9 Responses

1. it depends “when” you want to measure….

   Hi Sareeta

   If you want to measure teamworking longer term a very useful tool is a GRIPS assessment.  In short this is a subjective, team wide scoring system that measures the team members’ view of the Goals, Role, Interactions, Processes and Style of the team as time goes by.  It is a good way to measure the teamworking rather than the straightforward task achievement of the team as a whole and, if used sensibly, also shows areas where the team is not of one accord, ie where the team may be beginning to fragment

   I’ll post a copy on the downloadable resouces page of http://www.coach-and-courses.com shortly, if you think it sounds like the type of thing you need

   Rus

    

    (11th May….it is now there for people to download)

2. Teamworking tool

   Hi Rus,

   Thank you for helping. I went through the list of downloadables at your website and it’s amazingly helpful. Please upload the Teamworking tool, as well.

   Thanks again.

   Sareeta

3. Ask the Team

   Hi Sareeta

   An alternative to a pre-determined questionnaire or survey is to involve the team in creating one. By finding out what they would like to improve or what they perceive their issues to be, this would enable you to create a tailored questionnaire or survey that they complete before and after the team building.

   Thanks

   Rosanne

    

4. Pre-determining the evaluation

   Thanks, Rosanne.

   This looks like a great way to design the evaluation methodology with the stake holders. Not sure, if the parameter development and calibrating the participants and then self evaluation will take up a lot of classroom time. Could you tell me if there are some standard formats or may be a list of sub skills that one can use in the intial stage? I will definitely try your method in my next training program.

   Thanks again,

   Sareeta

5. Let objectives determine the measures..

   Hi Sareeta –

   My advice is to let the objectives determine the measures you use to evaluate the training.

   I would recommend the following steps:

   1) why are you holding the training, i.e. what are the objectives?

   2) what measures do you have available (see below for suggestions)?

   3) as Rus mentions above "when" should also be considered, i.e. immediately after the training or at some point in the future (both are important)

   4) how will you measure? You could use existing tools and processes as measures, or you could develop some especially for the training.

   As I don’t know why you’re undertaking the team building training I’ll give you a couple of examples of what I mean. Let’s say two of your objectives are to a) build morale, and b) improve productivity.

   Ideally establish a measure of each that you can evaluate before, immediately after and at some pre-determined point in the future, say 6 weeks or 3 months after training. For a) your measure could be a general employee satifaction survey, 1-2-1 with line manager or HR, or a questionnaire as part of the training. For b) it would depend on the team, but it could be sales per hour for a sales team.

   You could also build some evaluation into your training event. For objective b) think about a physical, measurable task that you can get the team to perform at the start of training and again at the conclusion. You can measure their productivity objectively and prove to them how much they have improved.

   Hope this gives you a few ideas.

   Fran.

6. Typical Headings

   Hi Sareeta

   To be time efficient you could use some typical headings for the team to think about such as:

   Communication

   Working Together or Team Working Relationships

   How we make decisions

   Listening to each other

   How we organise our team

   Feedback on Success/Improvements

   You could then easily build a scoring system 1-10 on each item they come up with under the above headings

   Hope this helps

   Rosanne

7. Why are you building the team?

   Hi

   I think I’d start with the end in mind and look at the results of better teamworking.

   What should improve if the team works better together (ie. what are the outputs)?

   If you think a sales team will work better as a team, then sales should increase. If teambuilding is the only attributable change, then that’s a great measure of success.

   We often, as trainers, spend a lot of time looking at subjective measures and what people perceive. If there are tangible measures, then I’d advocate using them.

    

8. Team Working

   Hi Fran,

   Thanks for the reply.

   Let me give some more clarity. Most of the time, we conduct these kind of training programs for IT companies. The reason for the training is ususally uncoordinated effort by several different departments. Most of the time, the managers delegate tasks expecting the result within a deadline, however, there is an eleventh hour work done by manager himself or the deadline is crossed. Sometimes this is due to poor communication, miscommunication, lack of ownership or even interpersonal issues. In this situation, would you consider the task completion time or better quality of the project or manager’s supervision report as a parameter or is it more important to use an EQ tool and gauge the effectiveness. Would you consider that, tangible?
   

   Regards,

   Sareeta

9. Thank you

   Hi Rus,

   Thank you for the tool.

   I have downloaded it and intend to use it in my next session.

   Thanks again.

   Sareeta