The most vital message an organization can send to its people about the importance of teamwork is that even the leaders at the highest levels value teamwork and are willing to improve their own teams through executive team building.
When we deliver different types of training to first-line and mid-level management teams, we often hear people say, “Upper management should have to take this course too.”
The executive team in any company is in the spotlight and the people in the organization take their behavioral cues from their leadership team. If its senior team isn’t highly functional, it’s challenging for the organization to succeed with its long-range strategy and direction.
CMOE’s executive team building process focuses on key strategies and business challenges; how these issues affect the executive team and how the team deals with those topics. Executive team building doesn’t occur with an off-the-shelf program.
What Is Team Building?
Team building describes activities intended to enhance social relationships, define goals, and establish trust among workforce members.
What Are the Benefits of Executive Team Building?
Driving executive team building at your organization can provide the following four benefits:
1. Improves workforce engagement: A highly engaged leadership team can boost manager engagement by 39%. And this trickles down to staff members. Team members managed by engaged leaders are “59% more likely to be engaged.”
2. Creates more confidence: This benefit helps team members have courageous conversations. Conflict is inevitable in the workplace, and a team-building activity provides the opportunity for executives to voice concerns and issues. More importantly, it offers space to identify solutions productively.
3. Fosters community: When executed well, team building fosters community and engagement. Ninety percent of team members and organizations believe that creating a sense of community in the workplace is essential.
4. Creates more alignment: When individuals feel like a part of a community, unified under a common purpose, this creates alignment. Alignment is critical, especially at the executive level. A workforce must have a firm executive foundation to function optimally.
What Are Examples of Executive Team-Building Activities?
Examples of executive team-building activities include:
- A meet and greet. For example, a company recently underwent a merger that added new members to the executive team. The team-building activities included a happy hour followed by a management workshop where executives discussed new and shifting objectives for the organization.
- Skills-based training. This activity may involve conflict management training to help executives manage issues efficiently and effectively. An executive can apply the skills and pass them on to managers and staff.
- Personality-based training. This activity may involve tools like Myers-Briggs to help identify each executive’s strengths and weaknesses. Executives can use the results as a catalyst for finding better ways of working together.
We provide executive teams with opportunities to call a “time out” to reconnect, re-energize, and explore how the team can work together more effectively to achieve a common purpose. While executive leadership teams aren’t much different from any other team trying to work together for an organization’s best interest, they face unique challenges and pressures that can seep through the organization.
Some of the critical business issues a company can address in a customized Executive Team Building program include the following topics:
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As with all our programs, the goal is to provide dynamic learning, personal growth, and a team development experience that will produce results. We find that the cascading effects of a more focused, productive, aligned, and powerful executive team will create tremendous waves of positive change throughout the organization.
Since long-lasting change and significant results don’t typically happen in the first attempt, we find it valuable to gather the team together periodically to:
- Provide a system for measurement on its goals and commitments
- Implement long-term change strategies and plans.
CMOE facilitators and consultants have been involved in many customized executive team-building projects with clients, including Lennox, Sauer-Danfoss, Cargill, and Grundfos. They’re highly skilled in helping executive teams identify the hindrances that may be limiting the team from reaching its full potential and how to address critical issues.
Many clients prefer having off-site Executive Team-Building programs or combining them with a high-adventure retreat. CMOE can also provide ongoing one-on-one Executive Coaching services to enhance the executive team-building efforts and growth of individual executives and senior leaders.
