Team building methodology from Team4Teams

There are colleagues who use team-building methodologies, deploy models in a theoretical framework. Fine.
There are also colleagues for whom team building focuses on experiential learning. They align with what the team aims to achieve. Also fine.
Team4Teams team coaches alternate both. Goal-oriented, self-experienced and - by using teambuilding methodologies - with depth.

 

Using a powerful team building methodology to guide team members into team players

That is the mission of Team4Teams

With a professional and experienced team, Team4Teams developed a teambuilding methodology over 30 years, together with many partners, which we are happy to share with you.

Team building methodology and vision

Motivation theory part of our teambuilding methodology
Contact Right arrow icon

Experiential learning - experiential learning

Some things you don't learn from a book. Our teambuilding methodology is also based on self-experience. 

Experiencing together has impact. Time and again, we see how participants - by tackling a multi-complex task together - accelerate their mutual communication through intrinsic motivation. Through the reflections, what has not been discussed becomes open for discussion. A team coach guides participants towards a shared understanding. The effect is enormous:

  • Tuning in is easier: 'Relations have become more pleasant.' 'He just answers my mail again'. 'I step in more easily'. 'I now understand why she reacts the way she does'. 
  • Addressing each other is done with respect. 'She first asked if I had time'. 
  • You can be yourself now. 'My qualities are seen'. 'I am now being asked for an opinion'. 
  • Confidence is strengthened. Psychological safety is a key to working well together. It ensures mental health. Colleagues dare to counteract when something threatens to go wrong.
  • Mistakes are looked at differently. 'When things went wrong I was able to discuss it, there was no pointing, we looked at the process by which this could have happened.'

Some things you don't learn from a book. For that, meeting each other surprisingly, connecting just a little differently and having a motivation from within is what makes the difference.

The Scale of Cooperation

The Scale of Cooperation is central to our teambuilding methodology and provides a powerful roadmap to good cooperation. In our view, good cooperation is the key to growing an organisation both literally and figuratively. Using the Scale gives language to the situation in a team and direction at the same time. 

The Scale provides insight, direction and focus. Team4Teams facilitators support teams to accelerate to a new level of better cooperation. You can use the Scale of Cooperation without limitations for your own team right now; it is open source  from The Scale of Cooperation VOF.

Scale of Cooperation where do we stand as a team?

Group dynamic work

A team moves, is dynamic every day. A group forms a system of work.

Are the group members moving along? What reinforces trust? How do you strengthen a group culture that works? How do you manage effectively and efficiently? Showing leadership is not 'doing what people want', leadership is shown by making shared goals and leading inspiringly across thresholds. A team member shows leadership when he or she brings in what the team, the organisation, needs. 

Supporting a team to go through the process of forming, storming, norming to performing to go is our job.

Setting priorities

 The Eisenhower matrix is an important tool for setting priorities.
No time? That's actually (usually) not a priority. 

General Eisenhouwer used this matrix in World War II to do what was important to him and urgent. It is also necessary to plan what is not urgent but important. And what is not important others should do or agree together not to do any more. This matrix also helps to organise agreement. 

do, plan, delegate

Team building methodology and theory

Starting from positive strength

That which you put energy into, grows. 

In a well-cooperating team, 'assuming positive power' is a given. Team members trust that they can solve difficulties together.

This does not work in teams where - under too much pressure - antagonism rears its head and the game is no longer about the task, but about the man.

Sometimes team members experience deficits or a lack. Do I really belong? Why do I get so little appreciation for my work? Where can I turn with this idea? Every person has a hierarchy of needs, by putting these needs on the table and respecting them, growth is possible again.

Price information Right arrow icon
Growing and being under pressure create dynamics in the team

Working together is working together

From criticism to feedback

In our trainings, the process of learning from each other's mistakes is paramount. Making a mistake actually always happens because there is a succession of events in which someone (many) could have done something!

In a well-functioning group, mistakes are made. 'Where there is a chop, there are chips,' is the thinking. However, in a struggling organisation, mistakes should not be made. But things go wrong there too. People are then busy criticising in order to stay out of harm's way themselves. Someone is 'blamed for everything'. Or mistakes are made invisible, denied and the learning effect is evaded. Hassle remains. How one deals with hassle makes all the difference.

By shifting attention from the person to 'what is needed in our way of working?' Towards the task at hand, then, comes space to learn from mistakes again. Putting mistakes on the table reveals that not one person is 'guilty', but that many can do something. This secures a way of working (in a procedure or method) and prevents mistakes by working together.

When team building is useful becomes visible with the Scale of Cooperation.
Contact Right arrow icon
outdoor team training is also possible coronaproof

From resistance to desire

From blockade to challenge

A team that puts energy into shared goals gradually turns problems into challenges.

Clashing teams are in struggling mode, feeling mostly irritation and resistance. By making the causes of this resistance negotiable, there is room for conversation, the problems behind the problems come to the table and, after a period of calm, a new desire carefully emerges. As soon as a desire can be shared, opportunities come back into view. And then things move fast! Our teambuilding methodology is at its best here.

Supporting team building methodologies

NLP

If someone else can do something, I can learn it is a principle in NLP that we like to use. Look at and hear first from someone who can already do it. By focusing first on the problem and then the goal, and then looking at how someone was able to achieve that goal, you acquire useful new tools.

Especially the practical way in which the NLP community Looking ahead to improvements in communication with yourself and others appeals to us.

Team building methodology using NLP
Team building methodology and communication styles
Discover more Right arrow icon

Communication styles

Communicating with style is a key focus at Team4teams. Every person has a focus. Some want quick results, others go for thoroughness, want to keep the atmosphere good or are especially focused on motivating people. A successful, creative and flexible team makes use of the differences in communication style. 

In a workshop, clinic or master class, a team learns to communicate flexibly, to tune in to each other and to customers. The effect is profound.

There are many providers of DISC profiles and Insights discovery testing. And to be honest, we find them expensive and while impressive, too little is done with them. Team4Teams uses a short (inexpensive) online questionnaire and focuses on the team, team cooperation and how the team will grow through self-experience. More than enough: keep it simple.

Systemic work

Systemic work with teams is a surprising, lively and effective method of content reflection. It reveals what is going on in the undercurrent of individual team members. It gives insight into resources, obstacles and the relationship to the common goal. Internal ordering is also an important tool for team functioning.

One of the tools of systemic work is a constellation. We call a constellation with a team an organisational constellation. This can be done by using objects, as in the picture with Martuskas. What does my organisation look like, where do I stand in this organisation, where do my colleagues stand? Lively, playful, but also serious.

Systemic work is a perfect form of work when there are - unspoken - questions about:

  • What is someone's bond?
  • What is the mutual arrangement?
  • Is there sufficient balance?
Team building methodology and systemic work
Team training feedback

From exploration to recognition

Will it be misunderstanding or exploring and perhaps acknowledging?
Those who put energy into goals turn problems into challenges step by step. Language is an important tool and it also has pitfalls. When tension is high, even a concept like 'cooperation' becomes negative and 'challenges' also take on the wrong ring. Us-side thinking makes cooperating with 'the opponent' no longer possible. Before a group under pressure wants to think about cooperation, there is the resistance. This resistance is there for a reason. Exposing and discussing the triggers of this resistance is an important first step in finding space. Next, the team coach explores what the participants are longing for. Only with a shared desire in mind can difficulties become opportunities again, exclusion becomes inclusion.

A team coach is multi-partisan in our team-building methodology and thus becomes a catalyst in this process. Turning attack into complement, that is the desire of our team coaches. Language is important in this; so is experiencing for yourself the joy and growth that complementing gives. 'We are working together again!'