LEARNING HOW TO WORK TOGETHER
People don’t have to like each other to be an effective team.
When there is more openness to the differences, acceptance of diversity and less defensiveness, Respect and collegial Appreciation can develop. Working as a team becomes more enjoyable, enhancing everyone’s prospects for success.
What undermines a Great Team
The need to be right, demanding personal credit or the fear the criticism can all undermine the very best intentions of team work and organisational excellence. The more we identify with a certain worldview, role, position or sense of self, the greater the fear arises of failing to live up to the expectations we create for ourselves. The defensive mechanism fuels dissonance and more adversarial stances that can lead to conflict, open aggressions and dysfunctional behaviours within a team or relationship.
Coming to know the Mature Team
The very essence of a team is to bring different skills and perspectives together in order to collaborate – creating a new field of awareness and insight. Individuals shine more when they are in support of something worthwhile, and able to relate to others. Such teams are more mature in their dealings with others, be they colleagues, customers or even rivals. The mature team is creative, efficient and generative towards a meaningful working atmosphere. Individuals can grow, develop and share their skills to the best of their abilities for the benefit of everyone in the team, the organisation and the community.
Good to Great Leaders
Good leaders may know this. Great leaders live and manage their teams and organisations by such an ethos. Great leaders will come to know themselves in ways that embraces their inherent Vulnerabilities as Strengths. They know the value of service to something greater than themselves. They can allow time for themselves and those whom they manage to recuperate and regenerate their energies. People are valued for who they are –as well as what they bring to the field of cooperation – they are part of the organisations assets portfolio. Encouraging and supporting growth includes human potential as well as financial gain. Taking risks includes investing in people.
How can this be made more inherent on your organisation or team?
When we practice Mindful Observing of ourselves moment-to-moment, we begin the process of coming to know our essential Being – and the gifts we naturally bring to our work, family and community.
We will also to notice how we over defend our point-of-view when we feel unsupported or threatened; become irrationally fearful of situations or making waves. We see more clearly how self-promoting and acting out our insecurities, is the engine that leads to the self-fulfilling prophecies that we most fear or avoid.
We can then attend to our individual and collective patterns of behaviour and habits that will be sabotaging our best efforts to be in a mature working relationship. Developing a mature support for real personal growth and effective team coherence requires a non-judgmental and less critical approach to interpersonal interactions and leadership.
Acknowledging and integrating qualities of Compassion, Honesty, Harmony, Integrity and Courage allow people to flourish. The Energy and Will these qualities generate is the vitality that drives Innovation, Adaptability and Creativity.
The long haul – no Quick Fix!
There are many approaches that an organisation can follow. However, to be truly effective they all require patience, commitment over time, and acceptance at all tiers of management and staff.
MetaMe offer a multi-dimensional approach to developing teams, and organisational change.
The strategies and process developed from Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) are supported by our accredited Master Practitioner and INLPTA Trainer skills. Team communication and leadership influence is greatly enhanced from the specialised communication skills of Language And Behaviour (LAB) Profile, of which Rosemarie and Grahame are Certified Trainers and Consultants.
The widely acknowledged benefits of Mindfulness approaches are inherent in all we offer.
In particular, our highly specialised and expert approach to the Enneagram of Personality Types can shortcut the time it normally takes for people to identify key habitual patterns that undermine mature team work and meaningful relationships. The Enneagram reveals both the gifts of our personality and the traps that lead to the defensiveness, fearfulness and all kinds of egotistical self-promotion that undermine our best efforts in work and at home. Our approach to the Enneagram supports teams and groups to see how all nine qualities and gifts of the types, are inherent and essential principles necessary for any organisation, individual, team or relationship to survive and thrive. Grahame and Rosemarie offer expert and Mindful facilitation for collective and individual learning through Workshops, Somatic Focusing and Coaching, supporting the unfolding of individual and team experience for greater expansion, personal depth, inner peace and sense of well being. The Essential Foundations for maintaining great teams, effective leaders and prosperous organisations