adventures-in-cooking.com) and Christiann Koepke heads up Portland Fresh (http://www.portlandfresh.com). They are very artistic young professionals. Both of their websites will give you insights into their style and approach to food.
We will be happy to collaborate with you to build a memorable team building experience paired with a unique and delicious dinner. Give us a call at 610-331-4187 or email us at rob@robertmcneil.com to discuss your next team-building meeting.
