Bidding on a project for a local company reminded me of what works and doesn't work when you attempt to do team building with a troubled department or team.
The initial bid asked for diagnostic services to determine what the company needed to do differently and then, to provide interactive sessions to help a department team improve their interaction. Troubled for a number of years, with many management changes and much public scrutiny, the department team members wanted to heal and grow.
The second request was just to provide an interactive session (team building) with no diagnosis or opportunity to understand what troubled the department team. I can't do that. No matter how much a management group believes that they understand a department team's problems, and even if they truly do understand a team's problems, without the diagnosis and discussion phase, the team will not own the solution.
So, if you work with teams in your organization, expect to spend time listening to each team member's perception of the situation, if possible. These team members also have opinions about what they believe would fix the problems. Rest assured. These are opinionated adult employees.
The team members must own the proposed solution - or they don't. Sometimes, pain is preferable to the unknown to team members. And, in a mantra many have heard me singing for years, don't ever expect people to own what they were not part of creating. They may buy in, and they may even support it, but they will never make it their own.
Image Copyright Phil Date