Culture and Team Building Intervention
Team Role Clarity Workshops and Cross-Team Alignment for Improved Collaboration
Grosvenor supported a multi-team division experiencing role ambiguity, workload pressure and inter-team conflict to define clear responsibilities and improve collaboration. In addition, they helped the team transition from a “storming” to a “norming” phase through targeted facilitation, stakeholder engagement and data-informed team alignment workshops. As part of this, team role clarity workshops were central to helping teams clarify their roles and responsibilities.
Situation
A division within the Client has three geographically dispersed teams that have a mixture of staff with a tenure of 20 years and as new as six months. After a period of significant change, the team was in a ‘storming’ phase of team development. In this phase, staff were challenged by unclear roles and responsibilities and a backlog of work. This led to perceptions that they are often doing work that is not their responsibility and to conflict between the teams. To help address these issues, the introduction of workshops for team role clarity was considered as a way to define responsibilities and improve collaboration.
Task
The Division wanted to move towards a ‘norming’ phase, where roles are clearly defined and understood, and operate as a cohesive and functional team. With an increase in the team’s workload causing capacity constraints, the Division sought a provider to work with them. They needed assistance to help the team culturally align. Their team role clarity workshops were a key piece of this transition.
Approach
The project undertook two day-long workshops over a period of one month, with key stakeholder consultations to ascertain challenges and temperaments prior to the workshop. This was coupled with data analysis of system data (backlog and performance data) as well as roles and responsibilities. Notably, team role clarity workshops ensured the sessions could be tailored to meet the needs of the group. This facilitated clarity of roles and standardisation across teams. Finally, the second workshop focused on building a ‘one-team’ culture.
Results
The facilitations were accompanied by reports capturing the inputs, process and outputs of each day. In particular, these captured the promises and actions (along with action owners) of both the leadership and team members of the division. As a result, workshops focused on team role clarity facilitated tangible changes in team behaviour.
Testimonial
“[the facilitator was] very impressive and understood the nuances of the underlying issues very quickly. She managed to figure out the real issues without actually being specifically told. This absolutely amazed me a couple of times.”
Explore how team role clarity workshops can support your organisation.
Start a conversation with Sarika Bhana, Public Sector Lead