Systemic team development

Control is good. Trust is better.

Whether management or leadership teams, departments or projects: Teams are the nucleus of an organization. This is where fluid interaction occurs and where conflicts draw energy from day-to-day operations. This is where leadership becomes a powerful frame or structural friction. This is where employees experience a fit with the culture or go on the back burner because they no longer find themselves in the work. With team development, this framework can be shaped. The result works back because an aligned team needs less leadership to compensate and still produces more connectable results. Afterwards, it is clearer what the team is doing. And what makes it tick.

Systemic team development in practice

I have been working since 2005 in different settings of team development in corporations and medium-sized businesses, in large and smaller social institutions, in start-ups and in the public sector. The participants are managing directors, division and department managers, team leaders or employees in the operational business. The team formats are customized — adapted to the situation of the team, the organization and the flight level of the issues we work on.

For example:

Work with a leadership team in a mid-sized company that wants to move from a time of silos toward a shared leadership team, unifying structures and resolving areas of tension among themselves.
Work with the team of an owner-managed network of consultants who want to reposition themselves in the market together and develop a common mindset to do so.
Work with a youth services team facing new challenges and build structures to respond well to declining predictability and increasing lack of resources.

What it could be about:

Diagnoses & Feedback

Learn what is actually the matter

A professional diagnosis brings teams to the stand. By specifically querying relevant impact factors, it becomes apparent where the focus of further work could lie. The team learns where its own strengths lie and where the areas of tension lie. Topics that do not seem to be discussable internally are named and can be dealt with. Often, diagnoses are the beginning of the really powerful team processes — whether as an institutionalized feedback process or as the organic start of a development workshop.

Develop structure that allows freedom

Roles and processes are fluid and are often in the context of conflicting expectations. In addition to defined processes, there are also the organic ones, often faster and tied to fixed players. We invent clever solutions between formal standards and grown best practices.

Roles & Processes

Vision & Strategy

Meaning, community and lasting differences

For many teams, vision and strategy work means bringing together high expectations with a conflicting organizational reality. We explain how the balancing act of remaining strategically oriented and keeping an eye on the inherent logic of day-to-day business can be achieved. Concrete and implementation-oriented.

Release bound power

Conflict lines can mark clear boundaries or burn energy and burden everyday life. Conflict resolution replaced by micropolitics weakens the organization and its actors. We bring the power back into the system — and remain mindful that everyone involved can stay on board.

Conflicts

Cooperation

Taking the next step as a team

Cooperation is complex: It is about precise communication and focused agreements, self-direction and sense-making, project management and fluid processes. We look at what it takes to take the next step and what’s in the way.

How about a no-obligation initial consultation?