Being Intentional with Team Time: a Compilation of Stories

Topics: advising * team-building * on-sites
Format: call to support team leaders
Team: various organizations

In the age of remote and hybrid work, time in-person with the team is a precious thing. It’s worthwhile to make the time meaningful and supportive of the team’s goals and needs. That’s one of the goals of my Team Scheming calls: to really break down the challenges a team is facing and some tactical ways to improve them. This compilation of mini-cases highlights a few times when just a little extra thought helped make Team Time extra effective for the teams involved. 

Nora and the Overly-Ambitious Agenda

Nora is the Board chair of a volunteer-run community hockey league and was planning a several-hours Strategic Planning Meeting with her board. She came to the Team Scheming call with a Miro diagram of topics and ideas for the meeting and a desire to do the “governance work” that never gets tackled in their typical board meetings. As we got to discussing the board members and the dynamics since the new members joined a few months back, it became clear that there wasn’t enough baseline alignment to actually get that “work” done yet. 

We took a big step back, and I helped her re-prioritize her goals for the meeting: the critical step was to build trust among the board members and set some baseline standards of communication and ownership. It was hard for her to give up on the “get the work done” pieces, but she understood that those would go better following some organizational fundamentals of trust and communication. Here’s what she had to say:

“Not only did Tiana come with an extensive collection of experience and a long list of potential team-building ideas and activities, she listened closely to the description of my team and our challenges and helped create a tailored plan for our particular needs. We have continued to utilize vocabulary and strategies Tiana recommended which have changed our board culture for the better and helped us increase productivity.” – Nora

Mikell and the Intentional Icebreaker  

Another leader working on her team’s baseline understanding and relationships was Mikell, who leads robotics development at a Fortune 500. The team was recently formed, spanning disciplines, and consisted of newly hired teammates as well as teammates joining from elsewhere in the organization. During our Team Scheming call, she expressed a desire to build trust and relationships among the team members and work on establishing a shared team identity for this new group. 

We reviewed her draft agenda for their upcoming on-site Team Day and reflected on how different activities could support her goals. I highlighted that some topics might need to be “timeboxed” and that she would want a “parking lot” for topics to save for another time, so as not to derail the day’s packed agenda. I shared some activities for building team cohesion, particularly ones that Mikell would be able to easily self-facilitate with minimal prep or props, given that she would be flying to the Team Day location. 

At the team day, the Group Order icebreaker I had suggested helped the team get to know each other in a fun way. And my favorite 3Ls Retrospective allowed Mikell to structure team reflection around the team’s first months together. The team also worked through some team identity topics and relationship dynamics with other groups, and began developing team charters. As so often happens, the time was short, so the charters would need to be completed another day. Mikell shared:

“Working with Tiana helped me think more critically about why I was including certain things on the agenda, and with her guidance I was able to reframe them to make sure they’d be a good use of the team’s time and actually move us toward our goal for the day. I hadn’t expected something as simple as a more thoughtful icebreaker could do so much to help my team better understand each other. The best thing about working with Tiana on the planning was how she dug in to understand where my team was now and where I hoped they’d be following our offsite. She was able to offer multiple suggestions to facilitate each part of my agenda so that together we could match the team’s personality, my personality as a leader, and the goal of the exercise to the approach that would work best. Changes in the planned icebreaker activity and retrospective framework seem like simple things but never would have occurred to me, and these changes had a noticeable impact on the tone of the day’s conversations and the success of the offsite.” – Mikell

Kim and the Hybrid Participants  

Sometimes the Team Day you’re planning is wedged within a larger company on-site, as was the case for Kim, a product team leader in another Fortune 500 company’s advanced tech development group. She learned that a few members of the ~20 person group would be participating remotely. That limited the types of activities she could do, so we hopped on a Team Scheming call to plan around that and make the most of the time together. 

We worked through her goals for the onsite time, particularly around reflecting together on recent changes and empowering team members to drive progress. She was mindful of some past team sessions that got off track or were unstructured, which had left some participants feeling that their time wasn’t used effectively. Since she and her boss would be self-facilitating the session, we discussed some lightweight activities and discussion framing that would work in a hybrid setting without making the remote folks feel like they were on the outside looking in. 

“I consulted with Tiana while planning a leadership offsite. Tiana’s expertise helped me distill and articulate key goals and outcomes that I was aiming for and work through specific considerations to engage a hybrid team of local and remote participants. Tiana also suggested several creative activities that helped me think outside of the box to make the day engaging and memorable.” – Kim 

After the day, Kim acknowledged that managing the agenda timing was more challenging given that she was also a participant, especially when the day’s plan was impacted by executive calls and other external disruptions. She reflected on the value of having an outside facilitator, given the challenge of facilitating a discussion and yet wanting to fully participate in it. I’ve heard this from many team leaders, that in order to fully participate in the day, it can be especially helpful to have someone from outside the team running the day and facilitating the discussions. Check out my other cases about facilitated offsites. 

Nikola and the Facilitation Tips  

Nikola was appointed with rather short notice to facilitate a Board strategy session for the non-profit his consulting company supports (pro-bono). He found himself scrambling to put together something that would engage the 17-member board in meaningful strategic reflection. We hopped on a Team Scheming call, and he walked me through the context of the organization and the Board Retreat day. His focus was on a two-hour session he would facilitate to get the board’s insights on how the non-profit should evolve their core offering or expand their served population in the coming years. 

We got into the deep details of facilitation, like the ideal size of breakout groups for the type of discussion, particular prompting methods, and the benefits of dot-voting and share-backs to the larger group. I explained the difference between asking “Anything else?” – which defaults to nothing else being shared – and “What else?” – which defaults to there being something else to share, as a way to encourage additional ideas and viewpoints during the share-back. None of this was revolutionary, but these tips and tricks helped Nikola walk into the strategy session feeling prepared. 

“Tiana got to know my context deeply and quickly and was able to provide coaching based on the group’s particular make-up. I don’t often facilitate these sessions but was able to lead an engaging session that received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Tiana was instrumental to that!” – Nikola

If you’re planning a Team Day, hop on a Team Scheming Call with me to get really clear on your intentions for the day and how to craft the activities to achieve your goals.