Clinics · The Teamwork Clinic™

The Teamwork Clinic™

Building the capacity to work as one.

The best teams are not simply groups of talented people. They share a purpose, know their roles, say what they expect of one another, and handle disagreement and hard conversations well. This program treats the team as the client. It examines the whole team at once, diagnoses how its members work together, and has the team practice on its own work until working as one becomes the way it operates.

The Clinic at a glance

Is this the right Clinic for you?

For an intact team ready to work better together: one examination of the whole team, one diagnosis, and practice on the team's real work.

Who it is for

Intact teams of five to twelve people, and the leaders and organizations that sponsor them: leadership teams, project teams, departments, boards, and staff teams in workplaces, nonprofits, and volunteer organizations.

The specialist examination

The Team Reading, which combines each member's H.E.A.R.T. Exam™ with a confidential survey of how the team works: its purpose, roles, expectations, trust, communication, conflict, and decisions. The results are read for the team as a whole.

Also built in: coaching for the team leader alongside the team sessions, and a summary for the sponsor that reports patterns, never individual answers.

The program, in the method

Six modules, one for each step.

Examine — The Team Reading. Every member's posture, and how the team works as a whole, read before anything is taught.

Diagnose — The Team, Diagnosed. How the team works together: where disagreement comes from, where conversations break down, and what roles, expectations, and decisions need.

Prescribe — The Team Charter. Purpose, roles, decision rights, and the expectations members hold of one another, written and agreed together.

Treat — Working It Through. The team's live disagreements and important conversations, worked through together with the tools of The Conflict Clinic™ and The Communication Clinic™.

Follow Up — The Team, Re-read. The Team Reading taken again, so the team and its sponsor can see what changed.

Maintain — Performing on a Different Plane. The Regimen, adapted for teams: the meeting, feedback, and review rhythms that keep the team improving.

By the end, you will be able to

Agree on the team's purpose, each member's role, and how decisions are made.

Name the disagreements and unspoken issues that hold the team back, and trace each one to its source.

State the team's expectations of one another out loud, in a written team charter.

Hold the hard conversations as a team, with shared language and shared rules.

Build working rhythms that keep small matters small and keep the team improving.

The outcome

What you leave with, and what makes it different.

What you leave with

The Team Reading, taken before and after, with each member's own H.E.A.R.T. Exam™ results.

A written diagnosis of what is happening between members, traced to its sources.

A team charter that names the purpose, roles, decision rights, and expectations.

Live disagreements and important conversations worked through, not just discussed.

Team rhythms for meetings, feedback, and review, and The Regimen to keep them.

A sponsor summary, and the full program document in the team's vault.

What makes it different

The team is the client. The examination, the diagnosis, and the practice are for the whole team at once.

It brings together the core of The Conflict Clinic™ and The Communication Clinic™, applied to how the team works, plus roles, expectations, and decisions.

It measures the team before and after, so the sponsor sees evidence of change rather than a satisfaction survey.

Members who need more depth can follow with the individual Conflict or Communication Clinic.

How it runs

Sessions. A launch session and seven 90-minute team sessions over about twelve weeks, with coaching for the team leader between sessions. Each session is 45 minutes of instruction and 45 minutes of practice.

Delivery. With an intact team of five to twelve people, in person or online.

Options. The full Clinic for the whole team. Members who need more depth can follow with the individual Conflict or Communication Clinic.

Included. The Team Reading for every member, every module with practice on the team's real work, a sponsor summary, and the full program document in the team's vault.

Coaching. Coaching for the team leader is included. One-on-one coaching for members is available.

Grounded in Hackman's conditions for team effectiveness; Edmondson's research on psychological safety; Katzenbach and Smith, The Wisdom of Teams; Tuckman's stages of group development; Rousseau's work on the psychological contract.

A good doctor does not prescribe what she has not examined.

Ask about The Teamwork Clinic™.

Every Clinic begins with a consultation. The Teamwork Clinic is scoped in conversation with the team leader and the sponsor.

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