Team Development Intensive

– Create Authentic Engagement

- We can fundamentally improve the dynamic of your team of up to 20 people in under 3 hours.

In a competitive marketplace, teamwork has become more and more critical to success, and we can transform your team's understanding of each other in just a few hours - without an escape room, a treasure hunt, or even leaving the office.

The days when a personality test, some Powerpoint slides, and a team lunch would suffice are long gone.  As Artificial Intelligence allows even more automation, the ability of your team to create and deliver at speed will become key to outperforming your competition. If your team can't be replaced by AI, it's because the individuality and people skills of your team are key. If people skills are key, then your people need to connect when they communicate with each other.

Communication skills are essential. A Holmes Report pegs the cost of employee misunderstandings at $37bn per year for US business - that's $24,000 per employee. These numbers can seem big till you think of every time you asked for one thing and were delivered something different.

Think how much faster and more confidently you can communicate with your closest friends, compared to your acquaintances. You don't need to make everyone at work your best friend, you don't even need to like them, but we can help you understand who they (and you) authentically are so that you can connect more effectively in your communications. It can seem a bit trite when people advise 'just be your authentic self', but we can help you and your team do just that.

A Cigna study found that nearly half of Americans (46%) report sometimes or always feeling alone or left out. Social media doesn't seem to be helping either, as Generation Z was the loneliest generation in that same study. Loneliness affects your health, your performance, and your likeliness to change employers. When people feel they belong, they stay.

Imagine how everything would start to change if everyone in your team was truly heard. 

How can we fundamentally change a team dynamic in only a few hours?

You will probably be aware of how much emphasis there is on story right now. Marketers are writing new content daily professing the power of good storytelling. Social media sites have abused the word with Facebook and Instagram 'stories'. There's even a great quote from Nobel prize winner for economics, Daniel Kahneman: 

"No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story."

-So here's our story.

We have developed a method to use storytelling exercises to get any group of people to start engaging and connecting, quickly and with unprecedented ease. We created these exercises and our method through experimentation with groups over the last 2 years, building on the knowledge we gained through teaching small groups to tell their stories to large audiences. In the past we used to offer this experience to the general public every month, but for teams, we add something very special.

Storytelling exercises and a structure to help people connect and engage is powerful by its self, yet, we can also add a boost to your team's Emotional Intelligence (EQ) too.

We have a technique to get a 'narrative read' from each of your team members. This read is achieved in real-time, using the unique skills of our co-founder Lynn Ferguson. Whenever anyone tells a story they will unwittingly communicate the underlying narratives of their life, their assumptions, truth, and view of the world. Lynn can uncover those underlying narratives and then reflect them back to the storyteller, giving the storyteller and their teammates a valuable insight into the authentic self of the storyteller. Half of EQ is the knowledge of self and the knowledge of others and so this team development exercise delivers on this half of EQ. The other half of EQ is based on the management of self and other's emotions and so can only truly be developed through the knowledge of the first half.

All of this might sound quite complex and difficult, which it is, but only for us. Your team doesn't experience this level of complexity. The team just sits and listens, and tells a few simple stories to fill their allotted time.

The reactions we get when we explain our method range from assumptions that we run some kind of cute storytelling event (like they experienced at grade school), to fears that we will be forcing people to over-share, and that the experience is similar to that which highly trained therapists deliver.

This is not grade-school-style, cute storytelling. Everyone is asked to speak their truth and the truth sounds different. It is extremely engaging to listen to another human speak openly and truthfully. Everyone is unique and you hear that truth at our events.

We aren't therapists and in our events there's no need to share anything that would make you feel uncomfortable. Therapists give you strategies to deal with issues and make judgments on whether a behavior is healthy or not. We don't make any such judgments and only reflect what we hear. In fact we have a client who is a well-respected therapist, who refers some of his clients to us so that we can uncover some of the hidden narratives and patterns that are affecting his patients. Sometimes the discovery is enough to let the person decide how to proceed and sometimes they then work with their therapist to make the progress they seek.

Are you ready to fundamentally improve the dynamic of your team of up to 20 people in under 3 hours?