Time Investment

Anywhere from five minutes to thirty minutes.
 

Tool Name

Project Personnel Replacement
 

When to Use

When the actions (or inactions), poor attitudes, or lack of ability of a particular project member is causing problems that threaten project success and several attempts to change the behavior have been successful.
 

Purpose

Remove someone from a project role so that the project team can quickly get over the problem and move forward.
 

Process Steps

There are four factors that must be considered before taking this type of drastic action:

1. Project personnel should truly be a problem person that is hurting the goals of the project.

2. Project leader has tried coaching and counseling and no improvements are shown by the project team member.

3. The project sponsor has been involved and the sponsor has talked with the project team member’s supervisor about interventions that can be pursued.

4. There is another person available that can step in for this project team member and can take over the project role.

Time Investment

Varies depending on situation
 

Tool Name

Outside Facilitation
 

When to Use

When the project is in jeopardy due to politics, lack of teamwork, or other “people” problems and when several attempts to deal with these issues have failed.   
 

Purpose

Use an experienced third party, with no connections to the organization, to serve as an arbitrator and facilitator to help overcome barriers and move the project forward.   

This is a form of a “project rescue” where the emphasis is solely on people problems.  Using an outside facilitator is a fairly extreme remedy and should only be used with the most critical projects. 

An outside facilitator may be used to help a single project team, or the facilitator may be used to help the project implementation team, steering team, or other critical project group that is not making progress due to leadership, politics, teamwork, or resistance to change issues.
 

Process Steps

The approach used will vary depending on the abilities and style of the facilitator.  The steps below outline a possible series of intervention steps:

1. All parties agree that outside help is needed.

2. All parties agree on the outside facilitator.

3. Diagnosis is carried out by the outside facilitator.

4. Ground rules are agreed upon through facilitation of a third party.

5. The facilitator makes recommendations and these recommendations are carried out by the project team.

6. The outside facilitator continues to coach and monitor, as needed, to ensure project success.

Time Investment

Varies with the type of problem faced and the type of intervention recommended by the facilitator.
 

Tool Name

Personality-Based Teambuilding Session
 

When to Use

When a project team or sub-team is not performing well due to personality conflicts on the team.
 

Purpose

Help team members better understand each other, and thus learn how to work more effectively together.
 

Rationale

Many “personality conflicts” result from differences in how team members perceive, make decisions and interpret and react to the same set of stimuli.  Once these differences are understood, the team learns that many “personality conflicts” are due to misunderstandings and “projections” of motives that are not necessarily valid.  They then can agree on codes of conduct for communicating and working together more effectively.   

In addition to the above, the process of carrying out this intervention in a retreat setting often helps generate camaraderie and team spirit. 
 

1. Team members fill out a personality inventory/assessment.

2. The instruments are scored and interpreted by a facilitator.

3. A one-day workshop/retreat is scheduled to review the results and learn about each person’s personality profile.

4. During the workshop, the facilitator guides the team through a series of exercises to help participants understand the unique personality differences on the team.

5. The facilitator helps the team agree on ground rules for respecting team member differences and ground rules for communicating and working together based on these differences.

Minimum is a half-day workshop; however, for best results a one-day workshop is recommended. 
 

Tool Name

Activity-Based Teambuilding Session

When to Use

When a project team is not performing well together due to any number of different symptoms (lack of trust, poor communication, lack of teamwork, etc.). 

Also can be used when a team is in a “rut” and would like an experience to help “energize” or reinvigorate the team.  Can also be used as an occasion to simply have fun together to improve morale.

Purpose

Help team members learn how to work together in a series of challenging outdoor group tasks and exercises.

Rationale

Lessons learned in experiential outdoor group tasks can then be transferred to the work setting to improve everyday team performance. 
 

Types of Exercises

Activity-based teambuilding can be carried out in a variety of settings, such as “high” ropes courses, “low” ropes courses or an outdoor adventure such as white water rafting, mountain climbing, or even a survival course or boot camp. 

All these exercises require groups to learn to work together to achieve success.

Note

It is important to custom design the experiential exercises around specific development needs of teams, such as group problem solving, risk-taking, trust, or paradigm breaking. 

These exercises can range from four to eight hours for a typical “ropes” course to two or more days for outdoor adventures.
 

Tool Name

Skills-Based Teambuilding Session
 

When to Use

When a project team is not performing well together due to a lack of understanding of how teams operate and/or a lack of teamwork skills.
 

Purpose

Teach team members specific teamwork skills and ground rules for operating more effectively together.
 

Rationale

The underlying philosophy with the skill-building approach is that the most likely reason groups don’t work together well as a team is because they do not have the necessary skills.  Thus, the obvious first step in building better teams is to have teams practice using teamwork skills in facilitated workshop settings, increasing the likelihood they will use these skills in the actual work setting.    
 

Approach

In skills-based teambuilding, team members participate in workshop sessions that require them to learn and practice specific teamwork skills (e.g., dealing with conflict, reaching group consensus, learning how to give criticism, or running effective team meetings).  These workshops include skills that can be applied immediately in the workplace.   

The teambuilding aspect of this approach is maximized when intact teams participate together and make commitments to use these new tools to improve the way the team functions. 
 

The amount of time invested varies with the number of skills that need to be learned and the maturity level of the team.  For example, team meeting skills and group decision-making and group consensus tools can be taught in a half-day workshop.  Critical interpersonal skills such as giving and receiving feedback, dealing with criticism and conflict, listening, and teamwork styles can be taught in a two to three-day workshops.  Group problem solving tools usually can be taught in one to two days. 
 

Tool Name

Problem Solving-Based Teambuilding Session
 

When to Use

Purpose

Remove the team from its everyday setting and get the team to agree on the barriers they are having, analyze why, and then take ownership in the problems by agreeing on actions they will take to get back on track.
 

Process Steps

During a one or two-day retreat, facilitate the team through the following steps:

1. List the barriers that are facing the team.

2. Prioritize the barriers and select the most important to work on.

3. Analyze each barrier in subgroups by analyzing causes, root causes, and actions steps that can be taken to remove or mitigate the barrier.

4. Reach commitment to move forward and execute the action steps.

5. Assign responsibilities and timelines.

6. Follow-up on progress in subsequent project team meetings.