By Svetlana Vityugova
Akson Medical – "a pride."
Did you know that a group of lions is called a pride? This is an association the team has with the company culture. Values-based, determined, mission-driven, client-oriented and caring with an ambition to become a market leader. How would you describe your culture in one word? Ask this question to your team, and you will hear many surprising associations you won't believe.
We started our change journey with the Akson Medical leadership team a few weeks back with great energy. Akson's mission is to be the best medical equipment and supplies distributor for hospitals. The CEO, Victor and his leadership team, are committed to high-quality service and strong business growth. I was delighted to help them achieve their objectives by taking this first important step in building a robust and high-performing team.
Over two weeks, we worked together with the team to understand and analyze team practices, culture, and collaboration.
What made these interactions particularly compelling was the data we received through various tools and diagnostics. These enabled me to gain critical insights into team motivations, strengths, dysfunctions, and key focus areas. We addressed these focus areas over a two-day Collaboration session. I facilitated using the Group Coaching from Professor Manfred Kets DeVries at KDVI.
Through this team coaching intervention, we were able to address live strategic and operational challenges facing the organization while simultaneously developing improved trust, alignment, and performance in the team.
What else did we achieve?
a safe space for the team to get to know each other better, practice deep listening and strengthen collaboration,
encouraging open communication and feedback sharing by building psychological safety
helped participants gain deeper awareness about teamwork, success factors, dysfunctions, their impact on the company's performance, and define improvement actions.
discovered team motivation level, what to pursue and what to avoid in their teamwork
learnt how to improve work effectiveness, build shared purpose, and enhance strategic connection
Family- like Team – effective, resilient, and united.
Family like? Yes, this is how I see the most effective teams. First, we spend one-third of our life at work, and secondly, we are social creatures and constantly satisfy our phycological needs through others.
We must take into consideration the emotional elements of working with other people. Like in the family, there are irrational behaviours, a shared set of values and behaviours that must be established to survive and thrive together.
There is much research out there stating that how people relate to each other defines their performance as a team. Unfortunately, there are dysfunctional teams as there are dysfunctional families, and building effective relationships in the group takes some effort.
Team effectiveness is a crucial focus of my team coaching and consulting practice. First, my leadership experience and team management have taught me what can go wrong, and I have come to an intuitive group coaching approach. Later, I learned about phycological safety, social defence system, teamwork dysfunctions etc. Finally, I realized that some of this knowledge could have made my own managerial life much easier. So, in my practice, I set an objective to explore and identify a very practical set of rules and recommendations on building team effectiveness to optimize performance and maintain a healthy well-being level.
Simple 3-step journey with high impact.
What will success look like? This is where we start exploring.
Before designing the sessions, we build together with you your future vision, discuss general challenges within the team, and diagnose the situation through structured interviews and assessment methodologies. To make a path to goals, it is essential to understand the starting point: the team's strengths and weaknesses are up-to-date, what resources are available, and what needs improvement.
We address universal teamwork effectiveness and collaboration challenges during the coaching interventions, which are the foundation for any project or work you do.
We can focus on a particular area of concern for you as a leader. Each session will have a specific scope, objectives and challenges to focus on (for example, it can be phycological safety, trust, team effectiveness, challenges of collaboration within or outside the team, general motivation, alignment of values etc.). If you already have something on your mind, that's great; otherwise, we will explore together where to start.
After the intervention, based on the information gathered during the pre-work, assessments, and coaching session, we will debrief you and build assumptions. Action plans around the areas you can work on and provide practical recommendations on building a stronger team/better culture.
Ready to take your team on this journey?
Reach out to me at svetlana@tbmpartner.com, and I will map it for you.