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• Team-intervention

TEAM INTERVENTIONS:

What type of intervention do you need?

By Ruth Tearle

You need to plan a team intervention. How do you choose the right approach? All interventions are designed either to help solve a problem within your team, or to achieve a goal. Choose the appropriate intervention based on what you as a leader, want to achieve.

Team bonding.

You need to bond people into a team due to one of the following:

• A merger.
• An organizational restructure.
• A new team or project team.
• New members joining an existing team.
• A new leader joining an existing team.
• Conflict within a team.
• A need to get people from different departments or areas working together
• A team of survivors with low morale after retrenchments.

Appropriate interventions include:

• Basic team building. Getting people to know what to expect from one another, and how to work together in a way that brings out the best in each team member.
• Building common values for the team.
• Crafting a vision for the team.
• Creating a role for the team.

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Creating new paradigms

You want to your team to challenge existing paradigms. You want them to:

• Identify new opportunities for the team.
• Develop new ways of delighting their internal and external customers.
• Develop new 'value added services and products that will excite their customers.
• Imagine the future.
• Get creative.
• Think 'out of the box.'

Appropriate interventions include:

• Providing research about changing strategic trends.
• Running a brainstorming session where the team brainstorms new opportunities for their area, as a result of these trends.
• Running a session where the team looks at how to use their strengths in a different way.
• A creative team based strategic planning workshop.

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Strategic planning

You need to develop a new strategic plan or team vision for the following reasons:

• A merger/takeover.
• An organizational restructuring. You need to determine a new role for your team.
• A new corporate strategy, vision or culture that your team needs to support.
• New stakeholders with new expectations of your team.
• Your organization wants you to cut costs without destroying value.
• Changes in the external environment of your organization means that the rules for success have changed, and your team now needs to develop a new strategy.

Appropriate interventions include:

• Team based strategic planning - including stakeholder analyzes, trend analyzes, internal analyzes, customer and competitor analyzes.
• Developing a scenario of the future context within which your team will need to operate.
• Defining a role for your team within its new context.
• Identifying new opportunities for your team.
• Developing new strategies for your team.
• Defining each person's role in implementing your team strategies.

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Communicating your vision. Getting buy in and action.

You've already developed a strategic plan. Now you need to:

• Communicate it to all employees in your area.
• Get them motivated and excited about contributing to the vision.
• Get them to contribute actively towards achieiving the vision.

Appropriate interventions include:

For simply communicating:

• Virtual communications such as videos, newsletters, websites, emails, and use of social networking sites.
• Face to face communications such as presentations, briefings and road shows in which the leader and his team present the new vision.

For getting buy-in.

• Workshops which combine communications with activities designed to achieve understanding andbuy-in.
• Competitions with incentives to reward actions that support the new vision or strategy.
• Fine tuning your performance management system to link individual/divisional goals to your new vision.

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Planning change.

You find it difficult to implement a new strategy or manage change because:

• Your organization is involved in too many changes at once.
• You have some complex problems that need to be resolved, and there doesn't seem to be an easy answer.
• You need to implement a new organizational vision. But the vision that you need to cascade down to your team is not clear!
• Your team is already stressed out from doing their existing jobs, and you now need them to take on new work, or get involved in additional projects.
• You are facing resistance to change, yet people are not being honest to you. There are many hidden agendas.
• Previous change processes haven't worked.
• You find it difficult to sustain the excitement and energy needed to implement your changes.

Appropriate interventions include:

• Using a systems thinking tool such as The Change Puzzle to diagnose the situation and to choose a few core changes that your team needs to focus on. i.e. the 20% of changes that will yield 80% benefit to your team.
• Selecting the tools you need to achieve your chosen changes. Understand the roles that need to be played to ensure the changes are sustained.
• Developing an integrated change strategy together with your team.

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Energy

You and your team lack the energy needed for change. You as team leader:

• Feel bogged down at the thought of having to implement your organization's new vision or projects.
• Feel weary or depressed.
• Get frustration too often. Yoy find yourself complaining a lot.
• Feel that the fun and excitement has gone out of work.
• Are continually having to deal with negativity at work.
• Seem to have lost control over your life.
• Want to leave the organization, but are concerned whether this is the right thing to do.

Appropriate interventions include:

• Thinking like a coach of a winning sports team. Know when it is time to train hard, run a marathon, peak and recover.
• After a period of working under stress, take the whip off your and your team's back. Recognise what your team has achieved during the time they were under stress - as well as what was not quite perfect. Acknowledge the difficulties and challenges that you and your team had to overcome. Don't allow stress to become a habit!
• When you are just tired, or demotivated, do things outside of work that to reduce your stress. e.g. exercise, and massages.
• Recognise the signs of burnout - in yourself and in your team members. (The initial signs are weariness, and things just seeming too difficult.)
• When you spot burnout - insist on the most appropriate intervention:- A vacation! A holiday means having the discipline to disconnect from all work related stimulation. This includes emails, phone calls, and social media.

• When you need to get inspired again, you need to reconnect with your personal values, create your own personal vision/mission or try out different belief systems.
• Read books and use daily inspirational cards that will help you to find your mojo.