Description

Workshop Outline

Session 1: Team Foundations and Diagnostic (90 minutes)

Central questions

What is a team, and how is it different from a working group?

Why does teamwork matter to our mission and results?

What helps or hinders this team today?

Key topics

• Team versus group: shared purpose, interdependence, complementary contribution, and mutual accountability
• The impact of teamwork on customers, employees, quality, safety, speed, cost, innovation, and culture
• Stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning
• Seven conditions of effective teams: purpose, goals, roles, trust, communication, execution, and accountability
• Personal and professional benefits of becoming a stronger teammate
• Team strengths, friction points, and barriers within control, influence, or escalation

Experiential application

• Opening challenge: small teams complete an ambiguous task with limited time and incomplete instructions; observers track leadership, participation, assumptions, communication, and use of resources.
• Team Effectiveness Diagnostic: participants rate the seven team conditions individually, compare patterns, and identify one strength and two priority gaps.
• Debrief: What did we do? What result did we produce? What helped? What hurt? Where does this occur at work? What will we change?

Session output: A shared definition of teamwork, a visible baseline of team effectiveness, and two priority development needs.

Session 2: Trust, Communication, and Psychological Safety (105 minutes)

Central questions

What makes trust grow or erode?

How do we communicate so that meaning, not merely words, is transferred?

How can people speak candidly while remaining respectful and accountable?

Key topics

• Trust as confidence in character, competence, reliability, and care
• Psychological safety: permission to question, admit mistakes, ask for help, and offer ideas without humiliation
• High standards plus psychological safety; candor is not comfort and safety is not avoidance
• Listening to understand, purposeful questions, paraphrasing, and confirming agreements
• Communication filters, assumptions, status differences, silence, and message distortion
• Giving and receiving specific, timely, behavior-based feedback
• Repairing trust through ownership, apology, corrective action, and consistent follow-through

Experiential application

• Communication Relay: teams pass operational information through a constrained channel, then compare the original message, received message, assumptions, omissions, and downstream consequences.
• Candor Practice Triads: speaker, receiver, and observer rehearse a real but appropriately anonymized conversation using Situation-Behavior-Impact-Request.
• Trust Ledger: participants identify deposits, withdrawals, and one repair action they personally own.

Session output: Two team communication standards, one practiced feedback conversation, and one personal trust-building commitment.

Session 3: Roles, Conflict, Decisions, and Accountability (105 minutes)

Central questions

Who owns what, and where do handoffs fail?

How can disagreement improve decisions instead of damaging relationships?

How will the team decide, commit, execute, and follow through?

Key topics

• Role clarity: outcomes, responsibilities, boundaries, dependencies, and handoffs
• Decision rights: decide, recommend, advise, execute, and inform
• Healthy task conflict versus relationship conflict and avoidance
• Moving from positions to interests, facts, impact, options, and agreements
• Commitment after debate: disagreeing honestly before the decision and supporting the decision afterward
• Mutual accountability: clear expectations, visible ownership, deadlines, measures, and early intervention
• Escalating issues at the right level with evidence, options, and a recommendation
• Improving processes and systems instead of blaming individuals for recurring failures

Experiential application

• Handoff Breakdown: teams map a real cross-role process, identify unclear ownership and failure points, and redesign one critical handoff.
• Structured Conflict Simulation: participants address competing priorities and limited resources using facts, interests, options, decision criteria, and explicit commitment.
• Accountability Reset: pairs convert a vague request into a complete agreement covering owner, outcome, standard, deadline, checkpoint, support, and escalation trigger.

Session output: One improved handoff, one decision rule, and one complete accountability agreement ready for workplace use.

Session 4: Performance Simulation and Team Operating Agreement (120 minutes)

Central questions

Can we apply the team practices when pressure rises?

What must this team consistently do?

How will we sustain the learning after the workshop?

Key topics

• Team performance under ambiguity, time pressure, changing information, and competing stakeholder needs
• Planning before acting: outcome, roles, resources, risks, communication, measures, and checkpoints
• Execution rhythm: brief, act, monitor, adapt, and debrief
• After-action review: intended result, actual result, causes, lessons, and next action
• Team norms that are observable, specific, reciprocal, and enforceable
• Measuring behavior change and operational impact
• Peer accountability and 30-, 60-, and 90-day reinforcement

Experiential application

• Capstone Mission: teams complete a multi-stage workplace simulation. New information and constraints are introduced during execution. Success depends on role clarity, information sharing, inclusion, decisions, adaptation, and accountability—not individual heroics.
• Video or observer feedback, when appropriate: participants examine specific behaviors and decision points rather than judging personalities.
• Team Operating Agreement Lab: teams draft, challenge, revise, and gain commitment to their shared standards.
• Action Planning: each participant names one behavior to stop, one to start, one to continue, and one business result that should improve.

Session output: A validated Team Operating Agreement, completed action plans, and a defined follow-up measure.

Teamwork Best-Practice Framework

Five Teamwork Musts

• Put the shared purpose and team result ahead of ego, status, and functional self-interest.
• Clarify outcomes, roles, decision rights, standards, deadlines, and handoffs before execution.
• Communicate candidly, listen actively, share relevant information, and confirm understanding.
• Address conflict, missed commitments, and harmful behavior early, directly, and respectfully.
• Own the result together: execute, measure, learn, adapt, and follow through.
• Build trust through integrity, competence, reliability, care, and repair.
• Invite questions, dissent, ideas, and bad news while maintaining high standards.
• Use every person’s relevant strengths, experience, and perspective.
• Improve recurring processes and systems rather than repeatedly blaming people.
• Recognize contribution, celebrate progress, and renew the team after demanding work.

Five Additional Important Practices

Team Operating Agreement

Participants will create a concise working agreement that answers the following questions in observable terms:

• Purpose and results: Why do we exist, whom do we serve, and what outcomes define success?
• Roles and handoffs: Who owns each critical result, and how will dependencies be coordinated?
• Communication: What information must be shared, through which channel, by when, and with whom?
• Meetings: What requires a meeting, how will agendas and decisions be handled, and what will stop?
• Decisions: Which decisions are individual, consultative, consensus-based, or leader-decided?
• Conflict: How will concerns be raised, debated, resolved, documented, and escalated?
• Accountability: How will commitments, measures, checkpoints, missed expectations, and recovery be handled?
• Learning and recognition: How will the team debrief, improve, acknowledge contribution, and celebrate progress?

Facilitation Method

Experience. Participants encounter a realistic task, conversation, or decision.

Reflect. The group names what happened, including behavior, emotion, assumptions, choices, and results.

Learn. The facilitator introduces a practical principle, model, or tool that explains and strengthens performance.

Repractice. Participants repeat the task or conversation using the improved behavior.

Transfer. Participants identify where the lesson applies at work, who will act, and how success will be measured.

Standard Debrief Questions

• What was the intended result?
• What actually happened?
• What specific behaviors helped the team?
• What specific behaviors reduced performance?
• Whose voice or information was missing?
• What assumptions did we fail to test?
• Where does this pattern appear in our work?
• What will we do differently next time, and who owns it?

30-, 60-, and 90-Day Application

First 30 days – Establish. Share the Team Operating Agreement, test one communication or accountability standard, conduct one after-action review, and collect a baseline measure.

By 60 days – Practice. Use the standards consistently in meetings, decisions, handoffs, conflict, and follow-through; request peer feedback and correct drift.

By 90 days – Sustain. Evaluate behavioral and operational results, revise the agreement, recognize progress, and select the next team-development priority.

Each action-plan commitment will identify the behavior, workplace situation, first action, support person, completion date, evidence of progress, likely barrier, and recovery response.

Evaluation and Evidence of Transfer

• Pre/post confidence rating against the learning objectives.
• Team Effectiveness Diagnostic at the workshop and again at 60-90 days.
• Facilitator or observer scoring during the capstone simulation.
• Completion and use of the Team Operating Agreement.
• 30-day report of one applied behavior, one barrier, and one measurable result.
• Operational measures selected by the client, such as rework, response time, missed handoffs, meeting effectiveness, engagement, safety, quality, or customer experience.

The workshop should not be judged only by participant satisfaction. The stronger test is whether team behavior changes and whether an important workplace result improves.

30-Day Follow-Up Webinar

• Review workshop highlights and the ten teamwork practices.
• Discuss implementation successes, barriers, failures, and lessons learned.
• Coach real team situations involving trust, conflict, roles, decisions, handoffs, or accountability.
• Review use of the Team Operating Agreement and correct vague or unenforced standards.
• Reinforce individual 30-, 60-, and 90-day commitments and peer accountability.
• Identify additional team-development or organizational-support needs.
• Conduct a short sponsor interview to clarify audience, team history, desired outcomes, sensitive issues, and measures of success.
• Customize scenarios to the organization’s work while removing confidential or personally identifying details.
• Prepare movable tables or pods, wall space, flip charts, markers, sticky notes, timer, printed diagnostics, scenario packets, observer sheets, and action-plan forms.
• Establish participation agreements: confidentiality, respect, candor, equal voice, challenge ideas rather than people, and permission to pause unsafe or unproductive interaction.
• Use observers or video only with advance client and participant agreement; focus feedback on visible behavior, not personality labels.
• Plan accessibility accommodations and a non-physical alternative for every activity.

Facilitator Preparation and Materials