Creating Team Clarity, Harnessing Collective Strengths to deliver Superior Performance

Why this is important

Our brains are social organs and connection is one of our core social needs. In business we are all required to work with others in a team environment to achieve collective goals and objectives, so it is crucial that we can work together productively and effectively for everyone’s benefit.

Course Overview

Building BrainSmart Teams uncovers the skills, attitudes and behaviours required to build and grow cohesive, high performing teams that can work together to create successful outcomes.

Because the scope of teamwork is so broad, we strongly customise the content of each program to cater to the specific challenges and outcomes of your teams. Content and learning outcomes will be co-created.

We also encourage the use of team profiling tools in our team-based programs e.g. Team Management Systems (TMS), DiSC or The 5 Behaviours of a Cohesive Team. More information can be found about these in our section on psychometric profiling tools.

Learning Outcomes

• Exploring the social nature of our brains
• Transforming from a group to a team to a tribe
• Exploring the development lifecycle of teams, identifying where the team is
• Creating shared goals and responsibilities
• Building an environment of trust and psychological safety
• Developing effective communication processes
• Understanding the different personalities in the team and how to optimise this (through a team profiling tool)
• Agreeing desired and undesired behaviours and what to do when boundaries are crossed
• Creating a defined, empowering team mission, vision and charter

“Thank you for helping me establish a true ‘team’ mentality, embrace change and drive higher motivation together”.

AM Tibco Software

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Building Understanding and Collaboration to unleash the Power of Teams

Why this is important

A wide body of research has shown that diverse teams consistently outperform homogeneous teams, especially when it comes to creative, or complex tasks. Diversity offers different ways of thinking about problems and opportunities and avoids the issues associated with groupthink.

Rather than being considered a nice-to-have in the workplace, when it is harnessed properly, diversity is a proven differentiator of performance. Diversity, however, doesn’t guarantee inclusion. Our brains create thinking shortcuts and mental rules to be efficient and keep us safe. These mean that we are often operating from unconscious biases that constantly influence who we relate to, what information we pay attention to and how we make decisions.

Creating an inclusive team environment requires understanding each other, our biases and creating strategies to mitigate and minimise them.

Course Overview

Harnessing Team Diversity and Inclusion is a highly practical and interactive workshop to help teams value different individual perspectives (using team profiling tools), improve team problem solving and decision making, foster collaboration, build trust and psychological safety and deal productively with conflict.

Learning Outcomes

• Learn the role of our brain in creating unconscious bias
• Understand how our biases influence how we work together as a team
• Discover how our differing personality preferences can impact team cohesion and performance
• Explore how to harness differing strengths to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts
• Identify behaviours and language that can result in exclusion
• Build a culture of psychological safety where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and feel safe to speak up
• Learn how to manage emotions and deal with conflict to create the best environment for thinking effectively and making decisions

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Building Change Agility and Capability, Minimising Change Resistance  

Why this is important

Our world has changed forever and there is no going back, there will be no ‘new normal’ and the way we lead teams through change also has to change. The nature and complexity of change requires leaders to understand the nature of change, from acceptance through to resistance, from fearing to embracing.

Still today, the reasons that change initiatives fail are all down to human factors (McKinsey & Co).

This highly practical and interactive programme focuses on a leader’s ability firstly to understand then guide teams through continuous and complex change environments  – one brain at a time.

By exploring how and why each individual has a unique response to change, leaders can tailor their approach for greater engagement and productivity.

Course Overview

Leading Teams through Change explores the nature of change from our earliest days, how our brains respond to change and how we can use knowledge of our biology and neurology to create change environments where people feel safe to apply new ways of working.

We address change resistance and how best to work with it, explore the predictable dynamics of change and the do’s and don’ts of communicating change effectively.

Leaning Outcomes

• Identify the impact of the changing landscape ‘post pandemic’ and what this means for people centred change
• Explore how our brain equips us for survival, where change resistance comes from and how to deal with it
• Uncover the myriad factors leading people to have an individual change response
• Learn how to create a psychologically safe change environment where people can share their concerns without repercussion
• Study the language of change and how to communicate key change messages in a way that gets buy in

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"Understanding how the brain functions (BrainSmart) was fascinating and has helped me to be more aware of and understand my team's reaction to change. I hope to be able to manage change and their reaction better going forward"

Building awareness of how those judgements and stereotyping we are unaware of are impacting the decisions we make, the relationships we build and the results that we get. Shining a light on Bias, taking Practical Action to mitigate its Effects

Why this is Important

Our unconscious biases directly affect not only who gets hired, developed and promoted, but also the ability of teams to perform at a high level, the effectiveness of our leaders in decision-making and change, the health of an organisation’s culture and the relationship it has with its customers.

Course Overview 

Getting to Grips with Unconscious Bias is a highly interactive workshop that explores the world of human evolution, neuroscience and the different approaches being taken to address workplace bias. The focus is on increasing our understanding of the most prevalent biases that impact our ability to be impartial and objective and on developing practical strategies to deal with bias effectively.

Learning Outcomes

• Explore the role of our brain in creating unconscious bias in ourselves and others
• Understand the impact of leaving unconscious bias unaddressed in all parts of the organisation
• Uncover the origins and influencers of unconscious bias
• Make the unconscious conscious through awareness
• Work through how to manage the most prevalent biases in our workplace
• Develop practical strategies to develop awareness and mitigate our biases

"This was the best Unconscious Bias training I have ever attended. I found this workshop to be so interactive, fun and interesting. Clare was a great facilitator and really read the energy of the room and tailored the session to suit the needs of the group. She made the information enjoyable and easy to absorb".  RS - Rural City of Wangaratta 

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