A fair number of years ago I learned about David Kolb and his concept of the learning cycle. Essentially this concept purports that we all learn in different ways and exhibit a preference for a learning style. The learning cycle is a deceptively simple concept, easy to understand and use.

Add to this the concept developed by John Adair around where we focus our time as leaders and managers and you have the basis for experiential learning.

With corporate team building events it is necessary to create thought provoking activities. This kind of team building activity has characteristics that cause delegates to revert to type and behave as they normally would at work. Now, creating activities that mimic the behaviours and processes used with work is not as straight forward as it seems. After all, we are trying to create a different kind of experience you get from run of the mill fun team building games.

When working on new team building ideas we take time out to imagine ourselves in a workplace context. That way we know what issues and challenges we can creat that are as realistic as we can make them without actually being in the office.

Because of this attention to detail, our activities feel much more akin to worklife.

So, now we have a powerful activity we’re off, or not! You see there is another couple of important factors to get right if you want the learning to make a difference. The activity alone is seldom enough, you need time to reflect and review you team’s performance and decide how you can improve.

Now, having planned and run hundreds of team building events over the years you get to see some familiar sights. Probably the most common is a group who only say nice things about each other and their performance. Another is lots of talking about planks, ropes and coloured blocks. In essence they often end up reviewing how to be better at the activity and missing the point.

This brings up another essential aspect of team building that makes the difference between having a good time and learning something valuable. A first rate facilitator.

A good facilitator really has their work cut out as they have to understand all kinds of business, understand some of the psychology behind how people tick and be able to challenge a group when they need challenging. If you’re not careful you can find yourself working with a facilitator who is little more than a “good time maker” or out to “polish their own ego.

Right, you now have a great activity, a good opportunity for reflection and review and a great, results focused facilitator. Is that enough? Of course not, you need to be able to take what you’ve learnt back to work and do some good with it. This is where pulling it all together in a tailored team building programme with an action plan for work is important.

Okay, so why does all of that make this such a great process co pared to other forms of learning? Experience and skill.

Over the last few years I’ve been more and more involved in modular style leadership and management programme. Quite often I have been brought in to focus on the experiential bit. I can’t tell you how many times the feedback has been the same citing the experiential module as the most eye opening and useful.

For one particular client this approach helped them save over 6 million pounds in project improvements. My most memorable individual started a programme with us basically as a machine, lacking self belief and showing almost no initiative. By the end of the programme he had been promoted and earmarked as “rising talent”. Furthermore, he instigated a business project which saved his company over one hundred thousand pounds.

Experiential team building has shown itself time and again to be the most powerful learning process both for individuals and their respective employers.

Spirit Consulting

As a home the midlands offers lots of fantastic places to see and live in.  From the once brewing capital of the world, Burton Upon Trent which in it’s hey day was home to over 700 breweries.  Then there is the Derbyshire peak district with it’s dales, caves and rivers for walking, boating and photographing.  Add to this the fantastic castle at Warwick, Sherwood Forest at Nottingham and the magnificent Chatsworth House and the area becomes a haven to wonderful experiences. 

So what makes it so great for team building?  Most of our clients these days have offices located from one side of the country to the other and from south to north.  So being based in the midlands creates a central location where travelling is balanced and no one feels unfairly treated.

Much of the midlands is sandwiched nicely between the M6 and the M1 which makes it easy to get to from most places.  We have team building venues across the country from Surrey to Edinburgh but our midlands team building venue is slap bang in the middle of the country half way between both motorways and has mainline rail access on the doorstep.

But, is it more cost effective to run your team building locally or travel to one of our venues?  Well, we were recently involved in  a major piece of leadership development work for a company based primarily in the south of the country.   The work involved some 1-2 workshops with a 3-4 day residential element for the experiential learning piece.

We worked out the cost of transporting the team building exercises and staff, venue set up and removal and then compared it to the cost of transporting everyone north to the midlands.  The cost of running the events at the southern based local venue worked out as nearly 50% additional cost.  So the Midlands it was!

Now, if you live in Derby, Nottingham, Birmingham, Stoke or even Leicester or Warwick, our site at Draycott in the Clay is anything from 30mins to 1hr away.  We provide full catering facilities, overnight accommodation and we’ve even got a hot tub to relax your weary bones after a great day’s team build.

So, when you’re next considering a team building event, don’t assume it has to be local.  We can show you that the costs can make it viable.

I have experienced this need in providing a range of different ways to deliver the same learning.  I had the opportunity to do some work for a friend’s client a few years back but unfortunately couldn’t fit it in around other commitments.  I had, however, spent some time with the client in order to understand their need and determine what solution would best suit the need.  The solution was largely about being able to undertake activities, self review and apply the learning in the next situation.  From my point of view the key to the success of this piece of work was not the activities or reviews, or even the application of the learning to the next activity.  It was about having the right facilitator working with the team to drive and challenge them in the right way.

I put together a programme and earmarked an individual I thought would be great in my place.  My friend decided to use somebody else, much to my protest and rationalised explanation.  My concern was that this other person (whom I knew) did not have the right style of facilitation to support the client.  Anyway, long story short, my friend used her anyway and sure enough the client’s feedback was that she wasn’t anything like as challenging as she needed to be and they got little out of the work.

One solution, but two very different styles which would produce two different sets of outcomes.  Which is right?  In reality it is often a judgement call based on experience, understanding of a client and their team and knowing your capabilities.

There are indeed lots of different ways to develop teams with different styles, from outdoor team activities to weekend retreats designed to bring people closer together.  I have seen teams likened to animal types to understand themselves better, drawing rich pictures from their lives, shouting beliefs at the top of their voices to rid themselves of their limited thinking and I’ve even seen them scared witless on the brink of a breakdown in order to better themselves.

The truth is, any one of these things could work if it is the right approach for the right team of individuals.  Invariably, the more extreme the approach the more mixed the results can be based on people’s personal preferences, phobias and levels of comfort (ah the good ole comfort zone!).

So, on to the real subject of this post, Gallup’s Q12.  If you want to develop a great team and you want something which everyone is going to be able to understand, get involved in and make it link to workplace effectiveness, you could do worse than to utilise the Gallup Q12.

Gallup have been in the survey business for many years and are pretty much the leaders at doing this sort of stuff.  My gripe for many years is that most of these employee survey tools are pretty woolly, have lots of influencing factors that limit the accuracy of the results and are hugely open to interpretation.  Therefore it’s an ok picture of the big areas to focus on, but we shouldn’t use the results as a tablet of stone.

However, Q12 survey has been researched and tested with organisations and Gallup have some pretty compelling evidence that suggests this is one survey tool to take note of.  That for me is what makes this a great tool for thinking about your own team’s development.  Gallup have made tangible links to improved financial performance for those organisations that do well in the Q12 areas.  Having now worked with a number of organisations that have or do use Q12 I believe it is a great vehicle for benchmarking your team and focusing development activity on areas that really can make a tangible difference.

So what is the Q12?

Gallup’s Q12 is a set of core statements that, if an organisation works on and does well in, will be really effective in improving performance financially. Below are the 12 statements.

• Do you know what is expected of you at work?
• Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?
• At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
• In the last seven days, have your received recognition or praise for doing good work?
• Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?
• Is there someone at work who encourages your development?
• At work, do your opinions seem to count?
• Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?
• Are your associates (fellow employees) commited to doing quality work?
• Do you have a best friend at work?
• In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?
• In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

Copyright © 1993-1998 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. You may not distribute, modify, transmit, reuse, re-post, or use the Q12® questions for public or commercial purposes, without the written permission of Gallup, Inc.  Gallup® and Q12® are Trademarks of Gallup, Inc.”

As an example of what Q12 claims, if we take the first statement “Do you know what is expected of you at work?”.  Gallup claim that organisations who ensure people understand not only what they are meant to be doing but also how it fits into the overall goal of the business could expect to see up to a 30% improvement in profitability.  Even if your organisation or department say profitability or effieciency savings of half that amount it’s got to be worth it, hasn’t it?

Gallup’s website has lots on information about how to use the Q12 in an organisation but it basically comes down to this.

• Be open to recieving the feedback
• Use it as a starting point to develop your understanding
• Talk about the results openly
• Engage your team in identifying the things that will improve things
• Create an action plan that dovetails into your business plans
• Remember, it’s tool for improving performance not just creating warm fluffy places to work

Alongside using Q12, you will be able to identify other tools and approaches that can help you tackle areas of concern on the Q12 results but remember to make sure not only the solution is right but that the person working with you is right for you too.

Obviously this is just a short snippet about team development and specifically how Q12 can provide a great insight to your team’s development needs.  It’s not intended to go into Q12 in detail.  If you want to know more about the tool, look at Gallup’s website, there is a whole bunch of information there.  If you want to talk to me about how I’ve used Q12 with other team’s then drop me an e-mail.

Likewise, if you have experience of using Q12, including success or pitfalls then please do post a comment for others.

We have been talking a lot about team measures with our clients over the last few years. The reactions we get to these conversations have been interesting. Sometimes when we introduce the subject of measures we see eyes glaze over. It’s like talking about taxes—a tedious, detailed task of administration we know we have to do, but really wish we could avoid. Intellectually, everyone understands the importance of reliable and timely feedback data to continuous improvement, but few seem able to muster the energy, time, buy-in and resources to develop useful measurement systems. We wondered how many organizations were struggling with these issues and what we could learn from the successes and trials of others.

What We Asked
Last fall we developed and distributed a survey that had five categories of questions regarding teams and team-based measurement systems. The first four categories of questions had to do specifically with how organizations collected and used performance data. We asked about:

• What teams measure
• How they collect data
• What they do with the data
• What has resulted

Because measurements and results so often form the basis for reward and recognition systems, we also included a set of questions about what organizations were doing in this arena. We identified several items within each category and asked respondents to answer two questions about each of these items:

• Do you do this in your organization?
• If you do, how important or helpful has it been to team performance? (On a scale of 1-5)

Generally speaking, the responses we received confirmed our faith that measures and performance feedback help teams. With few exceptions, our respondents found value in performing most of the example measurement tasks we included in our survey. Inside are the highlights from the data.

Comments from our respondents tell us that establishing effective measures is important, but not easy. Intimidation is no excuse for not starting somewhere, these experienced organizations told us. Get something in place as soon as possible and expect to tweak it as you go. They reassured us that it does get easier.

What Teams Measure
When deciding what to measure, start first with measures that track team rather than individual performance. Our data indicates that individual performance data are of less value (judging from the ratings and number of organizations tracking it) while team data reinforce collaboration and problem solving.

Be sure that you have a balanced set of measures. One of our clients got into trouble by having their teams track only sales. Not surprisingly, sales were going up, but so were complaints from customers! To prevent the teams from sacrificing long term success for quick gains, the organization added customer satisfaction to team score cards.

Measures should also be meaningful to team members and flexible enough to change over time to suit changing team needs and issues. One of our respondents told us that they originally designed their measures to satisfy their Budget Committee. Since these had little meaning to the team members, there was no buy-in to collecting or reviewing data.

The place to start, we were told repeatedly, is with the organization’s and the team’s mission and vision. Use these to identify four to five key performance indicators. If you pick too many, you will confuse people about priorities. (One organization reported making the mistake of starting with 20! No one could remember them all.) Our survey respondents seemed to like some version of the set we included on the survey: costs, customer satisfaction, quality, productivity and work processes. We were also reminded to choose SMART measures: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound.

What gets measured…gets done.

How They Collect Team Data
Two points stand out on this issue: teams need feedback specific to their performance as opposed to the performance of the organization as a whole, and the feedback is more valuable if it is collected by the teams themselves. Also, using specific tools provided more value than actually collecting anecdotal data.

One of our respondents reminded us of how much easier the task of collecting and reporting data is when you have well designed information systems. The less you have to manually process, the better.

What is Done with the Data
Performance data is only valuable to the extent that it is reviewed and used. Most respondents reported reviewing their data regularly (some at every team meeting). Waiting until there is a problem or only looking at some of the data doesn’t have nearly the same pay-off.

Many organizations also reported performance data as the basis for goal setting as well as team feedback and performance reviews. We have developed a process to help teams do this and we call it the Team Improvement Review process. It is built around a set of four questions:

1. How are we doing? (an examination of the data)
2. What have we learned? (what does the data indicate about our strengths and weaknesses)
3. What should we do next? (setting improvement goals)
4. What resources will we need to achieve our new goals? (what help, training, equipment, etc.)

One of our respondents made the wise suggestion to make sure your teams members know how to use their measures as a tool for implementation. Without the skills to analyze data, problem solve, or build business cases for their ideas, all they’ll have is information.

What Has Been the Effect of Tracking Performance
Measures build teams. Our respondents were quite clear on this point. Measures helped their teams focus, collaborate, and make progress on targeted improvements.

Few of the people surveyed felt that tracking performance made their teams feel as if they weren’t trusted to do a good job. It’s just as we suspected. People want to know how they are doing.

What They Said About Rewards and Recognition
While technically a separate issue, we felt that asking about measures without asking also about rewards and recognition would have left everyone waiting for the other shoe to drop. As we saw earlier, measures are useful to a team’s focus and goal setting. They also provide obvious fodder for rewards.

What our data indicated was interesting. Most organizations reported more satisfaction with simple team celebrations and “attaboys” than they did with tangible or financial rewards for either teams or individuals. This is consistent with Alfie Kohn’s¹ philosophy about rewards.

Most celebrations we have seen teams centre around food. One of our respondents, a manager at Con-Way Transportation Services of Portland, Oregon, described a time when his team had to put in some late hours. He made a point of bringing a special dinner to them each night they worked. One night it was Chinese, another Thai, another Mexican, and so on. The big hit was the night he brought homemade lasagna. At the end of the project the team celebrated at one of Portland’s best Italian restaurants.

Where performance did impact compensation, we see that profit sharing is more popular than any of the other suggested reward systems. One respondent provided this caution, however. He recommended not tying team pay to measures until the metrics have been in place for one full cycle and have been validated and agreed upon by management and teams.

Example – Using Measures to Redesign Work Processes
One of our clients is a healthcare nonprofit providing services primarily to women. Due to a number of factors, their patient revenues have been declining while their expenses have remained level. Most of their facilities do not pay for themselves and are subsidized by donations. Their management realized that they needed to turn this picture around.

Step 1: Pre-Launch – We helped them form a task force to redesign their work process. The first step was to sit down with the managers and develop a project charter for this team, carefully clarifying boundaries, purpose, expectations roles, etc. This “pre-launch process” typically takes four hours. In this we identified a set of measurable goals for the team including:

• Ability to handle three to four patient visits per clinician per hour
• Same day appointments for urgent needs; no more than one week wait to get other appointments
• Wait time for patients not to exceed 10 minutes past their appointment time

These measures have kept the team focused on business needs.

Step 2: Launch – At the first meeting with the team, the managers walked the new members through the team charter as we clarified and negotiated the details. We also established team agreements for how to operate.

Step 3: Redesign – Now we are in the process of mapping their work processes, gathering baseline data on their processes, and generating ideas for meeting the measures. (Tip: Use pictures to map out the process. These icons keep people from tunnelling too deeply into any one step.) We are expecting to complete the project with 8 half-day meetings, fully expecting to turn around their business.

1. Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes - by Alfie Kohn, published by Houghton Mifflin Company (link will take you to Amazon.com)