Wychwood Consulting offers training courses, workshops and consultancy including sales training, customer service training, competency based interviewing skills, management development, leadership development, appraisal skills, team building, recruitment services, and train the trainer.

The effective team

To use and develop a team's potential requires attention to be given to the purpose of the team, and to the relationships between the team members. Effective teams comprise individuals who understand themselves and their effect upon others, and are prepared to accept individual responsibility. They are independent. By working in appropriate teams, such individuals can then become inter-dependent. That is, greater results and rewards are achieved by the individuals in the team working together.

The ineffective team

There are some situations where individuals have low awareness of their values and their strengths, display little acceptance of responsibility and are thus dependent upon other people and events around them. Teams with a high proportion of such individuals are characterised by high mutual dependence, insecurity, lack of trust and commitment, a feeling of inevitability and a focus upon self protection. Much energy is wasted within such teams in dedicated yet isolated work, and in the apportionment of blame.

Values based team building

Values based team building addresses these issues through a range of inspirational and interesting exercises which give delegates a memorable shared experience allowing the important factors of positive teamwork to be experienced, discussed and applied. Delegates are encouraged to think about what is important to them (what they value) and how their own and their colleagues' values impact upon how they work together in their teams.

Inspiration from reality

Unlike many team building programmes, we include presentations and exercises designed and run by people who have actually achieved great success in recruiting and leading teams within a range of highly demanding fields, and are motivational speakers.

These people are available throughout the programmes and are involved directly with the delegates, including in a social capacity. They do not simply present and then leave! Also, we avoid abstract 'playground' exercises designed by professional trainers.

This all ensures a high level of credibility, interest, involvement and fun.

How can 'team spirit' be made to last?

In the return to a changing and pressured work environment, the positive atmosphere engendered by a traditional team building event can often dissipate. To prevent this, our approach is to use the presentations and exercises, and the subsequent debriefs, to help the delegates relate the messages and experiences back to the workplace. These debriefs are facilitated in depth around:

• appreciating the necessity of a shared vision and purpose for the team
• understanding how teams develop over time, so that when progress is difficult (or feels like going backwards) people will persevere
• the importance of trust and how it is built through
• appreciating and playing to the strengths of the individual team members, their different styles of perceiving, thinking and communicating, and their personal values
• open and honest communication

In other words, our programmes help delegates to experience and understand for themselves what is occurring between people in their team, and what is likely to occur as people, tasks and circumstances change in the future. This helps the team members to take responsibility for both the tasks and the maintenance of the necessary relationships within the teams in which they work (both now and in the future) without the constant need for outside intervention.

The services we offer

We offer a range of flexible team building programmes. These last from one or two days at a time and can be during the week or at a weekend.

The numbers that can be accommodated at any one event can also be varied to meet both your operational and budget needs, from around eight to thirty two delegates.

The themes around which the programmes are designed include a variety of real life experiences of our people for example:

• Leading an Everest expedition rescue
• Covert jungle military operations
• Earthquake disaster relief

Prior to these outdoor elements of the programme, we work with your people using relevant psychometric and other models to support the understanding of the particular individuals within the team, and the implications of the given mix.

As with all our programmes we work hard to ensure that the desired outcomes are clearly defined beforehand, the programme is 'joined up' to your overall strategy, and that relevant support is in place in order to embed the increases in learning and motivation.

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Wychwood Consulting.

"Eye opening!"

"Made me think a lot about why people do things"

"The exercises were very relevant"

"I now realise what part I can play in the team"