The underlying reason is almost always the failure of the people assigned to the project to find a way to work effectively together, to actually form a team. In many cases, the members or their managers consciously decide not to do the team formation things. They don't have time, it seems silly or illogical, or they don't think they need it. The key point is neither the team members nor the people assigning them understand or apply the essential elements of team formation.

The Solution

DeltaNet has developed this one-day workshop to give people the experience of forming into a team. In just one day, participants in this workshop will do the things essential to team formation together, in teams of about six.

What to Expect

The workshop is a highly concentrated natural sequence of exercises in which the participants actually form a team.

Experiential Learning

The experience produces the learning. Participants will understand the essential things they did together to form their teams, and they will be able to convey those experiences to fellow team members when they return their work places.

Learn Teamwork Doing the Team's Work

Teams learn teamwork doing the team's work. Don't expect a lecture. Expect to work, expect to interact with others on a team in formation, expect to accomplish something important, and expect to enjoy the accomplishment.

Team Member Selection

If you come to this workshop as an individual, not as a member of a natural team, you will be grouped with other attendees to form a new team. If you come to this workshop with other members of an existing team, we will keep your team intact during the workshop. In either case, you will experience the essential things that team members do to form a real team.

A Logical Sequence of Working Sessions

The working sessions start with the simpler things and with short sessions. Each new working session builds on the previous sessions. You will progress to more and more difficult tasks during the workshop. Your team will produce real work products in each of these working sessions:

• Personal introductions: Begin to find common ground
• Choose your Team Project for this workshop
• Identify each team member's strengths, skills, and team roles.
• Create your Team Identity
• Create your Team Constitution.
• Documentation: How to convert the outcomes of team exercises into useful forms.
• Creating Operating Procedures and Checkpoints

Individually, you will learn to use some vital teamwork processes. If you are already familiar with some of them, expect to understand them better and to improve your skills in using them. If you are not familiar with some of these tools, expect to get familiar with what they are and how to use them well in the future.

• Accelerated Brainstorming
• Dot Voting
• Future Forward method of problem solving
• Anticipating Predictable Problems
• Popcorn Brainstorming
• Itemized Brainstorming
• Balanced Discussion
• Fail Safe Voting

What You Get

In addition to the experience of doing the essential things to form a team, you will take with you a Handbook and an Exercise Book. The Handbook will be useful to you as a reminder of the experience, what you have done, and what you have learned. You can use it as a guide to help form teams you are on or teams you may join in the future. The Workbook is a handy place to record your observations, notes, and outcomes of the exercises.

Who Should Attend?

• People already assigned to a team or who normally work together on shared goals. We will keep these "natural groups" together during the workshop so their learnings will apply directly to their team.
• Anyone expected to be on a team in the foreseeable future.
• Anyone who may assign a group of people to work together in the future. The awareness created in this workshop will give you some useful tools to design teams and their assignments to consistently produce high quality results with strong commitment in the shortest possible time with the best use of scarce resources.

How to Attend

DeltaNet delivers the Team Up! Workshop in two ways. We offer public workshops and in-house workshops. The in-house workshops are tailored to the specific needs of the client.