Team Transformations

Discover the Dynamics to Improve Performance

Sometimes the veneer of functionality is just that: a facade hiding deeper truths that impede optimal performance. Every group has its dynamics and even top-performing teams can be marred by underlying tensions, implied norms and unspoken beliefs. What’s unspoken has power, but once revealed, understood and used as an opportunity for learning and growth for all, aligned purpose and improved performance are the results.

Groups are smatterings of individuals with perceptions, beliefs, values and goals. They don’t always align with those of the team or organization. Exceptional leadership sees the trees and the forest; the individuals and the team. When we acknowledge what aligns, seek out what does not, and invest in both individual and team pursuits, powerful, collaborative teams are created and outstanding service delivery results.

From Functional to Fantastic

 

H. M.

“We worked together but until you arrived we did not really know one another. We thought we were different because we are from different parts of the country and have different beliefs. Through these workshops - which were intense at times - we have learned that we are far more similar than we thought, and now our way of working is much better.”

My approaches included:

As always, contextualizing comes first. I met this team during a highly unstable time in a complex country. I connected with them as a group of individuals working to serve the needs of a vulnerable population, with similar education, but holding seemingly different beliefs and positions of status in a society wherein cultural norms around status were exceptionally strong. I delved below the surface of a program that at first glance appeared to work, but whose cracks appeared quite quickly. 

I identified the strengths and areas that could be improved, and regularly designed and delivered workshops to draw out their habitual thinking, unexplored beliefs, desires and fears. Through our work they gained crucial insight into themselves, one another, the power of underlying dynamics and the value of continually choosing to reflect and consider thinking differently. Their teamwork improved vastly, as did their services to clients.

Starting Using Crisis for Growth!

Do you believe you can invest in the growth of your team members and help them deliver on their goals simultaneously? Do you see the value in doing so?

Crisis is an opportunity. Whatever presents in a team or group is something seeking expression. With laser focus on the end result, teams and organizations often miss crucial opportunities to extract vital learning from what’s occurring along the way.

Does your organizational culture value investing in individual growth and validated learning as much as reaching the goal?

Even in humanitarian emergencies and highly unstable industries these pursuits can be achieved simultaneously. When we invest in people, and in their thinking and growth we create organizational culture that retains vital human resources.

From Crisis to Opportunity

Samuel K.

“Now we’re really learning”, he said to me as we moved to our next meeting. I stopped on the spot, turned to him and asked “How do you know? What tells you that? What are you learning?” He replied: “We’re learning about ourselves in the work, not just about how to do the work.””

My approach included:

This moment defined my career. To me, it’s not enough to serve recipients of aid, or help teams and organizations reach goals. I’m committed to helping teams and organizations do those very things while simultaneously investing in the growth and development of the people providing humanitarian service.

Contextual understanding is crucial. Always. In this case, I worked with this team during a time of great upheaval, as they moved forward from 12 years of civil conflict that left no one untouched; emotionally, socially, physically and economically. I immediately saw that the people in my team had been so profoundly impacted by the events of the last 12 years, they needed space to process while also building a program that would help child and adolescent combatants do the same once released from the fighting forces. 

This work is immensely complex, as  multiple truths, identities and roles are present simultaneously. These teams I coached and led were human beings affected by war, program staff members aiming to create professional identities to earn a living and community members working to repair all that had been broken and forge a better future for their own people. I helped them tell their stories and ask tough questions of themselves, which led to healing and growth, and from this place and with a genuine desire to rebuild trust with one another, they engaged similarly with their communities. This was unprecedented grassroots truth and reconciliation. It remains the most impactful professional experience of my career.

Help Your Team Thrive

Sometimes the reasons for problems are right there on the surface: a relentless emergency, high staff turnover, and a repeatedly flooding refugee camp are the reasons our program isn’t reaching its goals.

Sometimes however, the reasons run deeper and aren't visible to leadership on the ground. Sometimes organizations choose to stick with the plan and hope for the best, when in fact a pause or pivot would help. Often only outside eyes can see, design and deliver what’s needed.

Everything that arises within a program, team or organization - from pitfalls and problems to joys and successes - can be used for the purpose of individual and collective learning and growth, resulting in better performing teams and organizations. It’s not rocket science, it’s human science - simultaneously far more complex and easy to work with.

A plan is only as good as our willingness to adapt it to context and circumstance and exceptional leaders see beyond what’s presenting; understand how human and social dynamics impact teams and invest in understanding root causes to keep programs flowing.

 

From No to Go!

H. D. N.

“Kimber helped our team understand what mental health means for our culture, and clear the stigma so we could work better with vulnerable populations. Her training is like no other I’ve ever received. It asks us to connect our personal experiences to the concepts being introduced, so we are empowered by what we already know, and open to considering new ways of thinking and doing things.”

My approach included:

I met this team doing superb work serving vulnerable women and children, under extraordinary circumstances. Plucked from their pastoralist pursuits to become emergency health workers, I observed this team - not defiant in their sidestepping of the mental health and care practices part of the program - but rather, with questions, with confusion, with fear and cultural stigma about mental health - none of which had been addressed in their original training. 

Information doesn’t change behaviour. So when HQ directed me to simply repeat their initial training, I refused. 

I met them where they were in their fear, their cultural beliefs and their long-held stigma. I dropped the words ‘mental health’ and instead had them reflect on their own experiences of ‘care’ beyond basic survival. As a result, stories unfolded of fathers who taught them to care for goats because the goats cared for the family, of mothers planting trees for shade to play under and teachers paying school fees. 

Through personal experience, they connected the dots. They understood that this was the kind of holistic caring on offer in the mental health and care practices part of the program. They simply needed space to connect their personal experiences to the concept they were confused and fearful about, particularly as it carried such cultural stigma, and voila, their thinking changed easily and they began sending the mothers to the program, becoming hearty advocates for it in the process!