Team-based work for achieving organizational goals has enormously increased in today’s organizational life, which results in frequent and pivotal interactions among peers. Better exchanges within the team members support establishment of positive and empowering organizational climate (Palumbo, 2021). Therefore, establishing and managing teams have become so critical that different kinds of team development techniques have been recommended so far. Hicks (2010) defines three different techniques: team building, team facilitation and team coaching. Engage&Grow, on the other hand, offers its own unique holistic approach to build, facilitate and coach teams.
According to Hicks (2010), team building is an interaction-based team development technique while team facilitation is outcome-based. Organizations that focus on relationships and collaboration often come up with a team building activity. It is generally 1–2-day event. This event is action-based and mainly includes playful activities. It helps teams develop a common language and team members understand each other better. Such a specific and short intervention obviously creates joyful experience and improved interpersonal interaction (McCulloch, 2021), but its effect remains limited and easily vanished. Besides, organizations that focus on the outcome of team development planning tend to adapt team facilitation. Team members work on setting a strategy as well as develop its ability to work together (McCulloch, 2021). A facilitator organizes a series of short conversational sessions and keeps the emphasis on specific and current business problems. Impact of this technique is more practical and long-lived than the former but may be limited to the determined business problems.
The third technique is team coaching. It is preferred by organizations that focus on both interaction and business outcomes. It fosters long-term skills and capacity. Team coach seeks to establish a thinking-based environment in which team members develop a healthy communication, solve existing conflicts, commit to shared decisions, and embrace collective business results. Team coaching lasts over six to twelve months, and the outcomes of meetings are not planned but emergent with time. Team coaching is claimed to be a better approach than team building (Rodriguez, 2020) and organizations are increasingly turning to team coaching (McCulloch, 2021).
Engage&Grow has upgraded those three techniques and created its unique approach to team development: Group Activation System. Engage&Grow Group Activation System is an action-based program not limited to teammates. Groups can be established either with an existing team or individual employees from totally different departments. One team development technique obviously does not fit all teams in different organizations. Each organization has its own needs. Accordingly, Engage&Grow programs are tailored for each company. Group members meet once a week for twelve weeks. Activation starts with setting a shared objective by group members without pen and paper. Then group members themselves decide on a series of behaviors that should be changed to reach the objective. While members can independently make their own choices, the structured tools keep them on the way to the objective. Such an intrinsically driven behavior change has a highly permanent, comprehensive, and long-lived impact over both team and organization climate. Individual engagement, internal cooperation, trust, and organizational citizenship (Kumar & Pnasari, 2016) are initially developed and/or supported. The positive attitude and behavior change indirectly affect interaction with colleagues who have not participated into the group activation system as well as customer engagement and loyalty (Qin et al., 2014).
Teams have recently become essential to organizations. The last two decades have witnessed three recognized team development techniques: team building, team facilitation and team coaching. Engage&Grow adds to this literature and offers its own approach with Group Activation System. Two characteristics of this system stands out as its main difference from above-described techniques: active and independent participation of members, and unique tools adaptable to group needs.
References
Hicks, B. (2010), “Team coaching: A literature review”, Institute for Employment Studies, IES HR Network Paper MP88.
Kumar, V. and Pansari, A. (2016), “Competitive advantage through engagement”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 53, No. 4.
McCulloch, B. (2021), “Do you know the difference? Team building vs. team facilitation vs. team coaching”, accessible at https://www.bobmcculloch.com/Do-You-Know-The-Difference-Team-Building-vs-Team-Facilitation-vs-Team-Coaching.html.
Palumbo, R. (2021), “Engaging by releasing: an investigation of the consequences of team autonomy on work engagement”, Team Performance Management: An International Journal, Vol. 27, No. 5/6, pp. 425-445.
Qin, Q., Wen, B., Ling, Q., Zhou, S. and Tong, M. (2014), “How and when the effect of ethical leadership occurs? A multilevel analysis in the Chinese hospitality industry”, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 26, No. 6, pp. 974-1001.
Rodriguez, S. (2020), “Coaching, leadership tips”, accessible at https://www.shinecoachingbarcelona.com/en/team-building-team-coaching-comparative/.