Determining What the Team Really Wants

Success of any teambuilding intervention is directly dependent on how clear the organization is about what the team is to accomplish. My first question when asked to work with any leadership group is, "What is the purpose of this team?" If the group exists to produce an actual product (e.g., a mission statement, a strategic plan, a community service event, a launch of a new organization wide system, a strategy to address or avoid a current or potential crisis, etc.), I treat it as a team and ask to conduct some diagnostic activities. One activity is to interview members for the purpose of identifying general impressions of the team and what could be done to improve it, using questions such as those listed in table 24. In such an interview, all responses must be kept confidential and anonymous. The themes that emerge should be reported later at a special session, where all members must be present and make decisions regarding what to do about the results.

• What is it like to be a leader at this organization?

• What does this leadership team do well?

• What does this leadership team need to do better or differently? Is there a compelling need for this team to change and improve?

• What might be pushing this leadership team to improve? What might motivate this group of leaders to work more effectively as a team?

• What might get in the way of this leadership team's efforts to improve itself? What barriers, pitfalls, obstacles, or sources of resistance might interfere?

• If a session (or series of sessions) were scheduled to help this team work more effectively, what skills should be worked on? What issues should be on the agenda?

• As leaders, you have some independent responsibilities and some objectives that you must work on collectively. What is an opportunity/project/issue/activity that this group could attempt to work on as a team?

• What could you do to help this leadership team become more effective?

• What do you expect from me as a facilitator attempting to help this leadership team help itself?

If members are committed to collectively producing something and are willing to share decision-making power in some manner and establish a system of mutual accountability, then I suggest turning the group into a functioning team. Subsequent steps for developing a true leadership team are discussed later in this chapter. But first let's look at some other reasons underlying requests by leaders for teambuilding.