What has been your biggest challenge with team development?

Going into a new leadership role, one of my priorities was to build a cohesive senior team. Given the transformational mandate of our department, we needed to leverage the strengths of each team member and work collaboratively.

The challenge was to make sure we had a good understanding of each other and our leadership styles, to accelerate the team building process. I brought in Caliper at that point as a way for us to get to know one another and from the beginning, work together effectively.

"You need to consider how your piece fits into the bigger picture."

How did Caliper Canada help?

We had been using Caliper for a number of years as part of our recruitment process. Most of the team had completed the Caliper Profile – the remaining members went through the process in preparation for the team development session. It gave us a common language and a point of reference.

In the second part of the team development session we focused on defining a high performing team. Then we set markers to evaluate our progress toward achieving this team. In the months that followed we asked ourselves: Are we living up to those values and behaviours? What else can we do?

Individually, Caliper is a great tool that provides a person with insights into their strengths, how they operate under stress, and their preferred style of communication. Collectively, it takes things to a new level. You find strengths within your team members that their colleagues aren't taking advantage of.

What is your philosophy on team development?

I'm a firm believer that the whole is stronger than the sum of its parts. To become a high performing team, I think you need to have a broad perspective. That means you need to consider how your piece fits into the bigger picture, how it affects the next person on the chain. That way, you're contributing to the entire system.

What do you see as a "top priority" in team development either in your organization or overall for 2010?

We are in an environment where things are changing quickly. So a top priority is to understand customers' expectations and needs and deliver on those. As a team we need to be able to have good dialogue and debate. And with limited resources, we have to make sure we're making the best decision. We all have different perspectives – we need to bring them together and then collectively agree on an outcome.

Once you've had the debate, it's essential that people commit. If not, suddenly you're out of alignment, not all moving in the same direction. When that happens, there's a lack of agreement on top priorities and resources and people are not supporting each other.

What's needed is a vehicle that allows you to have a constructive debate, to frame the discussion so you can move it forward. That's what the Caliper process has allowed us to do. Having that framework to come back to has helped us continue to have discussions and draw conclusions.

When it comes to team development, it's that consistent process that will help to move a team along. It's a journey we're committed to taking.

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Trust and Communication: With the extensive research that has been done on teams, there's something most experts agree on: Open lines of communication and building trust are the cornerstone of a high performing team.

Most teams do trust each other to a degree, but only within certain parameters. To expand this trust, a tool like  the Caliper Profile provides a common language and framework for teams. It helps them better understand themselves and their own behaviours as well as that of fellow team members, from the same objective perspective. This foundation helps teams work together cooperatively and collaboratively.

"Often when we're heads down every day we're unable to see issues that are inhibiting success."

The key to taking in any new information is relevance. Before we work with the team we interview the leader and other key stakeholders to get a "bird's eye view" of the team, an objective perspective. This helps us craft a session that hits the mark with your team by addressing real live issues and concerns.

Success Measures: Together we define what an effective or high performing team looks like and build consensus. From there, we create success measures. For example, a success measure could be agreement by the team to follow a specific process and monitor the progress.

I remember one session where there were a few dominant individuals that really overpowered the majority of the team, especially a couple of introverted members. This was really impacting innovation in a team that needed to be ahead of the pack to come up with leading edge products. We identified how this was driving overall results (or lack thereof). Then we created an action plan to ensure all members of the team had a voice. That way, they could all comfortably contribute in meetings and one on one interactions.

Team Strengths: Using information from your team's individual Caliper Profiles, we create a team composite. I'm amazed how often it happens that, when I put up the individual's Caliper graph, the rest of the team doesn't recognize who it is. That's because people are often operating outside of their comfort zone and stretching beyond their innate behaviours.

In a word, they're not working their strengths, which means they're likely not bringing their best to the team. They may be spending time doing presentations, for instance, when what they really love is analyzing data.

Objective information from the Caliper Profile brings this to the forefront and provides a vehicle for a healthy, productive team discussion. We conclude by nailing down strategies as to how individuals on the team can work their strengths more often to improve results.

While this is valuable, the real magic comes in having a better understanding of other people's strengths.

Let's say you have a difficult time with details – getting help from a colleague that is naturally detail oriented will save you both time and frustration. And perhaps you can help them out with big-picture thinking, an area where you excel. Developing a group action plan as well as individual plans helps teams focus and stay on track.

Leadership Follow Through: Meaningful team building is not always easy, but it is productive. Teams walk away knowing how they can move forward effectively.

As the team gets to know each other better, they often make some interesting discoveries.

One team I worked with found that they were really uncomfortable with conflict. The way they dealt with it was to avoid it and defer accountability to someone else. And here's the thing- they didn't see it. Often when we're heads down every day we're unable to see issues that are inhibiting success. This process helped them first of all identify the issue and second, deal with it.

The leader plays a key role in helping the team continue to move forward effectively. We help the leader create a clear set of expectations that outlines the behaviour required to meet performance standards. This drives accountability and gives the leader a framework to follow through and continue building a high performing team.

Whether it's a new team or an existing one, team development takes a them to a new level of performance.

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