Creating a Star Team

STAR Team Development.

For a long time, we have been working with teams to support them to work better together. Working on how they work with each other and on what they do together and there is so much around to guide OD consultants, HRBPS and other practitioners in this field – if you google Team Development there are millions of places for you to go looking for help and resources some good, some not so good and some really quite amazing.

I have always been a fan of the basics, and got most of what I needed from Patrick Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team, but the more I worked with the element of this model, it didn’t quite do it for me on two levels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCxct4CR-To

Firstly the name put me off, being a gentle advocate of the appreciative inquiry school of thought, and strength based practice, I instinctively pulled away from something which had “dysfunctions†in the title rather than something like how to build a functioning team. Although to be fair, the inside of the book is all about this.

Secondly, I found I was always adding a few things to the model, the five just didn’t seem to it. Don’t get me wrong it is still a great book, a great model and if every team were following it, the world of work and all teams would be a better place, but I felt I just had to have a fiddle with it and see if I could get it to be more meaningful with the teams I worked with.

So we have created our own model – Creating a STAR Team – a model for Team Development
 
Recently I was discussing the STAR Team model with a colleague who has done some research around team development and unknowingly the STAR Team model is truly aligned with the most recent thinking related to high performing teams. Creating trust and respect, managing conflict and aligning authority and accountability are recurring themes and so I felt this was a really great place to start. Champoux: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07J5WLWNW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 and Katenbach: ttps://www.praxisframework.org/en/library/katzenbach-and-smith

Our work with teams, especially time poor teams who want to work on getting tangible outcomes from an away day or development process means that they need some tangible things to come away with, that they have created while at the same time working on their human relationships.
So we have split the facets of Creating a STAR Team into two sides How and What, and anchored it around the team’s CORE PURPOSE. You can work all you like on trust and conflict, but if a team doesn’t have a core purpose, and a strategic plan to deliver that purpose, then it might as well be a hand holding camp fire sing along; which is lovely, but stuff won’t get done.

For us, this presented the balance of providing a path or a clear direction with the heart that comes from being in a team that feels for each other. Below is an overview of how we use this in our work with teams.
Firstly – We focus first on explaining the model to the team, doing some diagnostics on which part of the model they need to most work on, from their view point and from some individual psychometrics.

Secondly – we work with them on defining and understanding their core purpose, which is an anchor we come back to time and again.

Thirdly – we work our way around the model depending on what the diagnostics tell us, but always covering all areas.

Finally, we wrap the interventions up with a plan for sustainability for the team and sometimes we will come in and do a health check with them 6 months or a year later.

Now this model has been refined and developed with lots of teams internationally over the last four years and we think that we are now ready to share it, and that it works so well we are ready to teach others how to use the model, or elements of it to develop their own teams.

Nicola Roberts [email protected] and I are jointly running a 6 day training event starting on 13 and 14 November at the Yorkshire Sculpture part, with 2 more days in March 2020 and the final 2 days in June 2020 (to be confirmed shortly). All six days are available to book now via the People & OD Website https://peopleandodpartners.com/book-events-1 with an early bird or valued client offer of only £995.

We are also running one in London the following week (dates to be confirmed) as demand from our “down south†clients is growing.

Please do get in touch if you would like to come and learn how to use our model, or you would like a complimentary diagnostic about how we can help to develop your team.