Do you lead a high performing team?
In Life Science organizations, highly-skilled experts work together in multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural, virtual teams. Most teams know exactly what their goal and deliverables are. However, is your team really working as a high performing team?
The common characteristics of high performing teams are:
- Democratic leadership style
- Effective decision-making
- Open and clear communication and good listening skills
- Diversity of experience and background
- Mutual trust
- Managing conflict and personality clashes
- Clear goals
- Defined roles and responsibilities
- Positive atmosphere
- Efficient meetings
It is great to work in a high performing team and we all want that. However, building a high performance team requires strong leadership skills and a quite some effort. Some team leaders naturally do this; others are struggling to reach that golden standard.
If your team is in trouble or when your team needs to prepare itself for a major challenges, it is OK (and wise) to get support from an expert in team development.
How do we start?
Your team coach, who has years of experience in the Life Science industry, will attend one or two regular team meetings (F2F or virtual). The coach will be like a fly on the wall and not actively participate in any discussions. The goal is to assess the team’s current state of performance and identify any driving and restraining forces. After the meeting, the coach will discuss the observations with the team lead and propose a specific program to develop the team.
What happens next?
Depending on the outcome of the initial assessment the following options are available:
- Enroll the team leader in the individual coaching program GROW your leadership skills
- Start a team coaching program (see below)
- A combination of the two options above
How does a team coaching program look like?
If you decide to embark on a team coaching program, it usually starts with a kick-off meeting with the team leader to discuss the objectives and known challenges. Based on this, the teamcoach designs a program that focuses specifically on what this team needs and prepares a detailed offer and the price for the entire program.
The program usually starts with individual interviews with each team member followed by a kick-off meeting with the entire team. On average, 3-4 team sessions targeted to improve communication and collaboration are needed. These sessions are on top of the regular work meetings.
Topics that could be covered are:
- What are the different roles of each team member?
- What is the purpose of the team?
- What obstacles is the team facing to reach it goals?
- Is there trust in the team and how do you build that?
- How does the team communicate and collaborate?
- Developing essential skills for successful teams:
- Communication styles
- Listening skills
- Giving and receiving feedback
- Dealing with resistance and conflicts
- Effective meetings
- Decision making and escalation
- Leadership skills
