A Primary Focus on Team Development
A Happiness Project Initiative
Primary Ethics is a not-for-profit organisation established in 2010 to provide young people with the space to explore ethical dilemmas within a secular context. Since then, ethics classes have been enthusiastically adopted in over 460 schools in New South Wales and Primary Ethics has established itself as a highly effective education provider within the public-school system.
Background
TMS Network Member, Roger Reidy from BPS Consulting applied for The Happiness Project to support his pro bono team development services for Primary Ethics.
Roger used the Team Management Profile (TMP) with the Primary Ethics Management Team to help them get a better understanding of themselves, their team and the types of work required to make them high-performing.
Session Focus
The key outcomes the team hoped to achieve by utilising the TMP were to:
- Provide individuals with a better understanding of their strengths and team challenges
- Gain insights into how to recognise and acknowledge different preferences
- Discover ways to improve communication within the team
- Explore the relationship between the team leader and the team members
- Review the organisational roles and structure
TMP Outcomes
Roger started out the session by taking the team through the TMS concepts, Types of Work Wheel and Work Preference Measures to allow all participants to understand their individual Profile outcomes.
Once the team better understood their own preferences, they moved on to the TMP outcomes of the group with the following result:
The top three Types of Work the team covered well:
- Developing
- Promoting
- Organising
The three Types of Work the team looked to improve on are:
- Innovating
- Advising
- Maintaining
The Primary Ethics team recognised that it was very advantageous to draw upon one specific team member who had a major preference in Advising along with her related roles in Innovating and Maintaining. Following on from this discussion, meetings targeting these specific types of work were planned.
To assist with improving communication within the team, Roger took them through the Pacing Activity, as well as the people component of the Linking Skills model. Although the workshop time frame restricted further exploration of these tools, an active listening exercise was enthusiastically taken up by the team.
Results, Return and Future Plans
Following on from the session, the team were able to apply their learned skills in a practical setting. One of the key challenges within the team involved expectation setting. By utilising the TMP along with their gained pacing and active listening skills, this made the expectation-setting conversation between the leader and the team more focused and effective.
The team left the workshop with the following plan of action for the future:
- Utilise the Team Role Snapshot handout, to allow the team to practice their linking and pacing skills.
- The team agreed to share Profiles and focus on Linking Skills.
- Time in team meetings was set aside for ‘TMP moments’ and observations, to keep the learning fresh in their minds.
- Implementation of the outcomes of the leader and team expectation-setting conversation was planned.
- A follow up with Roger was organised to assess the team’s progress