My colleague Sara and I spent two days with a leadership team that was, in many ways, brand new. Most of its members had been in their roles less than a year. The organization had reorganized, and more leaders than before were now making decisions that used to sit with one or two people at the top.
That kind of change is good for a business. It puts decisions closer to the work and builds leadership depth. It also asks a lot of a team that is still getting to know each other, because a team has to be aligned on where it’s going before it can execute well together.
Starting with What the Team Already Knew
Before we brought the team together, we interviewed the leader and each team member. Those conversations gave us an honest picture of what people saw: what was working, what was getting in the way, and what they hoped this team could become. Sara and I drew a set of themes from those insights.
In the room, we shared those themes and gave the team the place and the space to talk about what they meant to them. Then the team decided which two mattered most: shared vision, and trust and psychological safety. They were the same two that came through most strongly in the interviews.
Sara and I didn’t point them there. The team got there on its own.
We also looked at the team’s Birkman results together. The strengths they showed matched what the team had described in the interviews and revealed a range of strengths the team didn’t know it had. For a team that now shares more of its decisions, that range is an asset. Their needs pointed to something else: under pressure, this team tends to turn inward.
Time Without an Agenda
That evening, the team had planned some fun: darts and dinner, with an added surprise karaoke adventure when they learned that one of their members has a real love of karaoke and a beautiful voice.
Time like this is critical for teams, especially new ones. No agenda, just people being with each other and getting to know each other. The trust built over an evening like that is what a team draws on later, when the pressure is on and the conversation needs to be candid.
What Quiet Can Hide
The next morning, we started by collecting their insights: what had stayed with them overnight, and what they wanted to be sure to focus on in the day ahead. The reflections were thoughtful, and there was a real willingness in the room to look honestly at how they work together.
From there, we looked at what they might notice in each other when someone’s needs aren’t being met.
One insight stood out. When this team is under stress, its members go quiet. And because everyone on the team is comfortable with quiet, no one would notice. A colleague could be struggling, or disagreeing, and the rest of the team would not know.
The team agreed on two specific behaviors to counter this comfort with quiet: quiet that could keep important issues from being raised early or disguise a reluctance to speak up as agreement. What matters is that the team named them, and the team will hold each other to them.
A Purpose Statement of Their Own
Strong teams know why they exist as a team, beyond what each member is responsible for individually. A team purpose statement is one of the practices we come prepared to facilitate, though we never know in advance whether a team will be ready for it.
With this team, the idea of a purpose statement came up on the first day. On the second day, it came back up as something the team specifically wanted to work on, and they built it together. That was a great win, and a sign of how ready they were to work as one team.
From there, they worked through their shared vision, their next actions, how they will measure success, and how they will keep building trust and psychological safety with each other.
The Team Owns the Path
People often ask what a team development engagement delivers. My honest answer is that the most important part of the work belongs to the team. It isn’t dictated by a consultant. Our role is to help the team see itself clearly, using what they told us and what the assessments show, and then create the conditions for them to decide what to do about it.
When a team sets its own direction, it owns it. That ownership is what carries the work back into the business after we leave: into the next decision, the next difficult conversation, and the next stretch of pressure when someone goes quiet.
Teams usually know more about themselves than they say out loud. The work is creating the space where they can say it and then act on it.
If you asked your team what’s working, what’s getting in the way, and what they’re ready to act on, would their answers surprise you?
