Getting a Team to Leverage their Strengths to Collaborate

I was asked to enable a team to use their strengths to improve their collaboration as a team with the help of the CliftonStrengths assessment.  

Love that thought - especially since I'm a certified Strengths Strategy Coach.

This team were the leaders of R&D and had teams reporting in. So yes - their average experience per person would between 18 to 20 years.

The challenge - covering a lot of content along with reflection and discussions within a short time.  Specifically I was given a day, after a lot of negotiation. There's many dimensions to CliftonStrengths that have to covered before a participant is able to understand how strengths manifest, as well as how they can be triggered, unconsciously and consciously.  This is true for group settings as well as one-to-one strengths coaching.

The base workshop design was from my Signature Workshop "Decode your Strengths", and I included a lot of pre-work and post work - i.e. articles to read and exercises for self-reflection.

The participants were wonderful and invested their time to complete the pre-work assigned to them, in addition to completing the CliftonStrengths assessment.  Their participation during the workshop definitely enhanced the learning experience for everyone.

We covered the 34 Strengths, Great Wall of Talent, Theme Dynamics, how collaboration happens when weaknesses are negated by complementing strengths, and ended the day with short case studies of how strengths, when understood, can be used to manage different situations at work.

What's next? Practice and Reviews.  Let's see how they go.

Here's some of the action from the day.

Building the Top 5 Great Wall of Talent

The Great Wall of Talent

Creating the Team Domain Map

Do connect with me if you wish to build a Strengths-based Team or Organization that can use their strengths to effectively collaborate with each other.

Reflections from IAF Mumbai Hub Session - Springboarding Sustainability through Stories

Pic credit: Dall-E

Conducting a facilitation session for the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) is always a pleasure.  It can also get a bit tense if you try to do different topics using a process that fits the session, but you haven't tried before.

That's what I did last month when I agreed to do a session on "Springboarding Sustainability through Stories" for IAF's Mumbai Hub.  I was blessed with participants who gave their full attention in the session.  There were two CPFs in attendance - Shyam Iyer and Kala Diwanji.

Here's what went well  - a deep discussion on the vast topic of "sustainability" was enabled for the participants.  I learnt that the process "Impact Gap Canvas" can generate deep discussion.  Participants were able to first research sustainability stories and then create some of their own as they discussed how they can make sustainability practices a part of their life.  I contracted with the CPFs to be participants in the session.

What I could have done differently - I could have designed more physical movement during the session for the participants as it would keep their energy levels up.  I also could have spent more time setting the context for the session.

Here are some pics of the action:

Some possibilities of actions towards sustainability

With Parineeta Mehra who willingly supported me with the logistics

The harvest at the end of the session

My gratitude to IAF Mumbai hub for this wonderful opportunity.  

Additional thanks to 

• Parineeta Mehra for her support with logistics.  
• SessionLab where I found the Impact Gap Canvas
• The CPFs for sharing with me a few tips for improving my facilitation skills.
• The participants for giving of their time and whole-hearted attention.

Pics from Leadership Training - Managing for Effective Business

 Here are pics from this workshop of 2 days covering two separate groups of leaders of a manpower outsourcing organization.  In this particular workshop, the focus was on the topics of Risk Management, Decision Making, and their relation to delivering Customer Experience.  We also covered a few tools for innovation including SCAMPER.  

This was another workshop customized as part of the Leadership Learning Journey for this group of enthusiastic learners.  

Here are the pics from Batch One

Batch two pics:

I had a lot of fun and learning while designing these workshops ensuring that they positively and curiously engaged with the content and each other.

Contact me on +919820155778 if you want to conduct similar leadership journeys for your leaders.

IAF Event - Transformation Sprint

Say the word "sustainability" in certain companies and it will followed by discussions around pollution by organizations, waste management, loss of forests, wildlife, climate change and so on.  The discussion around action to change things doesn't move beyond criticizing government and industry.  At the end of this utilization of precious oxygen, nothing really changes, leaving a few people feeling sad and hopeless for the fate of the planet.

If you want to have a fruitful discussion on this topic of Sustainability, join me on 22 March 2025 at Hotel Mirage, Andheri East, Mumbai, where we will leverage the power of #facilitation and #storytelling to discover and discuss ways to inspire action and create impact i.e. a tangible difference in our real-world sustainability actions.  

This is one of the two Facilitation sessions (the other session is "Aspire – Be Your Best Version" facilitated by: Shyam Iyer, CPF & Kala Diwanji, CPF) brought to you by the Mumbai Hub of the International Association of Facilitators.

You wouldn't want to miss this fabulous Transformation Sprint.

Here are the registration details:

Date: 22nd March 2025

Time: 09:30 AM – 5:30 PM IST

Venue: Mirage Hotel, Andheri (East), Mumbai

Who should attend: Open to all who are interested in gaining deeper insights, and consciously bring one's best self into practice, actionable sustainability, while learning about #facilitationskills #facilitation and it's application beyond the workplace.

Registration here : https://iaf-india.org/event/transformation-sprint-copy/

The Key Quality of a High Performance Team

In Teamwork, silence isn't golden - it's deadly!

- Mark Sanborn

The importance of getting teams aligned and running smoothly is a key differentiator for an organization's success and tends to give leaders a headache especially when deadlines are missed or quality is less than desired.  

I put out this poll on LinkedIn a few weeks ago.  See the screenshot below on what the poll contained and what people chose.

Some background - Through the past few decades, the most popular models in conflict management were the Thomas Kilmann model and Patrick Lencioni's 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.  The first model describes clearly one's possible behaviours during a conflict, and the second model identifies what are causes of poor performance in teams.

So when I have covered the topic of 'Conflict Resolution' or 'Conflict Management' during my Leadership / Managerial Development (or as a stand-alone topic) workshops, both these models have helped the participants get a better grasp on managing and resolving conflicts.

As you may have seen from the poll, the respondents felt that 'Trusting each other' was the key factor for high performing teams, followed by 'Clear Goals'.  Some also shared their perspectives in the comments. Click here to view the interesting comments by some of the respondents in this poll.

The fact is that all four options are important for teams to deliver performance.  Some of my musings on these options: 

Trusting Each Other - What exactly are we trusting each other person to do?  Also trust is built over time, and is quite a fragile thing.  It needs constant repetition, like breathing, if it's going to be of use for a team.

Knowing Each Others Strengths - It's important, no doubt.  How are the strengths being appropriately leveraged by the individual and the team to deliver success.

Clear Goals are Defined - An extremely critical point that speaks of alignment of the team members to the goals.  What's needed post this is actual performance, guidance and flexibility to enable the team to reach the goal - while leveraging strengths, building trust, managing errors and so on.

Manage conflicts effectively - For high performance, the teams will have to work and resolve conflicts quickly.  Why?  because any conflict can consume humungous amounts of time.  A conflict doesn't start out as a conflict, but  mostly as a disagreement or a difference of opinion or a personality clash. So it's actually consuming time from a previous date.  Now we also know (but often forget), time is our most precious resource. Added to this is the amount of emotional energy invested from the initial disagreement to the conflict in progress, by all parties trying to convince the others that they are right.  These tend to become crucial or difficult conversations, which will consume further time and energy to getting the parties to agree to a particular course of action or thought.  

If team members are busy proving that they're right, they don't have time to build trust, get aligned to clear goals, or take the time to know each other's strengths.  As a result, performance will suffer.

The above quote is a reality throughout life, whether personal or professional (irrespective of the industry / organization culture).  Not every disagreement deserves a battle or a war.

Therefore, the faster the team is able to resolve their conflicts effectively, the quicker they are on their way to delivering high performance.  You definitely wouldn't want silence, no matter how golden, coming from your team.

Please get in touch with me at ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or +919820155778 for workshops and coaching on enabling your teams to work effectively together.

 

5 Conversations that foster Teamwork in the Workplace

We know that the world moves based on #conversations and #decisions.

Here's a useful article on the kind of conversations that #leaders and #managers could have with their #teams to foster #teamwork at the workplace. You may even want to have some of these conversations as one-to-one sessions for specific effectiveness and outcomes.

From the article - "Consistent communication is essential for #collaboration and performance."

Contact me on ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or send me a DM here if you want to learn how to make these conversations effective for your teams.

LinkedIn Poll - What key quality makes a high performing team?

Here's a link to a poll that I created on LinkedIn on what key quality makes a high performing team.  Do click the link and join the discussion.

I'm not sure that we think alike on this.  I'll give my thoughts after the poll time ends. 

Stay tuned.

#strengthsdecoder #highperforming #teamperformance #performancecoach #strengthscoach