Team Learning Process

'Coming together is the beginning. Staying together is progress. Working together is success.' - Henry Ford

Our team learning interventions are generally designed following intensive discussions with the team leader and following a team assessment and/or personal interviews with team members. In this sense, we follow the four stages of the Discovery, Design, Delivery and Review process as we would with any group learning process.

Discovery

Once we have conducted the initial contracting conversation with the team leader and other key stakeholders to agree on the scope of the intervention, we would like to speak briefly with each group member to learn about his/her current views of this team and the outcomes that he/she would like to see from the process. This is also an important opportunity for our consultants to start building some trust and rapport with the group before the learning event.

We then take the comments made during these interviews and build a 'Team Commentary' of the key issues that could then be distributed during the workshop - this means that that the ideas shared during the interview process can be captured and shared in a relatively safe and anonymous way. This tends to accelerate the process of exchanging expectations, concerns and feedback during the event. Another approach is to conduct a more formal (online or email) team assessment or this can be done later as a review.

On some occasions we have also been invited to observe team meetings see the team in action. This allows us to 1) observe real team dynamics, communication (or lack of) between team members and leadership styles. 2) link/anchor the team building workshop more effectively to the key outcomes for the business and begin to use the same language as the participants and 3) give the team and team leader some outside-in feedback. We can appreciate that there may be some fairly sensitive information being discussed and are always happy to sign a CDA.

Design

Once the discovery process is complete we pull together the final agenda for the upcoming learning event. Each event is essentially unique and we design a learning process and select activities based on the business and learning outcomes you are looking for and the teams current stage of development. Are you forming, storming, norming or performing? Our program designs will usually include a number of different elements such as experiential-based learning activities, an expectations exchange, individual and group dialog, some creative visioning activities (e.g. based on appreciative enquiry methodologies) plus of course group work and action planning and a team feedback exchange. Depending on the objectives we have agreed upon, we generally recommend a 2 to 3-day meeting format including evening activities.

Delivery

The Clarion Learning team of consultants uses an extensive toolkit of experiential learning activities to support active learning during the learning modules. Experiential learning reduces the impact of hierarchy, builds relationships and trust, accelerates the learning process, engages multiple learning styles, creates a common language and context for dialog and is engaging and fun!

Our core philosophy is that learning has the greatest impact when it is delivered with simplicity and creativity, in depth and through active involvement of the participants. Our consultants' role is to facilitate the learning process and support open and constructive dialog between the group members. This supports the process of change and creates the business results that you are looking for.

Review

The team should commit to meet again - with or without the facilitator - and review the learning and any actions agreed upon during the workshop. Another option is to conduct a more formal (online or email) team assessment in addition and observe progress against benchmarks and best practice.

For more information contact us