Team Facilitation

Team Facilitation vs. Team Building

We call our approach team facilitation because it is much more than playing team games for team building. We aren't critiquing team building - it has an important place in the sustainable development of your organization. We offer many such programs and activities as you can see on other pages of this web site.

But facilitating teams means supporting them through out their life cycles, and supporting their leaders as well. Sometimes outside consultants - and process consultants especially - can see things and help with things that team members and leaders, no matter how savvy, simply can't see. The objectivity we can bring you, along with our dedication to using subtle but powerfully effective listening and probing techniques, can make a vast and immediate difference to your effectiveness as a team.

The Current Need

Teams need to engage in re-vitalization activities and processes after serious blows to their morale and their integrity. Recent examples are plentiful and will continue to be for a long time. The lay-offs and cutbacks of a downsizing economy are a serious case in point, but that condition pales in the face of the events of September 11th. Even as the US and the Western world recover from those heinous crimes and events, teams and whole organizations will need revitalization work like none we have known in our lifetimes. The facilitation of the ongoing restoration of our work places will be an immense part and a constant focus of the savvy leader's work for months, if not years, to come.

The Ongoing Need

Nevertheless, the ongoing need to keep teams developing positively over their time and experience together, and not regressing as they encounter challenges and crises, is a key leadership and processing challenge.

Beyond that, teams need the usual and specific supports necessary to create their charters,their rules to live and work by, and the goals and accountabilities to guide and inform them along their way. In addition, teams require a high level of sensitivity from leadership to deal well with conflicts and feedback challenges, as well as the interpersonal paradoxes that are likely to evolve along the way. Helping team leaders as they facilitate these things is part of our work. Facilitation of events and conditions beyond the skill of many team leaders is a service we offer, too.

Whether it is team revitalization, like the work we need now, or the ongoing and regular maintenance and development of teams across their life cycles, facilitators need to rise to the occasion. If you want to facilitate your teams yourself, we can help you learn. If you want help in real time so you can work as a colleague within the team - we can provide that. Sustainable teamwork requires excellent facilitation. Keen attention to the human problems and processes that define our team experiences may mean the difference between products and services that keep our customers and employees coming back and those that leave for greener fields. We encourage you to take the challenge of excellence not only in your technical and product offerings, but also in the human dynamics of your work place.