WorldsView Consulting, developer of the Nine Conversations in Leadership© programme, has announced the launch of its Purposeful Teams© intervention in sub-Saharan Africa.

Purposeful Teams was created under the agreement that every definition of effective and high performing teams highlights a clear sense of shared purpose as a key success factor. “And yet, in so many teams, the performance purpose of the team is often overlooked or lost.” So says Donna Glanvill, Interventions Development Director at WorldsView Consulting, who adds that the company has found that many teams are built using very talented members, and yet are unable to achieve results due to a lack of purpose.

What separates Purposeful Teams© from other team building activities is the fact that it places the team within the organisational context, leveraging organisational mandates into team purpose, and creating the space for the team to contextualise its reason for existence. Team members are given the opportunity to engage at the levels of the organisation, the team and the individual, in order to make sense of the task and the relationship issues inherent in teamwork.

“The ideal delegates would fall under the “natural work teams’ banner” says Glanvill, “This means they are active members of actual task, project or management teams who would benefit directly from the transformational impact being pursued in each session - to ultimately become a high performing, effective unit.

Other team building exercises are generally hosted away from the workplace and, while they may work at building trust among staff members or as a measure of giving your staff a fun day out, they’re not really addressing the core issues”, says Glanvill.

“Research has shown that, as organisational strategies shift and new members join existing teams, it can take up to 12 months for teams to figure out exactly what it is they’re responsible for and which goals they’re aligned to. Thus, the objective to team building should always be to effectively place the team in an organisational context and identify what it is they should be focused on.”

Glanvill says that individuals need to understand the context within which they are being asked to function, and they need to be able to do so on three levels of purpose – organisational (why should we come together as a team for the organisation); Team (why should we come together as a team for our group) and Individual (what is my purpose in this team).

“From that foundation, a shared vision of the future can be developed in which the teams consider the practical implications of their mandate and their current state,” she says. “Through that exploration, team milestones are crafted and individual commitments aligned to those milestones and the team begins the work of implementing them.

“After a period of implementation, the length of which is determined by the team in the context of their purpose, the team returns to the Purposeful Teams© intervention to reflect on the challenges they have faced, the extent to which they are achieving their purpose, and the learning that has arisen from working as a team.”

After a further period of implementation, the length of which is determined by the team in the context of their purpose, the team returns once more to the Purposeful Teams© intervention.

“In this final session the team will decide on the mechanisms it needs to ensure its own sustainability as a purposeful, high-performance team. Members will select and embed new supporting rituals that have emerged from the intervention, and the appropriate team behaviours will be firmly embedded into the team’s culture and processes,” Glanvill says.

Put plainly, Purposeful Teams© examines the team’s context, mandate, milestones and members in the realms of head (knowing), heart (being) and hands (doing), bringing participants together repeatedly to explore and cover all aspects of the team’s purpose, from the organisation"s perspective, the team perspective and the individual perspective.

For more information, email [email protected] or visit www.worldsv.com.