Cutting Edge Tools, Resources, and Experiences in Building High Performing Teams

Session Submission Type: Panel Discussion

Short Description

Whether you are a team leader or team member, a CEO or a consultant to a CEO, high performing inclusive teams are the next leadership challenge on the horizon. This symposium promises real-life examples, practical tools and resources, as well as a real-time consultation of the panelists’ own teamwork in the here-and-now. Panelists will explore the work of Cambridge scholar Meredith Belbin and the Belbin Team Roles Instrument, the Tavistock group relations model, the results based leadership approach, and social network analysis. Time will be reserved for a lively discussion with participants of their own experiences in teams.

Detailed Abstract

A high-functioning Team is the key to moving the agenda forward and producing the results you seek.

Whether you are leading teams or a member of a team, a CEO or a consultant to a CEO, high performing inclusive teams are the next leadership challenge on the horizon.

But the success and sustainability of a team depends on having the right environment, the right authorization, the right mix of people, and the right balance of team roles. Unfortunately, there are few resources that support the development and measurement of high impact teams.

This symposium will bring together successful practices and thinking about developing high performing teams.

• We will explore the work of Cambridge scholar Meredith Belbin and the Belbin Team Roles Instrument, based on thirty years of research on top-performing teams as well as the TRACOM Instrument. Top corporate trainers and researchers at the Møller Centre at Churchill College, University of Cambridge have used the Belbin and TRACOM Instruments with hundreds of corporate clients.
• The group relations model and experiential conferences developed first by the Tavistock Institute in London, which provides a framework to examine the unconscious forces impacting a group as it does its work. Unconscious bias and other dynamics often keep works from being as inclusive and productive as they can be.
• The Results-based Leadership approach based on the Theory of Aligned Contribution and its impact on communities, championed by the Annie Casey Foundation, and increasing utilized by foundations and other funders in evaluating the impact of its investments.
• The use of social network analysis (SNA) used with clients in the non-profit sector by the Leadership Learning Community demonstrates the value of strategically developing both strong ties of affinity among teams or cluster and weak ties that reach out to bring new ideas and resources to organizations and networks.

This symposium promises real-life examples, practical tools and resources as well as a real-time consultation of our own teamwork in the here-and-now. We will reserve half the time for a lively discussion with participants of their own experiences in teams.

Sub Unit

• Business Leadership

Chair

• Gillian Secrett, Churchill College, University of Cambridge

Presenters

• Deborah M. Meehan, Leadership Learning Community

• Georgia Sorenson, Moller Centre, Churchill College, University of Cambridge

• Ashley B. Stewart, Annie E. Casey Foundation

• Ruth Berry, Moller Centre, Churchill College, University of Cambridge