Team Effectiveness Starts With The People Around The Table
Updated: Oct 15
How BRICX® helped a strategic team reconnect, improve team communication and think about the future together
CLIENT |
The Challenge
When we talk about team effectiveness, we often start with the work. Objectives, responsibilities, processes and ways of working.
All of those things matter. But there's another question worth asking: how well do the people in the team actually know one another?
That was part of the question facing a small strategic team within a UK government-backed innovation organisation.
There were eight people in the team, working across a complicated mix of stakeholders and high-profile priorities linked to government. They were already a close team, but things had changed. People had moved in and out of the day-to-day environment, and one colleague was preparing to return from maternity leave.
They wanted to think about what they needed from one another to stay cohesive, resilient and effective as the demands on the team continued to change.
Sometimes, the work can wait
The team had worked together before on Insights Discovery® and team effectiveness, so they weren't starting from scratch.
This time, BRICX® gave them a different way into the conversation.
Rather than starting with roles, responsibilities or objectives, they started by reconnecting as people.
The first build was a model of their Dream Holiday.
It sounds like a strange place to start a conversation about team effectiveness. But it made people talk about interests, hobbies and experiences that colleagues who knew each other well had never heard about before.
Nothing dramatic happened. But simply learning a few new things about each other changed the conversation.
For learning and development professionals, this is worth noticing. Team communication depends on whether people know the person they're communicating with, understand their perspective, and feel able to share what's on their mind.
Sometimes you need to step away from the work to make that possible.
Seeing the team's future
Once the team had reconnected, they turned their attention to the future.
Each person individually built their own view of what the team needed which created the opportunity to put their own thinking on the table.
The team then created a shared model of their future and began identifying what they wanted to protect, strengthen and develop as the demands on them increased.
This is where the physical nature of BRICX® becomes useful.
An idea that might normally stay in someone's head is suddenly sitting on the table. Everyone can look at it. People can ask questions about it. They can spot where their thinking is similar and where it isn't.
The differences become something physical that the team can explore and remove the assumption that everyone sees the future in the same way.
For a team working under pressure, that can be a useful conversation to have before the pressure really arrives.
From talking to doing
Everyone had an opportunity to contribute, including a colleague returning from maternity leave. That gave the team a way to reconnect with where they were now, rather than simply picking up where they had left off.
The session then moved from the team's shared picture to individual commitments. Each person created a commitment model and transferred that commitment onto a dated postcard.
"This is what we want in the future" became "this is what I will do to help get us there".
A good conversation can help a team understand what it needs. But the real test comes afterwards. Do people behave differently? Do they communicate differently? Do they remember what they agreed?
The commitment postcards gave the team something they could come back to.
What does this have to do with team efficiency?
A team can have good processes and still lose time because people aren't clear about what others need from them, don't understand different perspectives or aren't comfortable raising an issue early.
For a small team with a lot of responsibility, those things can add up.
The BRICX® session gave this team time to reconnect, understand one another's perspectives and agree what they needed from each other.
Their commitment models also give them something to revisit in the future. They can bring them back together, look at the promises they made and ask whether they're still doing what they said they would.
That's a much more useful follow-up than simply asking whether everyone enjoyed the workshop.
Team development doesn't always start with the team
Over time it is inevitable that a team will change. Some people will leave and join. Responsibilities will grow and priorities will change - both inside and outside the organisation.
The people around the table might still be the same team, but the team itself can feel different.
Giving people time to reconnect can help them notice those changes and talk about what they need from one another.
Then, once people have had a chance to reconnect, you can start talking about the work again.
For this team, that meant building a shared picture of where they wanted to go and deciding what each person would do to help get them there.
Good team development isn't always about changing the way people work. Sometimes it's about giving them the space to understand the people they're working with.
Ready to reconnect your team?
If your team is navigating change, growing responsibilities or simply needs time to reconnect, BRICX® can help you create space for the conversations that matter.
Discover how BRICX® can help your team build a stronger foundation.
