Case Study: Team Development Initiative

The president of the division of a global aerospace company sponsored a team development initiative for the engineering group that supports the business.   The project centered on providing a development experience for managers to be more effective as leaders in a challenging cross functional team environment.

After interviewing the senior manager and some of the mangers who were direct reports, and based on the data collected, Exelligence devised a roadmap with aims to:  

increase the skill base among the engineering group to deal with complexity,
• use more effective communication in identifying and resolving issues,
• become more conflict competent and enhance their leadership capacity, 
• increase the level of trust among participants in the engineering group.

The design’s desired outcomes centered on building team effectiveness through improving team conditions, team processes, and the team’s measurable outcomes. 

Skill development focused on developing a collaborative organizational framework, sharing responsibility for effective group dynamics, trust building, and conflict management, and creating an environment for greater commitment to team success while positively influencing others within the organization so that the team can achieve greater results.  

The development workshop design centered on using the interactive I-Skills Zone, to address underlying issues, how to better influence, and how to act with integrity, and with each member taking the CDP to recognize their conflict profiles.   The managers identified and mapped their own issues and committed to specific actions to mitigate their issues.  

One exercise that measured whether there was a need for a team development initiative.  An evaluation of the team’s strengths and development areas was conducted.  How well the team was doing in terms of working together as a team vs.  how well they needed to be doing in working together as a team.   The data collected clearly showed the gap between current state and desired future state. 

Outcomes (measured 6 mos. Subsequent offsite) included: learned a great deal about others; knowing how to build greater trust, experienced higher level of trust among peers; feeling more hopeful in climate of differences; significantly improved collaboration, significant improvement in team commitments; improved timely feedback; greater confidence in each other.