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TEAM THRIVING

Truth: 
People join organizations for the cause, and they stay for the people.

Effective interpersonal relationships and lived agreements around fundamental actions such as group decision-making are the backbone of any successful organization, particularly at the leadership level. ASG's team-thriving work can improve the functioning of any group, but we specialize in taking leadership teams (Boards, executive, and managerial) to higher levels of success and smooth operations, and coaching individual staff members into higher and higher levels of success and professional fulfillment.

​We design and facilitate customized sessions and retreats using Appreciative Inquiry to address specific opportunities and concerns such as cross-department silos, communication processes, organizational culture shifts, and more.

The team thriving process is customized by organization based on your specific needs, but here are a few examples.

A BETTER BOARD FOR ALL INVOLVED: A Chicago-based organization faces significant Board functioning challenges. Through a three-retreat process with asynchronous work between, we collaboratively clarify the Board’s primary areas of responsibility, create a set of working agreements, identify the critical conditions for high levels of functioning by the Board, and generate a set of prioritized and time-limited action steps for Board and staff leadership to take in order to create the conditions for success and improve the Board’s ability to carry out its key responsibilities.

CREATIVITY AS THE KEY: After a period of growth, an organization hears from its staff members that they feel highly disconnected from each other, overworked, and burned out. ASG designs a full-day retreat that utilizes meditation, reflective writing, and tactile imaginative practices to increase understanding and connection among the staff, support participants in developing effective ongoing self-care practices, and guide the group in brainstorming ways large and small that they can contribute to transforming the organization’s culture in positive ways.

CROSS-TEAM CONNECTIONS: An organization with multiple sites across a major metropolitan city, a wide range of services, and a relatively new executive director is feeling the strain of tension and disconnection between sites and individual departments. A survey shows that staff feel misunderstood and in many case undervalued by other departments. Leadership knows that while some groups are relatively high functioning, others are struggling. ASG conducts a half-day session with each of the seven departments, working to identify the critical conditions for that group’s success, as well as engaging the group in a process of identifying the creative identity by which it will present itself and its work to the full organization. In a facilitated full-day session with the entire organization, each department presents its work to the whole using the framework of this identity — the childcare workers as gardeners, the immigrant services group as chefs, etc. Follow-up with each department focuses on identifying key steps for living into their critical conditions and becoming a highly effective and cohesive team, as well as brainstorming ways to continue connecting across departments.

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