Effective Teams...
High performing teams do not stay "stuck" very long, nor do they tolerate inefficient team functioning. They have developed a high level of trust. This trust makes it safe for any member to call the group on behavior that is preventing the team from moving towards its goals, from getting the results it has committed to.

How can your team develop a high level of trust and openness? How can it get better? You have to be willing and able, as a group, to talk candidly about your team's process, about how it operates, about where it is working well and where it needs to improve.

The Teamwork Palette® will help you to have these necessary conversations.

Meetings and Meetings and...

It used to be that when you asked someone at work how things are going, they would say "fine." Now, 90% of the time their reply is "busy."

In fact, we are all terribly busy. And, for many of us, the single activity that keeps us the most busy is attending meetings: departmental meetings, planning meetings, committee meetings, project meetings, team meetings, impromptu meetings to fix a problem...and the list goes on.

The Teamwork Palette® will make your meetings more efficient.

What is the Teamwork Palette?

Hands-on tool
Any team member or meeting attendee can use the Palette when the meeting's process breaks down. Perhaps your team can't agree on an issue, goes off on a tangent, looses enthusiasm, stops listening to one another, or suffers from people not meeting their commitments. Now you have a way to bring up the problem-right there in the meeting-and deal with it, so the team can quickly get back to the business at-hand.

7 Elements of team success
The Teamwork Palette® covers seven factors of team functioning in which successful, high performing teams excel:

1. Agreement
2. Commitment
3. Accountability
4. Leadership
5. Communication
6. Collaboration
7. Trust

Physical presentation
The elements are presented on separate laminated strips, attached with an eyelet for easy fanning open to reveal all seven factors at-a-glance. The tool is designed to be used frequently in meetings. It is laminated on sturdy card stock and will fit easily in pocket or purse.

Questions for team/meeting analysis
On the back of each strip are 5-6 questions that reflect the respective element. Amid the tension of a struggling meeting it can be difficult first to figure out what is holding your team back and then phrase an appropriate comment to the team. With the Palette, a meeting attendee can use one of the prepared questions to express how he/she thinks the group has become stuck.

For, example, here are a couple of questions from the Accountability element:

Do members accept responsibility for their roles and tasks?
To what extent do we all feel responsible for the collective work product of this team?

Comes with handy user's guide
The 28-page guide explains some fundamentals of group dynamics your team should understand. It outlines, step-by-step, how to use the Palette during a meeting and suggests four different times you might use it. Finally, it goes into a fuller explanation of each one of the seven elements.

Benefits

For your team...

• Build team efficiency
• Achieve results faster
• Foster members' accountability for team success
• Increase follow-through on action commitments between meetings
• Expand the level of trust and openness in your group
• For your meetings...
• Increase productivity
• Reduce length and time wasted
• Improve the quality of decisions
• Create a positive atmosphere
• Minimize frustration of attendees

Who will benefit from the Teamwork Palette®?

• Intact management teams
• Departmental teams
• Project teams
• Cross-functional (matrix) teams and task forces
• Volunteer committees
• Work groups that meet regularly
• A manager, to analyze or monitor his/her team's effectiveness

How to order your Teamwork Palettes®

You will need a Palette for yourself and for each member of your team or work group that meets.

To place an order, call us at 1-888-FULCRUM (385-2786)