From me to you….. A Toolbox for team development

A 28.5 hour brief that initially scared the bejesus out of me, kicked off yesterday at Hyper Island. In conjunction with Teamweek, Hyper Island my fellow Masters students and I embarked on a challenge to help solve A huge problem: 75% of Cross-Functional Teams Are Dysfunctional (source: https://hbr.org/2015/06/75-of-cross-functional-teams-are-dysfunctional)

The challenge for the MA Hyper Island Crew UK (60 students, from 25 different nationalities, from two masters programmes) was set the challenge to come up with a Toolbox to help these teams better collaborate

To create the toolbox we had to look at everything from culture building and reflections to icebreakers and team bonding. The ex recruiter and intern programme manager in me shuddered. A toolbox like this would normally take weeks to create, even in a fast paced environment with a whole team of training and development professionals. Also coming off the back off an extremely intense refection session and team breakdown of my last group. I thought — does everyone really need these tools!! ‘Well there it is’ I thought — since starting the course in January…. 4 months later this is the first time I have sat down and reflected on the way in which the tools have helped me. When I first arrived in Manchester — I thought coming from a culture of quick meaningful feedback at Facebook and team openness at Microsoft…. surely I have nothing more to learn. However the tools have helped to to create — meaningful bonds and trust though heartfelt icebreakers. To understand myself, my skills and limitations through reflection and feedback from my peers. Finally the confidence to push for team culture development when we are all in a mad deadline panic, because I know that its really worth it. For someone who thought they ‘knew it all’ I realised how little I knew.

The tool box is now ready and live and here’s the result: hiteamweek.com—If you can get even a small amount of the value from of it that I have, I will be one happy girl to have been able to share it with you.

If you do please, please leave me a comment — I would love to hear how!