Team Building & Effectiveness 

In addition to what is listed elsewhere, a significant component of our work involves helping businesses with growing and developing existing human capital, building high performing teams and dealing with conflict in organisations. (See more detail on How We Work here)

Team Coaching: Helping teams help themselves 

Our team sessions are collaboratively co-designed and customised to work on a team’s most pressing actual challenges and ensure they leave equipped with immediately implementable solutions. It can best be described as Team Coaching, i.e. integrating elements of Team Development, Team Thinking, Team Learning and Team Strategising. We provide the models, frameworks and structure, and the team provides the thinking, the challenges and many of the answers to their own challenges.

We stay true to the principle that ‘the mind that holds the problem most often holds the solution to it’ and we structure and facilitate the sessions so that teams often come up with solutions to the challenges themselves.

We borrow from a broad range of modalities to create the best possible interactive learning experience.

These include things such as models and frameworks of thought leaders like Daniel Kim, Brené Brown, and Etsko Schuitema; the neurosciences; Nancy Kline's thinking environment principles; the business model canvas; EQi2.0 emotional intelligence assessment; the change cycle; and conflict competence tools.

In the process, participants learn and practise ways of being and doing so they feel competent to go and implement these right away. 

Team Building & Development: Assessing and developing team effectiveness 

High-performing teams lie at the foundation of organisational success and much of the work we do is to collaborate with team leaders in building such teams.

All teams in an organisation should ultimately be focused on achieving outcomes that directly or indirectly support the overall organisational vision, strategies and goals. In order to help organisations (and teams) achieve this in an orchestrated manner we have developed a team effectiveness assessment model that guides teams in analysing and tracking all the critical elements required for them to be exceptional. It ensures both that the right metrics are considered, and even more importantly, that the right conversations are had about the right issues for a specific team at any given point in time.

For more information please see the attached document.

Prior to any intervention we use focus groups or one-on-one interviews to ensure both that the real challenges in the team are accurately identified, and that all team members' voices are heard. The intervention is then custom designed in partnership with the team leader to address the real issues that the team faces (real play rather than role play).

One size does not fit all, so we make use of a spectrum of best practice models, philosophies and cutting edge thinking to ensure an interactive blended learning intervention that is just right for the team. During the actual intervention our role is to create a safe container, build trust amongst team members, facilitate effective and honest conversations and ensure that every voice is heard. 

With Strategic Human Capitals guidance, we collaboratively designed a multi-day team engagement that focussed on: building relationships; re-establishing trust; developing Vision and Values; quickly identifying all the aspects that were impacting the team’s performance (using SHCC’s Team Effectiveness S-Curve model), and facilitating in-depth discussions about the overall and BU strategies going forward. - Chief Information Officer, Global Insurance Company 

Team Strategy Development: Working towards excellence 

The SHCC Team Excellence canvas is one of the tools we use as part of the Team Coaching process to help the team identify what it will take for them to get from Good to Great to Excellence.

The benefit of the Team Excellence canvas is that it gives the team a one-page summary view of who they are and everything required for them to be excellent.

We follow a balance between an inside out and an outside in approach, depending on what needs to be emphasized in the specific team.

From the outside-in perspective, we consider the team's clients, who they are and what they want from us vs. what they get from us.

From the inside-out perspective we consider and clarify the team's purpose, vision and mission. We together define excellence for the team and analyse what is being done well and what could be better.  

Relationship and Conflict Management: Personality & conflict style assessment 

A recent study that questioned 5000 employees in Europe and the Americas and 660 HR practitioners in the UK found that the average employee spends 2.1 hours a week dealing with conflict (“...workplace disagreement that disrupts the flow of work”) and this, in UK workplaces alone, translates to 370 million working days lost every year.

But conflict in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, or is it? Thomas Jefferson said that "Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth". Suffice to say that having conflict competent employees and teams is critical for organisational effectiveness.

We are certified providers of the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) Assessment tools that were developed specifically to help people learn how to have truly effective interpersonal relationships (including good conflict). Done in a team context, this powerful tool gives team members a colour coded visual expression of each other’s natural preferences, strengths and overdone strengths that are likely to impact the team dynamic both when things are going well and when conflict arises.

With SDI, we are able to scientifically predict how each team member will react and change in conflict. Team members get to understand and share:

• • how everyone in the team progresses through the three stages of conflict,
  • what they really want in each of the stages, 
  • how they feel and show up,
  • how they should and should not be approached in each of the different stages.

This is exceptionally powerful in helping people to recognise conflict sooner and resolve it with more acceptable outcomes.

For more information, please see the attached document. 

Emotional Competence Training: EQi-2.0 and 360 assessments

Emotional Intelligence is a set of emotional and social skills that collectively establish how well we: perceive and express ourselves; develop and maintain social relationships; cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way. 

Emotional intelligence is estimated to account for up to 45% of job success!

The EQ-i 2.0 measures an individual’s emotional and social strengths and weaknesses across five distinct categories, each with three sub-categories, which together create a Total Emotional Intelligence score. As certified providers of EQ-i2.0 & 360, we offer one of the most advanced and scientifically validated emotional intelligence assessment tools in the world. Based on the work by Reuven Bar-On, the EQ-i 2.0® measures a set of emotional and social skills that influence the way people perceive and express themselves, develop and maintain relationships, cope with life and work challenges and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.

• • Self-Perception: Self-Regard, Self-Actualization, Emotional Self-Awareness 
  • Self-Expression: Emotional Expression, Assertiveness, Independence 
  • Interpersonal: Interpersonal Relationships, Empathy, Social Responsibility 
  • Decision Making: Problem Solving, Reality Testing, Impulse Control 
  • Stress Management: Flexibility, Stress Tolerance, Optimism 
  • Well-Being Indicator: Happiness 

The EQi360 allows for a 360-degree review of an individual's EQ - a most powerful perspective for either team development or individual leadership development.
Read More 

Employee Engagement: Tracking levels of commitment and productivity

The Gallup 2012 results found that 23 million people in the U.S. are actively disengaged from their work, i.e. they turn up and do their jobs at a basic level only. In the US alone, the estimated cost of this loss in productivity exceeds $300 billion.

High levels of employee engagement and being considered an employer of choice are mostly determined by the extent to which employees feel an organisation cares for them and is interested in their individual growth and development. This is a strategic challenge that requires a comprehensive approach.

Our solution includes a strategic management tool that helps organisations manage and monitor employee engagement through an easy to administer questionnaire that tracks all the critical indicators of employee engagement across four dimensions namely, the Individual:

• • as Employee
  • as part of a Team
  • in relation to their Manager
  • in relation to the Organisation.

This provides results that are a snapshot of employee engagement overall and per unit and it also serves as a high level review of the performance of unit managers. Like all our modules it can be customised to a specific organisation’s needs.

For more information please see the attached document.

Diversity Training Workshop: Transformation, integration, restoration and healing

In South Africa’s diverse society it is essential for employers to actively manage the process of building a strong and culturally integrated workforce. 

After a deceptively calm period in South Africa post 1994, a number of factors seem to have generated the need for a renewed and more in-depth process of cross-cultural conversations today. But now the conversation is different and it includes questions around real transformation, privilege and restoration and ultimately what it will really take to heal us as a people and nation. 

In creating safe spaces to have these conversations, our workshops include opportunities for learning, talking, thinking, healing and sharing around topics of individual experience and pain, and group and cultural differences and experiences. We focus on developing an understanding of and appreciation for diversity as an emotional competence (EQ) and create opportunities for people to get to know each other, see each others’ hearts, and in so doing create new bonds and emotional allegiances with each other and build strong integrated teams.

For more information please see the attached document.