Group Facilitation & Team Development …
There are things you can learn in a group, or when operating in a team, that are unavailable to you in any other way …
For many years we have put our attention on working with groups and teams to harness the power of collective action and relational awareness. In the process of developing our approach to working with groups and teams we have come to appreciate the uniqueness of them as entities that transcend the individuals that comprise them, and at the same time being a reflection of those same individuals.
What’s The Difference Between A Group And A Team:
The main distinction between a group and a true team is the level of collective agreement to a common outcome. A group may have a loosely agreed upon outcome, e.g.: to support one another’s personal or professional development. A team will typically have a much more focused collective outcome, e.g.: getting a product to market in a specified timeframe and at a specified budget. These distinctions also determine how much the individuals in the group or team are typically willing to submerge their personal agenda to the collective agenda, and how willing they will be to submit to committing to the collective outcome first and foremost, before achieving their personal outcome.
What Makes Group Facilitation And Team Development So Powerful:
What remains the same for groups and teams is that the individuals in them can and do learn from and support one another. Leveraging the learning that is possible in this structure is what excites us most about working in group and team environments. We focus on making the reflective nature of relationships in groups and teams available to the individuals that comprise them ... regardless of whether they have been together for a day or a decade.
Sometimes organizing an ad hoc group for the sole purpose of collective learning creates a supremely powerful experience for the participants when properly and expertly facilitated. We put these groups together for programs like our Foolish Wisdom Group Coaching events that last just one or two days, and despite the short time frame the group dramatically accelerates the amount of learning that becomes possible in this setting.
In cases where teams are the focus of the developmental work we’re delivering a critical factor can be the length of time the team has been together. Often when we encounter teams of long standing our first task is to unravel and unwind the hidden emotional and relational issue that reside beneath the surface, and to reset the “rules” that the team operates under and how they relate to one another.
How We Work With Groups And Teams To Ensure Success:
Establishing the outcome position for groups and teams, and the work we agree to do together at the outset often determines the ultimate success (or failure) of the actions we take. We have a specific process that we’ve developed over decades of working with groups and teams that bring them together very rapidly and then deepens the positive bonds as we continue. This is one of the key aspects of our approach, and our success, in group facilitation and team development.
The other key aspect of our approach is the fundamentally experiential nature of how we work with groups and teams … i.e.: in a real time way using what comes up as the grit for the process.
If you want the most powerful possible learning and development experience available to you, you owe it to yourself to explore the possibilities of working with us in a group or team context … we’re confident you will be amazed at how far you will come in a remarkably short amount of time together.
