Team Development &
Organisational Evolution
"Any system is relational by nature. And Complex. The only possible way we can lead and navigate those is in co-emergence."
There are many, many ways to lead and shape an organisation. There are many, many models of change. Regardless of what model is used, we have learned that a Co-Emergent approach always wins.
Here we share a few the models we have found working really well. Our favourites. And we hope you find them useful.
We also have had the fortune to validate the effectiveness of a range of tools to improve team connection, foster psychological safety and help teams to develop.
Also in team development, we take a holistic approach. Weaving IMGD with vertical development, the relational organisation, complexity theory and social systems.
Here, we share those tools. Because everyone deserves to belong to a well functioning, highly connected, performing team.
Please enjoy them indulgently, and please feedback your experience, or additions.
TEAM CONNECTION & PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
Without human to human connection any team will be powerless. To shape psychological safety, we need to dare to show ourselves, and meet in authenticity. Embracing our differences as strengths. These powerful tools will help you start that journey.
Curiosity Game
Let's play together, and let your curiosity guide you to get to know your team mates better. One of our absolute favourites. A must do!
For team building & connection. To shape belonging. Also a great start of a longer co-creative meeting or workshop to take off in the right way.
4 Ways of Knowing
A check in practice that goes a bit deeper. For the team that wants to shift the dialogue to a more connecting one, opening up to each other. But also to explore your full sensing instrument. Mind, Body, Heart and Spirit.
Appreciative Written Feedback
This is a beautiful practice where you tell all your team mates what you really appriciate with them.
We have never seen a better way to create open hearted connection in a team than this. A lovebomb!
Connecting Practices & Check Ins
A collection of connecting, short check ins, to open up for collaboration. Try them, blend, mix as you go along.
Dialogue Walk
A dialogue in pairs. One shares a story while the other listens without interrupting. Given quality space and time to think, people discover surprising insights and wisdom within themselves.
Great for opening for dialogue and listening in a team.
TEAM FOUNDATION
To form a team, some foundational aspects need to be in place. These tools will help you with just that. These are as important as the connection and psyhchlological safety tools above.
Team Charter
An overview to visualize & agree (and re-negotiate) the very foundations of being a team.
Why you exist. What value you create. How you want to be with each other. Who your main stakeholders are, and what exploration/improvement to focus on the coming period.
With this foundation set, you can start building your team, and your output.
Stakeholder Mapping
No man is an island. Niether is any team. This tool will help you mapping your stakeholders, and assess which relations are good, and which need to be improved.
This is a must for any team caring for their stakeholder relations.
Team Values, Principles
and Rituals
Who do you want to have been when you leave work? When you retire?
Based on these two big inquiries, you will derive your team's values, shape principles based on these values and start to adjust and shape your team's recurring rituals and meetings to honour your values and principles. Enabling for all of you to show up as you want to.
A deep and powerful tool.
Team Mission
Team mission is the organisational reason a team exist. Aligning this with personal motivators releases power and engagement. Also, alignment on what your team should be up to is shaped. Within the team, and among your stakeholders.
Team Purpose
When you do what you do, working in line with your team mission, what value do you enable? In your product/service? For the customer? For society? For the world?
This tool has been a game changer for some teams, realizing what they are part of enabling for the world. Both in hard and soft terms.
Stakeholders
A team is at their best when their relation with their stakeholders benefit both them and the stakeholder. Here are a few tools to help you on that path. Try them. Seriously! DO!
Stakeholder Interview
A beautiful tool that you really should do with all your stakeholders, AND all your team members. It really helps seeing the world from the eyes of the other. One of the most powerful tools we have come across.
SOS Reflective Team Dialogue
A tool to help your team reflect, and hold a dialogue on the perspectives of Self, Other and System. This may be an eye opener to what views you share, and what you want to address together.
Meetings & Team Practices
Meetings can be valuable, joyful, creative energisers in the workday. They can also be quite the opposite. The selection of tools in this section will help you to actively pursue the first, and avoid the latter. Use them and make them yours.
I Do A R T
Any meeting need a clear and agreed Intention. And a desired outcome. We would suggest it is better to spend the entire meeting on setting these, than to run away with differing views on why you are here.
This is a MUST for all recurring meetings. For all meetings, really.
Better Meetings
A guide on how to shape and lead better meetings. Meetings that may form a backbone in the organisation.
Planning Week - a team guide
A simple guide on how to approach your team planning, including your stakeholders in your planning.
This have added great value to many, many teams.
Learning Experiments - Improve Team Practices
A tool to help you assess the value of your recurring meetings and activities, and shape learning experiements to make a go for a better tomorrow.
Appreciative Retrospective
This is a retrospective on the perspectives that really count. And we mean REALLY count. Addressing the relational aspects of the team.
Try it for a few months, and reap the sweet fruits.
Team Collaboration
These are a collection of great tools for improved team collaboration. From agreeing on mutual expectations on each other, to identifying how your are dependent on each other, to conflict handling and resolution tools. Enjoy responsibly!
Dependency Dialogue
Having done this in several leadership teams, and development teams, we say just one thing. DO IT! It is worth every second you invest in the dialogue, times 10.
Responsibility Collaboration Dialogue
One of the simplest, and most powerful workshop formats we have seen to address responsibility splits in a group or a team.
Release Tension in Conflict
This is a beautiful way to release tension in any conflict, or dialogue with conflicting interests. Based on human developmental psychology, it is as simple as it may be difficult.
DEAR - Conflict Resolution
A process to address and release conflict. It is really good, for small and big. Set aside enought time though. We humans tend to need it.
Organisational Evolution
"Any system is relational by nature. And Complex. The only possible way we can lead and navigate those is in co-emergence."
Cycle of Co-Emergence,
overview
The "Cycle of Co-Emergence" is a way to sense, make aware what is going on, activate and close together. A powerful way to use the collective ingtelligence, and to naviaget emergently. A necessity in any complex system.
Organisational Feedback Loop
A way to listen to the organisation, via the teams, and other stakeholders. Integrated into how you do things, it is really, really powerful
Open Space
This is a 1hr open space format, for any occation, any matter.
5D - Appreciative Inquiry
One of our favourite scaffolds to co-create change. Versatile in the range of use, and properly facilitated, powerful to anchor any initiative.
Case Clinic
A powerful process, to access the non-verbal and non-cognitive parts of our beings when helping a case giver get input on an organisational (or other) challenge.
From the Presencing Institute, MIT.
That's it, my friend. We hope you enjoyed it. If you miss anything, please get in touch. We tailor tools and workshops to any situation.