This workshop was designed for AT&T quality consultants to enhance their skills/knowledge around working with and coaching groups to grow and develop into high-performing quality improvement teams. These teams were responsible for identifying and acting on opportunities to increase customer satisfaction.

This highly experiential workshop (based on the philosophy that adults learn best by doing) provided a forum for consultants to discover and practice methods for assisting a group to achieve its goal(s). Specifically, this workshop addresses the following key topics:

• Distinguishing between a group and a team. A high-performing team must reflect the 4 key characteristics of mutual goal, interdependence, commitment and accountability. Consultants explore these 4 characteristics in terms of how to help a group build them into their environment as they help them move from a group to a team.
• Understanding the stages of group development. Using the Tuckman Model, participants of the workshop develop a strong understanding of the stages a group moves through in its journey toward becoming a team: forming, storming, norming and performing.
• Team leader/member roles and responsibilities. As a group moves through the stages of development, the roles and responsibilities of the team leader and team members will shift. This is what often makes it difficult for a group to grow! Consultants learn how to identify where a group is at relative to the stages, and then coach the leader and members to effectively move through that stage into the next
• Effective team behaviors. In order to be effective, team members must recognize the impact of their behaviors on the overall progress/success of the team. Consultants learn a number of techniques to use with groups to help them assess the effectiveness of their behaviors, and buy in to changing behaviors when necessary.
• Group dynamics techniques. Facilitators in this workshop learn techniques to help a team establish a set of norms or groundrules, identify and work through conflict, make good decisions, and communicate effectively with one another.

Workshop Design:
This workshop uses a discovery method, combining a set of "mini-lectures" on key team building concepts with immediate practice opportunities. The practice opportunities are in the form of five "experiences" which require participants to accomplish a task during a specified amount of time. One or more participant acts as the facilitator for the group, and must effectively coach that group to a successful end. Each participant receives peer and instructor feedback for improving his or her facilitation skills. Finally, each participant creates a plan for his/her further development as a team facilitator.