Client scenario: A financial services firm asked its 500+ New Jersey employees what sort of training and development opportunities they would like to see offered. Nearly two-thirds identified “team development” as either “desirable” or “very desirable.”

The company brought in three firms to conduct pilot programs before selecting the Cradlerock Group to offer our Building High Performance Teams workshop to its New Jersey offices.

Based on the Team Performance Model developed by David Sibbet and Alan Drexler, this workshop focuses on a “map” of seven stages that can help organize a team’s thinking around successful teamwork: orientation, trust, goal & role clarification, commitment, implementation, high performance, and renewal.

Building High Performance Teams includes modules around each of these seven key stages. Each module begins with a fun, hands-on problem-solving exercise which highlights the key issue at the heart of that phase of a team’s development. Structured discussion after each exercise highlights both the central challenges associated with each stage and the strategies best-suited for attacking those challenges.

The Team Performance Model, for example, predicts that a team that tries to improvise its way to high performance with no plan or framework will likely experience “disharmony” and “overload.” To illustrate this point, our module on planning begins by asking participants to stand shoulder to shoulder in two parallel rows, facing each other, with arms extended. A long plastic rod is placed along participants’ outstretched fingers, and participants are given three straightforward directives: keep your fingers under the rod, don’t break contact with the rod, and lower the rod to the ground.

Immediately, the rod will shoot straight up in the air – exactly opposite from what the group is trying diligently to accomplish! And just as quickly, most groups will immediately set about trying to assign blame for this strange malfunction. Often, in fact, groups will forget about actually accomplishing the project and focus exclusively on identifying the person(s) at fault!

The mechanics of the exercise involve the uneven pressure applied by a group of people trying to remain in contact with the underside of the rod. More importantly, however, the exercise serves as an excellent introduction to the subject of planning – and to the dangers of relying solely on improvisation.

The final ninety minutes of these daylong sessions is devoted to application. Having spent most of the day learning a proven “recipe” for team development, participants are asked to consider the implications this formula has for their own teams. What stages are relatively “resolved,” and which stages signal a need for focused attention? Most importantly, what can participants do individually and collectively to purposefully move their teams toward high performance?

This roll-out is still underway, but based on early successes the firm has already contracted for additional sessions in Dallas, Boston, Hartford, and Chicago.