Building & Leading
Teams for Impact
December 20, 2011
There’s no “I” in team.
There’s no “1” in the One
Million Campaign.
We all have a piece of the
puzzle.
Building Your Team
You’ve got to organize
& mobilize!
Mobilizing to Action: PSA
Solution: Hope
What specifically & meaningful can be done about?
Problem: Anger
Action: Opportunity
What are they angry about
Make the specific &
or threatened by?
doable ask
Organizing Conversations
Intentional conversations that go deeply into a
person’s:
 Issues: What we act on
 Values: Principles, what motivates us
 Interests: What’s our stake in it
Assessment from the conversation:
 Capacity: What resources can be offered
 Commitment: What resources are offered
Goal: Learn a person’s story and what matters to
them. Build a relationship, assess them, and figure
out potential common concerns.
Mobilizing Conversations
Prompted conversations that make the ask.
Solution
Problem
Action
Goal: Find common concern. Find what is a
problem or point of agitation for a person to
make link between person’s problem and the
solution that leads them to take some action.
Coming Together As
A Team
Team Phases
Team Phases
1. Forming: Team meets & learns about challenges &
opportunities; agrees on goals; begins to tackle tasks
2. Storming: Team addresses issues, such as what
problems they are really supposed to solve, how they
will function independently & together, & what
leadership model they will accept
3. Norming: Team manages to have one goal & come to
mutual plan for team
4. Performing: Able to function as unit as team find ways
to get job done smoothly & effectively without
inappropriate conflict or need for external supervision
Working Together:
The Team Charter
Team Charter: Purpose
 What kind of team?
 What “work” does the team do?
 What topics belong “in” this team and what’s
“out”?
 What is the team responsible for accomplishing?
Team Charter: Context
 Who are we accountable to?
 What other groups / teams do we connect?
 What do they want / need from us?
Team Charter: Goals
 What specific results do we expect from our
efforts?
 What outcomes?
 How can we measure that?
Team Charter: Roles
 Who is on the team?
 What perspective does each member bring?
 Are there special roles or subgroups within this
team?
 What do subgroups require of us?
Team Charter: Procedures
 Work Processes:
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What processes will we use to do the team’s work?
How often will we meet?
Who determines & manages our agenda?
How will we connect with our stakeholders & other sponsors of
our work?
 Decision Making:
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What decisions are made within this team?
What is out of bounds?
What level of decision making responsibility do we have?
What decision process will we use?
 Communication:
 How will we communicate & connect to others within the
organization?
Team Charter: Norms
 What do we expect of each other?
 How do we agree to handle conflict?
 What are our team norms and/or operating
principles?
Team Norms Exercise
 Think of the worst team you have been on
 Spend 2 minutes writing down what made that
experience so terrible
 Think of the best team you have been on
 Spend 2 minutes writing down what made that
experience so good
 Write down suggestions for behaviors that would
make being on this team a positive experience
Working Together:
Team Needs
Team Needs: Planning Phase
 Team Charter: Overall objectives, resources, & constraints are
defined by or for team
 Goals: ID of measurable team output & related milestones
 Team Norms: Agreed upon standards of behavior that
regulate team member performance during & between
interactions
 Task Performance Strategy: Development of overall approach
to task & key actions to achieve goals
 Shared Understanding: ID of key assumptions & beliefs that
will affect performance to create a common perspective
 Team Memory: Inventory of relevant knowledge, information,
& skills available to team (& gaps)
Team Needs: Action Phase
 Monitoring Output: Tracking & communicating progress toward
task completion & goal accomplishment
 Monitoring Systems: Tracking resources available to team &
tracking external environment
 Coordination: Prioritizing & orchestrating sequence & timing of key
activities & events
 Communication: Ensuring high quality communication within group
 Monitoring Team Behavior: Providing feedback & coaching to help
members perform tasks or ensure others complete those tasks
 Managing Boundaries: Ensuring high quality information flow with
other groups or units, including acquisition of resources,
coordinating activities, & advocating team interests
Team Needs: Interpersonal
 Motivation Building: Generating sense of personal
accountability for individual & team performance, team
cohesion, & motivation toward task accomplishment
 Psychological Safety: Developing shared sense of trust
so team members can openly speak their minds without
fear of rebuke or retaliation
 Emotion Management: Ensuring set-backs & frustration
(& even over-confidence) don’t undermine team
performance
 Conflict Management: Proactively ensuring differences
of opinion don’t prevent task accomplishment; helping
team have healthy debate without personal acrimony
Working Together:
Virtual Teams
Virtual Teams
It is harder to follow a meeting from a distance.
So…
 Make meeting plan very explicit & more detailed
 List all planned activities, timelines, processes, etc.
 Engage vested interested of participants in advance
 Correspond personally with each to confirm
participation & interest
 Enunciate interim process goals & make smaller &
chronologically shorter
Virtual Teams
People don’t get feedback when working over a
distance. So…
 Proactively seek out & provide feedback from all
participants
 Engage in process check-ins frequently
 Enable private virtual dialogue
Virtual Teams
It’s harder to build a team over a distance. So…
 Achieve very clear, unambiguous goals
 Arrange for distributed “breaks” to allow informal
dialogue
Virtual Teams
There is an art to using audio & video in a
distributed meeting. So…
 Engage in a dialogue rather than giving a briefing
 Stay close to the microphone
 Explicitly ask for comments and feedback
Teams in Review
 Have organizing & mobilizing conversations to add team
members
 Teams go through phases – it’s perfectly normal
 Create a team charter
 Spend time developing team norms
 Teams require trust
 Manage team conflict before there is conflict
 Virtual teams require a little extra TLC
Sample Team Meeting Agenda
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Round of introductions / personal stories
Team norms exercise
Set team norms
Determine how team will meet
Determine how team will communicate
Create team charter
Assign team roles & general responsibilities
Lay out plan
Questions?