Developing a team is not formulaic but an emergent thing, we see things present slowly. Still there are things that can be done to encourage creation of a team out of a collection of individuals. First and foremost, the organization’s culture. Culture is also emergent and is the consequence of the actions of the leadership and demonstration of what is important to the organization, the values, and we are not talking about the words we use. We can say the team members are empowered, but if our actions run contrary to that, we can expect the behavior the team member to match the actions rather our voiced desire.
We want to create an environment that enables team development, encouraging the transition from a collection of individuals into an empowered, energized team. We need to recognize the things that help, empowerment and agency, create opportunities for learning, models and lexicon, and those things that hurt, such as fear, division, cognitive biases, and a focus on sub-optimization. This presentation will review elements of building the team, encourage team learning and to spread that learning through out the project and the organization. The presentation is designed to be engaging, and will include audience interaction, but you will have to attend to see just what that means.