Team Alignment (Download)

Case Study

Recently, a large publishing company asked us to help its executive team resolve differences that were becoming more and more of a problem for the organization. The desired outcomes included improved conflict management, better day-to-day communications, and greater cohesiveness.

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The most significant human achievements are the result of a group working together towards a shared objective.

As leadership expert Robert Hogan points out, if effective teams can be established and maintained, positive organizational outcomes will emerge. When teams fall apart, an organization experiences lower productivity, lower morale and other negative consequences.

Unfortunately, in many organizations today, senior teams are not teams at all, but rather a group of functional and business unit heads with little inclination or incentive to cooperate or work with one another.

However, when an organization’s leaders become effective team leaders and create real, aligned and motivated teams, powerful things happen: Trust is built, barriers are broken down, differences are leveraged rather than discouraged and creative solutions overcome past limitations. This creative energy catalyzes other teams into high impact performance mode, and culture begins to empower rather than impair real leadership.

WJM Associates offers a rigorously customized Team Alignment program designed to provide practical, long-term solutions to the specific business challenges faced by senior management teams.

WJM’s High Performance Team Alignment Program:

  • Ensures team buy-in to the team’s priorities.
  • Identifies and communicates expectations of each individual to improve the ability of the team to meet its goals.
  • Clarifies individual team members’ roles and responsibilities and the most significant obstacles that must be overcome.
  • Provides a concise scorecard to use to monitor progress to meet business goals.


Unlike traditional “teambuilding” events that impart fleeting and vague notions of “teamwork” and “trust”, WJM’s Team Alignment process focuses exclusively on how relationships between team members are supporting or undermining real business objectives. WJM assists the leader and his/her team in increasing understanding and consensus regarding each executive’s priorities, roles and work loads, and how best to achieve maximum alignment, particularly where members depend on each other to achieve the team’s shared goals.

 

 
The WJM Team Alignment Process

WJM consultant(s) meet with the team’s leader to review the team alignment program goals and develop objectives for the team from three perspectives:  the team leader, the team, and the individual executive.  WJM focuses on determining the overall methodology for the team alignment program and defining specific measurable outcomes.
 

In order to measure the impact of each executive on the collective productivity of the team, WJM Associates gathers assessment data to generate a profile of individual and team strengths and developmental objectives.  We utilize interviews and proprietary tools that assess team alignment, team member engagement, and team member developmental strengths and challenges.  The assessment results allow the team to determine how to best accomplish goals, generate working norms and build cohesion around a common objective.  Our process allows us to focus on the behaviors that drive success and collect metrics around objectives and accountability.
 

In advance of the workshop, WJM conducts prep work with each individual team member so that the workshops are meaningful and targeted.  In a team workshop setting, WJM Associates works with the team to:

  1. Define the strategy, vision, mission, values and plans that are unique for the team.
  2. Determine role, responsibilities and expectations of the team members individually, and as a collective whole.
  3. Develop procedures for solving problems, making decisions, communicating, managing conflict and evaluating and measuring performance.
  4. Enable positive relationships, through mutual trust, support, inclusion, listening and feedback.
  5. Maximize the team leader’s personal credibility while maintaining their strategic focus, establishing clear expectations, developing team members, managing change and resolving conflict.
 

In some cases, team members may desire additional counsel to reach their objectives.  In these cases, WJM offers both individual and Strategic Team coaching to address specific challenges.
 

WJM’s process allows for the measurement of progress on the team’s top business priorities.  Mini-surveys/assessments are employed to measure progress.  Results are presented to the team to maintain focus and adjust the course, if necessary.