Creating a High Performing Team that maximizes individual talent and increases teamwork has never been more important. In recent workplace studies, 74% of employees indicate that they like their work, and are willing to do more than is expected, with 2/3 of respondents indicating that they are only "committed to staying" with their company through the remainder of the year, and that few as 21% of these individuals may be fully engaged. At the same time, increased global competition has caused many companies to reduce headcount in order to cut costs, but maintain high productivity.
Leveraging the true power of diversity inside your teams, to engage your employees and gain your competitive edge has never been more important. Increasing productivity through reducing barriers and increasing individual skills is paramount to success. Workplace Diversity: The Team Advantage™ is designed to improve the ability of your workforce to engage and interact more effectively with co-workers who are different than themselves, and to learn the characteristics and value of High Performing Teams.
Four courses in The Team Advantage™ series leverage multimedia technology to create an individualized and highly interactive learning environment. The program engages the employee with a virtual workgroup of individuals who are diverse in many ways and have just been assigned to a new team to develop a high performance initiative for their company. Each course is a 30-45 minute interactive learning experience of realistic workplace dynamics.
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Participants engage with their new "virtual team" and begin to explore the definitions, characteristics and skills associated with High Performance Teams and Organizations, and why this training is important to the bottom-line impact of any and every organization. Barriers to teamwork are presented, in addition to a discussion about workforce engagement and commitment in general as well as within the participant's specific organization.
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As the team begins to become more comfortable in their new setting, they explore some basic concepts about diversity, and begin to learn that leveraging their diversity of experience and strengths can lead to increased performance. We begin to see that "filters" applied to our daily task performance can hinder a High Performing Team, and this fresh insight leads into discussing potential barriers to success, managing assumptions, the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion of team members and the shared responsibility of on-boarding new employees and setting team norms.
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One of the most critical tasks of any High Performing Team is establishing a competent set of interpersonal skills ~ communicating effectively. Working together in a team environment may be challenging, but the "virtual team" learns more about handling conflict and addressing tough issues. Participants learn several tools to help them through this process, including the BICA model for providing feedback, the concept of Intent versus Impact, addressing inappropriate remarks and behavior, as well as establishing norms of support for each other.
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In the final module, the team brings all of their learning together and focuses on skills specifically important to a High Performing Team environment, including developing skills necessary for listening and hearing ideas and solutions of others, problem solving and making decisions. The participants finally learn to engage their team in developing an inclusive culture of feedback, mutual accountability and contributing to the development of others, by directly addressing inherent prejudicial "filters" that hold us back from truly becoming a High Performing Team. Each participant then develops an interactive, personalized Action Plan.
Workplace Diversity: The Team Advantage™ Goes Beyond Education! Measure Attitudes, Beliefs and Behavior in "Real-Time"!
One of the most innovative aspects of The Team Advantage is that in addition to providing an engaging, interactive learning experience for participants, it also has the capability of surveying your employees while they are learning! Our unique Learning Management System developed along with our innovative eLearning creates an opportunity to provide invaluable feedback about the collective behaviors, perceptions and concerns of your workforce. By filtering data by race, gender, ethnicity and age, TEAM can provide invaluable feedback about the quality of your organization's High Performance Characteristics, including:
- Team Hesitance & Engagement Profile
- Personal Filters Impact Area (General, Communication, Feedback & Development)
- Organizational On-boarding Effectiveness
- Informal Inclusion Matrix
- Personal Development Opportunity Matrix
- Effective Relationship Index