Global FTSE Talent Acquisition firm
Team alignment integration for high performance
Opportunity
Our client is a FTSE 100 Talent Acquisition Services and Managed Workforce Solutions provider to corporate clients internationally. In support of enhanced customer service, it recently brought a number of its highest performing consultants together into a newly formed ‘Customer Office’. The purpose of this intervention was to accelerate the integration and alignment of a team that had never met, as a result of dispersed geographies and Covid restrictions.acinia eu.
The solution
Sheridan first established the ‘from… to….’ the Team Leader wished to achieve, before organising a 30 minute video call with each team member. These conversations were held on a strictly confidential basis and gave Team Members the opportunity freely to share their views of the team and their team leader. The unattributed themes were then fed back to the Team Leader and to the Team, as well as providing the foundation of the intervention itself.
The event took the form of two 3.5 hour online sessions, one day apart, followed by a further two 3.5 hour online sessions the following month.
Areas covered included:
- exercises to support the Team get to know each other personally;
- a psychometric (SDI, Strength Deployment Inventory) to help it think through its collective strengths and potential blind-spots;
- a look at Roles and Responsibilities and a chance to define the over-all Purpose of the Customer Office.
In the second pair of events, there was the opportunity to share deeper motivations and Stakeholder perspectives, as well as a look at ways to offer feedback and to build trust.
Impact
The impact was felt quickly in that the Team Leader acted immediately on a couple of key areas to emerge from the pre-calls. As for the events, the Team could see that their feedback had helped co-create the intervention, rather than it being something done to them. The first two sessions built clarity around expectations on all sides and success was witnessed, not only in how energising the Team found them, but in their open wish ‘to go deeper’ next time.
This was achieved in surfacing the challenges with one particular Stakeholder group, as well as the requirement for each team member to offer and receive direct, 1:1 feedback on what they most valued about their colleague, and what they would encourage them to do differently. Finally, photographic images were used to share an aspiration for the year ahead.
The event took the form of two 3.5 hour online sessions, one day apart, followed by a further two 3.5 hour online sessions the following month.