Consultants and advisors who are expert in working with individual business leaders are often tempted to expand their work into working with teams, assuming that the skills they will need to be effective with groups are the same. We have found that this is not the case. In fact, there are important reasons why you need to approach working with teams differently – reasons that can mean the difference between a team’s becoming a high performing unit and losing ground on achieving results.
Four common mistakes
There are four common, but critical, mistakes made by consultants who may be highly skilled and very competent in working with individuals, but who have not been trained in group dynamics and can potentially and unknowingly do more harm than good.
- Assuming that team needs and group dynamics are simply the sum of the individual needs and behaviors of team members.
- Assuming the goal of a team intervention is always the same regardless of the differences in the team’s need for collaboration and interdependent goals.
- Assuming that once a team has been assessed, the team’s needs will remain the same throughout the advisory and facilitation process.
- Assuming that the goal of a team intervention is only to improve team relationships and not to help the team drive business results.
To learn more about each of these mistakes and gain clear guidance to get on the right track, download the full article.
