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Case Study 4:

Revisiting Team Building Efforts for Better Communication

Sylvie had been the team leader of the team for several years. The group had undergone team building experiences each year, but they didn't seem to be meeting their needs and the team was still having many miscommunication issues. After meeting with Sylvie and each member, ND Learning Centre was able to design a team building program that would help to bring them to the next level.

Because of the negative experiences the team had had in the past with regards to team building, many of the participants were a little apprehensive about this retreat. Soon after arriving however, their worry gave way to laughter and soon the team was communicating on a whole new level. "This is the most fun I think we have had as a team since we've been together and I really know everyone a lot better. I will feel much more at ease when I need to work out a problem with any of them." remarked one satisfied team member.

	"We're actually talking to each other. We never used to really communicate."

At the end of the 2-day session, the team was asked what they would like to bring back with them to the workplace. They had developed some new patterns of communication and behaving while on the retreat and now had to decide how they wanted to behave back at the workplace. They then created an action plan for how they would implement these new behaviours.

ND Learning Centre continued to work with the team for 7 months following the initial session. Each time the team met with one of our facilitators, we picked up where we left off and reviewed how the process was going.

Initially, we looked at the original action plan that the team had created to evaluate how effective the team had been at transferring these new behaviours to the workplace. It was found that although many of the new behaviours had stuck with the group, some were not being consistently applied. As a team, they looked what the barriers were to transferring these new behaviours and then devised a plan to address each of these barriers. Subsequent training sessions addressed such topics as communication and conflict resolution, creative problem solving and time management. "We're actually talking to each other" remarked one team member, "we never used to really communicate." "We are consistently applying the new tools that we are learning and find them to be very motivating" replied the team leader when asked how practical she thought the program was. "We are well on our way to becoming a high performing team".

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