Leading High-Performance Teams

How to Harness the Power of Collaboration and Teamwork

A Customized and Practical “How-to” Half, One, or Two-Day Workshop

Good managers have always fostered teamwork. But highly effective leaders harness the power of teams for dramatically higher results. Teams that are effectively organized and led, have produced extraordinary improvements in productivity, customer service, quality, process management, innovation, cost effectiveness, job satisfaction, morale, and financial performance.

Teams can be an extremely effective way to harness the full energy, experience, and expertise dispersed throughout organizations. But calling a group of people a team doesn’t make it one. Too many groups are usually just a collection of individuals who meet periodically. They’re too often poorly focused, weakly led project groups, committees, task forces, or councils. One study, for example, found that only 13 percent of teams received high ratings. Another extensive study of teams found that in more than half the teams studied, “team members give up.”

The “Leading High-Performance Teams” workshop helps participants understand the power and problems of teams, launch and sustain new teams or renew and refocus existing teams, develop vital team leadership and effectiveness skills, and use team assessment and measurement tools.

Let’s Get Practical

For almost thirty years, Jim Clemmer’s practical leadership approaches have been inspiring action and achieving results. His 2,000 plus presentations and workshops/retreats, seven best-selling books, columns, and newsletters are helping hundreds of thousands of people worldwide because they are inspiring, instructive, and refreshingly fun. And most of all…because they work!

Jim is constantly distilling his exhaustive research, extensive experience, and collection of best practices into easily understood, highly energizing, and practical applications. His workshops are so highly rated because they inspire action and provide concrete “how-to” steps that — when used as directed — dramatically boost results.

Workshop Menu

Each workshop is tailored to the audience and organizational circumstance. Following is an overview of the main sections that Jim can draw from in customizing a session for each Client.

Harnessing the Power of Teams

The Power and Payoffs of High-Performance Teams
Establishing the Team Environment: Navigators (making things happen), Survivors (watching things happen), or Victims (living in “Pity City” wondering what happened)
Keys to Building a High-Performance Team

The Performance Balance

For a brief overview of the material covered in this section click here and here.

Finding the Right Balance: Technology, Management, Leadership
Managing Things and Leading People
Soft Skills, Hard Results: Harnessing the Power of Emotional Intelligence for Stronger Teams

Timeless Leadership Principles for Team and Organization Success

This section builds on Jim’s best-selling book, The Leader’s Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success and its accompanying Practical Application Planner. Leadership expert, Warren Bennis, enthuses, “If you’re looking for a book that illustrates the topic of leadership in a useful, readable and lively way, this is it.”

Depending upon the length and focus of the workshop, the process typically used starts with an overview of each of the following Leadership Principles. Participants then assess their team/organization. From here, small breakout discussion groups or the whole group (depending upon workshop size and objectives) review application exercises and brainstorm potential application ideas. The workshop usually finishes with participants setting practical action plans.

Focus and Context: Points of Origin

Where Are We Going?
- Are we confusing goals and vision?
- How alive is our vision?
- How important is it for us to improve this?
What Do We Believe In?
- Do we have core values?
- How alive are our values?
- How important is it for us to improve this?
Why Do We Exist?
- Do we have a powerful purpose statement?
- How alive is our purpose?
- How important is it for us to improve this?

Responsibility for Choices: From Victim to Victor

Identifying and Eliminating “Victim Speak” in Our Team/Organization
Ten Ways We May Be Disempowering Ourselves
Strategies for Busting Our Barriers to Peak Performance
Focusing on Areas of Direct Control and Influence While Letting Go of No Control Areas/Issues

Authenticity: Let’s Get Real

Assessing and Addressing Trust and Credibility Gaps
Leading by Example: What Behaviors Do We Need to Change to Change Their Behavior?
Identifying and Dealing with Our Biggest “Moose-on-the-Table”.

Passion and Commitment: All Fired Up

Assessing our Leadership Against the Top Ten Commitment Indicators
Prioritizing our Key Factors for Engaging Much Stronger Commitment in Our Organization
Loyalty Leadership: Retaining Our Top People

Spirit and Meaning: Matters of the Heart

Identifying and Addressing Our Five Biggest Spirit Killers
Which Stage Are We at on the Hierarchy of Spirit and Meaning?
Establishing Our Preferred Stage and How to Get There
Keys to Bringing a Deeper Sense of Pride to Our Team/Organization

Growing and Developing: All That We Can Be

The “Fish Tank Factor”: Measuring the Size of the Environment We’ve Built
The Coach’s Playbook: Assessing and Strengthening Coaching Effectiveness
Helping Team Members Get the Most from Training

Mobilizing and Energizing: Inspiring Peak Performance

Identifying Top Team/Organization Energy Drains and How to Plug the Leaks
Eight Factors to Build High-Performance Teams: Assessing Our Effectiveness
Meeting Effectiveness Checklist: What Should We Keep, Stop, and Start Doing?
Steps to Recharging with Recognition, Celebration, and Appreciation
Information versus Communication: Keys to Inspiration through Verbal Communications

Workshop Options

Half–Day

For Management and/or Frontline Staff

This is generally an interactive and inspirational session that reinforces or provides participants with an “edutaining” overview of the keys to leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. A few assessment and application exercises may be selected on the basis of preworkshop discussions and customization.

One–Day

For Management and/or Frontline Staff

Participants complete a greater number of the assessment and application exercises from The Leader’s Digest: Practical Application Planner. Participants assess their overall effectiveness across the seven “Timeless Leadership Principles”. This helps determine which Principles they want to complete as a whole group or in small discussion groups (depending upon the key issues and number of people in the session). The amount of time and depth in each agenda area is determined by preworkshop discussions and customization.

Two–Day

For Management and/or Blending with Staff (see next option)

Participants typically complete all assessments and application exercises in The Leader’s Digest: Practical Application Planner and may start selected ones in Growing the Distance: Personal Implementation Guide or organizational Transformation Pathways. They get deep into the key leadership issues and/or organizational issues that need to be addressed and develop detailed action plans. Key priorities, next steps, and follow-through processes are established.

Progressive Blending for Staff and/or Various Management Levels

This starts as a half or one-day session for staff and management together with organization or team assessments, issues to be addressed, and implementation brainstorming. Everyone gets the same message, develops common language, and gets involved in the improvement process (which dramatically increases commitment to change). Jim then facilitates a senior management team priority and action planning session the afternoon of the second day to make decisions and begin implementation. Sometimes the progression is first a half-day with everyone, continuing with a day including all management, and a final half-day with just the senior management team.

Confidential Preworkshop Web-Based Assessments (Optional)

These assessments can be built around the questions in The Leader’s Digest: Practical Application Planner and/or Transformation Pathways. All or selected assessments (depends upon the half, one or two-day version) are completed confidentially and anonymously by each participant before the session begins. Scores are tabulated and a summary report is brought to the workshop for discussion, prioritization, and action.

This option provides:

The truest views of how participants really feel about the organization or team’s strengths and improvement opportunities
A savings in the time used at the workshop for completing and scoring the assessment exercises
Preworkshop learning that allows for deeper discussions of each Pathways leadership and change concept or principle
A more balanced discussion based on objective data of everyone’s perspective rather than a few of the most vocal or powerful participants
More thoughtful and authentic assessments since participants don’t feel rushed or that someone is peeking at their scores over their shoulder

To view the Transformation Pathways assessment click here.

What Participants Gain From This Powerful Workshop

Extensive “how-to” workbooks (Practical Application Planner and Personal Implementation Guide) (hyperlinks to open a new browser ? to the book landing pages) with hundreds of practical application ideas (depending upon workshop option chosen and pricing)
Ideas and inspiration for increased personal teamwork
Practical tools, techniques, and ideas for leading a high-performance team/organization
Reflection time to reassess personal and professional priorities
Discover how to shift their team’s culture toward much stronger teamwork and collaboration
Understand and apply the power of emotional intelligence
Pinpoint personal leadership gaps and priorities to be addressed and set action plans
Strengthened team dynamics and processes
Team/organization agreement on leadership strengths and improvement opportunities
Establish personal, team, or organization improvement plans
Reframe and refocus team behaviors
Recharged, reenergized, and reinspired
Common languages/approaches for a more “leaderful” team or organization
Practical insights for coaching and developing team members