Advanced Teamwork and Cooperation Skills

This course explores the nature and advantages of innovative and cooperative teams. Progressively, organisations see innovation and coordinated as a key source of competitive advantage, with advantages for motivation and engagement and developing talent, as well as team and organisational performance. However, achieving these benefits places new demands on leaders, and requires new leadership practices.

Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Appraise the key features and benefits of innovative and collaborative teams.
• Asses their team’s current and aspired innovation and collaboration skills and create an appropriate development plan.
• Assess key approaches for creating the right environment for innovation and collaboration.
• Test common approaches to developing shared purposes and goals.
• Apply leadership practices which inspire and support team innovation, collaboration and success.

Course Outline

Day 1

The Benefits of Innovation and Collaboration

• The nature of innovation.
• Collaboration vs. competition.
• Learned behaviours.
• Innovative and collaborative teams.
• The innovative and collaborative team mindset.

Day 2

Building the Innovative and Collaborative Team

• Innovative and collaborative team values.
• High performance goals and metrics.
• Innovation and collaborative skills.
• Appraising team skills.
• Designing a team development programme.

Day 3

Creating the Right Environment for Innovation and Collaboration

• The new role of leadership.
• Individual creative work.
• Individual strengths and blind spots.
• Trust and communication.
• Recognition and feeding forward.
• Productive conflict: a source of creativity and team cohesion.

Day 4

Inspiring Shared Purposes and Common Goals

• Individual preferences and goals.
• Developing a team picture of success.
• ‘Force field’ analysis.
• Strategic priority areas.
• Monitoring progress and achievement.

Day 5

Leadership Practices for Innovative and Collaborative Teams

• Guiding principles: drawing on great experiences.
• Communication with and within your team.
• Team gatherings.
• Team decisions and the leader’s decision-making process.
• Personal and team accountability.
• Developing a personal and team action plan.