Presenter
Deborah Slobodnik
- Your most important role as team or project leader
- Introducing and reinforcing healthy team habits
- Building a cohesive and committed virtual team
- The difference between healthy and dysfunctional conflict and best practices for dealing with it
- Efficient decision making and testing for real buy in
- Strategies for developing accountability and non-blaming behavior
Key Takeaways
- 1.Leaders can learn to assess observable team behaviors that signal dysfunction.
- 2.Real-time intervention is a key strategy to interrupt unproductive patterns as they occur.
- 3.Coaching can strengthen cohesion and collaboration in cross-functional, virtual, or co-located teams.
- 4.Leaders should practice giving immediate, constructive feedback on unproductive behaviors.
- 5.A culture of self-correction empowers teams to identify and resolve internal conflicts.
- 6.Heightened awareness of team communication styles and decision-making processes is the first step toward improvement.
The Challenge of Team Dysfunction
In any organizational structure—be it cross-functional, virtual, or co-located—dysfunctional team behaviors can undermine productivity and hinder growth. The ability to effectively coach teams is a critical skill for leaders and managers. This session with Deborah Slobodnik explores the art of real-time team coaching, providing actionable strategies to foster a more productive and cohesive team culture.
Assessing and Interrupting Unproductive Patterns
Effective team coaching begins with the ability to diagnose issues as they unfold. Leaders will learn strategies for assessing observable team behaviors that signal underlying dysfunction. Key to this process is learning how to interrupt these unproductive patterns in the moment, preventing minor issues from escalating and redirecting the team's energy toward constructive outcomes.
Key areas of focus include:
- Developing a heightened awareness of team communication styles.
- Observing the team's decision-making processes.
- Practicing immediate, constructive feedback when unproductive behaviors emerge.
Strengthening Team Cohesion and Performance
Beyond simply interrupting negative patterns, real-time coaching aims to build a stronger, more resilient team. The webinar offers methods to enhance team cohesion and collaboration. By facilitating structured discussions around challenges, leaders can guide their teams to collaboratively address and resolve issues. The ultimate goal is to create a culture where team members feel empowered to identify and resolve internal conflicts, fostering a self-correcting and continuously improving team environment.
Application Across All Team Structures
The principles discussed are designed to be universally applicable, whether your team is fully remote, in-office, or hybrid. By applying these coaching techniques, leaders, HR professionals, and managers can proactively manage team health, ensuring sustained engagement, innovation, and organizational growth.
This session delves into the critical skill of real-time team coaching, illustrating how to effectively identify and intervene in dysfunctional team behaviors. The principles discussed remain highly relevant today, as organizations continue to face challenges in optimizing team dynamics across diverse work environments, from co-located to virtual and hybrid setups. Understanding these strategies is key to fostering a productive and cohesive team culture.
What you'll learn
- Strategies for assessing observable team behaviors that signal dysfunction.
- Techniques for interrupting unproductive patterns in real time.
- Methods to strengthen team cohesion and collaboration.
- Approaches to coaching teams across various structures, including cross-functional and virtual teams.
Who this webinar is for
This webinar is ideal for:
- Team leaders and managers seeking to improve their team's performance.
- HR professionals focusing on organizational development and team efficiency.
- Coaches looking to expand their expertise into team coaching.
- Anyone responsible for facilitating productive group interactions and outcomes.
Why it matters now
Effective team dynamics are more crucial than ever in today's rapidly evolving work landscape. With the prevalence of hybrid and fully remote teams, the ability to diagnose and address team dysfunctions promptly is essential for maintaining productivity, engagement, and innovation. The insights from this session provide a foundational understanding of how to proactively manage team health and ensure sustained organizational growth, preventing minor issues from escalating into major impediments.
How leaders can apply this
Leaders can immediately begin to apply the concepts by observing their teams with a more critical eye for behavioral patterns. As discussed by Deborah Slobodnik, it involves:
- Developing a heightened awareness of team communication styles and decision-making processes.
- Practicing immediate, constructive feedback when unproductive behaviors emerge.
- Facilitating structured discussions to collaboratively address team challenges.
- Creating a culture where team members feel empowered to identify and resolve internal conflicts, fostering a more resilient and self-correcting team environment. This proactive approach helps build sustainable high-performing teams.
About this session
Key takeaways
Watching this webinar gives you grounded, practical perspective on Growth. Expect ideas you can use in leadership conversations, not abstract theory, drawn from Deborah Slobodnik's direct experience.
Who this is for
CHROs, HR business partners, talent leaders, executive coaches, organizational development practitioners, and senior leaders who are responsible for systemic collaboration inside their organization.
Why it matters now
Workforce expectations, hybrid work patterns, and AI-driven change keep raising the bar on culture and leadership. Sessions like this help leaders make smarter, more evidence-informed decisions about Growth.
How to apply it
Use the ideas here to challenge a current assumption on your team, design a single concrete experiment in the next 30 days, and bring one finding back to your leadership group for discussion.
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