Inspiring Individuals, Engaging Teams, Changing Society
Five years ago, we started Team Building with Purpose to ignite a passion in people to help make the world a better place. We believe that social issues can’t be left to the Government or charities alone to overcome them. Put simply, most people want to help, but they just don’t know how, so we decided to make it easier for them.
For example, too often corporate teams have volunteer days that go to waste each year because engaging people at an individual level can be laborious, and most people feel too busy to take time out of their work life to do something meaningful.
In addition, traditional team building in our experience can be pretty lame. It’s often team bonding rather than team building – undoubtably fun, but what’s the point?
So, we decided to bring the corporate and charity worlds together – providing meaningful team building that inspires individuals, engages teams and changes society. That might sound like a big call, so in this newsletter, we’ll show you how – through harnessing the 5
Superpowers of a United Team©.
Inspired by Patrick Lencioni
We’re big fans of Patrick Lencioni’s book, 5 Dysfunctions of a team in which he explores the knock-on effects of a lack of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results within a team can stand in the way of them
realising their potential.
Building on this model we’ve structured our charity team building programs to facilitate team learnings and growth each of these areas – building trust, promoting healthy conflict, gaining commitment, encouraging accountability, and achieving clear results.
1. Building Trust – through connection and vulnerability
“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication.”
Stephen R. Covey
Trust is the foundation of all high performing teams. Without sufficient trust, people don’t share information, they don’t try on new ideas and they don’t speak their truth.
Trust allows us to feel safe to be vulnerable – to say that we don’t understand, to admit that we’re not comfortable or to give an opinion that’s opposite to that of the wider group.
In effect, without trust there’s no collaboration. People keep to themselves, put their head down and sometimes merely get through the day. Without trust, people find themselves feeling separate from their colleagues and often dread the end of the weekend, when they begin to get that “Sunday night feeling”.
In our team building sessions, we promote and practice vulnerability by encouraging personal storytelling in relation to the social issues we’re helping our charity partners overcome. When people start seeing each other as fellow human beings, rather than colleagues a wonderful thing happens – we start to get to know each other on a much more authentic, holistic level, which deepens trust and understanding of each other’s history, values and passions.
Questions to ponder:
• Out of 10 (10 being high) how would you rate the current trust levels in your team?
• What about your wider organisation, e.g. with the senior leadership team or other departments?
2. Promoting Healthy Conflict – through open debate
“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.”
Margaret Heffernan
Healthy conflict is essential in high performing teams. It’s the diversity of thought that moves us forward rather than getting stuck in a rut of doing things the way they’ve always been done or falling foul of not challenging our group thinking.
Yet the courage and vulnerability required for healthy conflict is uncomfortable for many people who would rather be on dishwasher emptying duty for a month than potentially upset the apple cart or draw negative attention to themselves unnecessarily. We get it. We do. But often it’s how we say something, not what we say that’s the problem. Being curious and wondering whether there’s a different viewpoint is a pretty safe approach.
In our team building sessions, we’re talking about some important and complex issues – domestic and family violence, environmental sustainability, homelessness and the global housing crisis to name a few. These issues are bigger than us, but we’re part of the solution. Often the first step to positive change is getting people talking about what’s going on. That makes for really interesting, sometimes challenging conversations (in a good way), where the group is working together for a higher purpose. That in itself brings people together whilst practicing healthy debate around important issues.
Questions to ponder:
• Out of 10 (10 being high) how safe do your team feel to debate important issues?
• What’s one issue that no-one in your team is addressing?
3. Gaining Commitment – through emotional engagement
“The only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment.”
Tony Robbins
Each of the elements we’re discussing have a knock-on effect. Without trust, teams don’t feel psychologically safe enough to have healthy conflict and if they’re not speaking up and saying what they think, then they’re not really emotionally connected to the decisions that are being made, which can result in a lack of commitment.
That makes sense, right? If you’re not really invested in the conversation in the first place, you’re hardly going to dedicate yourself to achieving the outcome. Without an emotional connection, commitment is simply making a decision. In the moments when our commitment wavers, we rely on the emotional connection for the reason why we put in the hard work or change our behaviours for new habits.
Changing the world requires commitment. This is why we craft our sessions to take people deep into the world of our charity partners, to understand the full impact of the social issues we’re discussing, to hear real life stories and to recognise the possibilities of changing
people’s lives for the better. Our sessions are a rollercoaster of hard-hitting facts, inspirational stories, team challenges, debates, games, creative activities and all the while, we’re translating the learnings from the room back into your team culture and way of working.
Questions to ponder:
• Out of 10 (10 being high) how committed are your team to the strategic vision?
• Where might you need to create more of an emotional engagement to what’s possible?
4. Encouraging Accountability – through shared responsibility
“Accountability is the glue that ties commitment to the result.”
Bob Proctor
We’re sure you can see where this is heading by now… If people don’t feel personally invested in a decision or plan, they’re less likely to follow through, therefore affecting accountability.
Often people remain accountable simply due to responsibility – being bound by what they “should” do. A much more effective and enjoyable approach is to be emotionally connected to the outcome, which gives us the drive and energy to follow through with our commitments. This is especially true when what we’re doing positively affects other people.
Now, we’re only with teams for an average of 3-hours, so we don’t hold them accountable for changing the world, but we do know that people take action as a result of our sessions – they volunteer, reach out to their local community, do a fun-run, host a morning tea, become a mentor, champion the cause they’ve learned about, tell others about the good work our charity partners do. It’s a ripple effect that extends the reach of our charity partners to 1,000’s of people a year.
Questions to ponder:
• Out of 10 (10 being high) what is the current level of accountability in your team?
• What are the tasks that always seem to get put off until later? How can you create more emotional connection to the “why” (the higher purpose)?
5. Achieving Results – through collective action
“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.”
Oscar Wilde
Maintaining good levels of trust, healthy conflict, commitment and accountability leads to results – the final level of Lencioni’s pyramid. Once you have this recipe right, you can expect positive results from an inspired and cohesive team.
We see it in action daily. By helping teams practice skills such as vulnerability, respectful debate, creativity, positivity and caring, we see colleagues start to relate to each other differently, which deepens relationships and makes teamwork easier.
And while our charity partners are busy doing what they’re best placed to do, we’re educating people about the big issues and revving people up to help them make positive change.
Plus, in addition to any specific outputs from the team sessions (e.g. food or toy hampers, or special messages of support for the people our charity partners support), we give 50% of our net profit to our charity partners, which we guarantee to be at least $500 + GST per event. This in itself produces a residual income for our charity partners to do more of the good work they do.
Needless to say, five years on, we’re pretty stoked about the work that we do, the results we’re achieving and corporate Australia’s response to choosing Team Building with Purpose.
Questions to ponder:
• Out of 10 (10 being high) how would you rate your team in terms of the results you’re getting?
• Which of the 5 elements above, when improved, would have the greatest impact on your team’s results?
If you’d like to chat to us about your team dynamics and how we can help, please reach out on 1300 880 487 or info@teambuildingwithpurpose.com.au