An Artful Team Program To Level-up Performance
A Happiness Project Initiative
Brisbane-based arts company, Metro Arts, is on a mission. Supporting Australian artists through all stages of their creative journeys, their tagline 'Art Starts Here' makes clear the organisation's purpose and ethos.
Over the last 3 years the organisation has undergone significant growth both in terms of the number of staff, but more significantly the programs that those staff deliver. With Metro Arts' move to the West Village precinct in 2020 to expand and develop in accordance with its strategic plan, much of the growth process was disrupted by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which proved a challenging time for the arts sector as a whole.
After speaking with the CEO, who was looking to re-align and re-energise the Metro Arts team, Kasia Kondas, Strategic Change and Team Alignment Leader at Mindful Energy Consulting, reached out to Team Management Systems (TMS), successfully applying to the Happiness Project on behalf of her client.
A capable and growing team, embarking on an expanded range of programs, the major challenges facing the Metro Arts Executive and facilitator Kasia, was the wide-ranging scope of roles and goals within the team as a whole, and the need to develop shared team goals and behaviours across the organisation to enable team cohesion and a high performance culture.
Identifying Team Preferences
Using the Team Management Profile (TMP) as a practical team model, Mindful Energy's High Performance Team program was a great opportunity to integrate and re-energise new and existing team members by providing opportunities for the whole team to come together, reflect and discuss their role in Metro Arts' growth.
Through a series of virtual meetings as well as in-person briefings, interviews and face-to-face workshops, Kasia's blended approach effectively navigated the post-pandemic working environment, to map out the Metro Arts team profile and create a team charter.
Kasia tailored her core High Performance Team program to Metro Arts' objectives and facilitated a series of workshops to strengthen communications, team performance and culture.
Diversity and Strengthening 'Linkages'
The team mapping process revealed a very good balance of preferences across the team and a great diversity of complimentary skills. The key opportunity identified for the team was to develop stronger 'linkages' between departments by integrating work and people processes.
Program outputs and findings were embedded into Metro Arts work and team processes.
Leading Lasting Change
"The work we undertook with Kasia utilising the TMS profiles was invaluable and came at an important time for the Metro Arts team," says Jo Thomas, CEO and Artistic Director at Metro Arts. "The workshops provided an open space for the team to come together and reflect on their role in this growth and Metro Arts' Strategic Plan. It was extremely valuable to hear the staff reflect back to me as a leader, the values that truly underpin our organisation. From this I know we can go from strength to strength."
The findings and feedback were shared with the Metro Arts Board of Directors as input to the review and redraft of their Strategic Plan for 2023-2027.