Consulting

Developing Teams

Getting along to get ahead—collectively.

Any successful team or organisation requires the dynamic management of the tensions embedded in the two human metamotives of Agency (i.e., ‘getting ahead’) and Communion (i.e., ‘getting along').   When leaders successfully manage the apparent paradoxical tension in these two opposite motives, that of the individual (Agency) and group (Communion), the team and organisation thrive; they get along to get ahead— collectively. 

However, this is no easy task as leaders must be self-aware and manage their own behaviours and at the same time manage the interpersonal behaviour of others around them. 

So, leaders in teams have two roles:

1. Ensure they as leaders are aware and manage their own interpersonal behaviour and its impact on others, and
2. To encourage and ‘gate keep’ interpersonal behaviour of team members establishing, encouraging, and defending a positive group interpersonal ‘norm.' In the language of the CLS360, leaders must encourage and reward the green ‘transformational’ styles of Inspirational, Coaching, and Participative, and challenge—even sanction—more negative interpersonal behaviours associated with the red ‘destructive’ styles of Authoritarian, Distrustful, and Withdrawn.

If leaders fail to manage this tension they run the risk of suboptimal team or organisational outcomes. For example, if the leader fosters or allows too much Agency on the part of the team members, and doesn’t promote Communion, people will do their own thing, operate as individuals, and create silos, focusing on their own outcomes at the expense of those of the team or organisation. 

Therefore our approach to developing teams focuses on building on the individual leader feedback and combining individual leader results into a CLS360 Team Report. The focus is on developing the team’s collective transformational leadership styles of Inspirational, Coaching, and Participative to enable the team to better achieve its outcomes. 

Our team development processes and tools help teams:

• ENQUIRE about the collective team interpersonal styles using the CLS360 Team.
• ENLIGHTEN the team about strengths and development areas.
• ENCOURAGE the team to identify strategies to enhance team functioning.
• EMBED more effective interpersonal behaviours into day-to-day operations, systems, structures and processes.
• EVALUATE and monitor the implementation of agreed new ways of ‘doing business,’ and at critical points re-measure.