What’s Inside:
Not meeting your objectives and falling short of your goals?
Note from the Coach

Not meeting your objectives and falling short of your goals?

We've all seen it happen over and over where strategic initiatives either take off or whither on the vine—and what seemed like a great concept eventually just slips off into oblivion. Obviously, the executive management behind these organizations thought these initiatives were significant enough to warrant focusing their team's effort on making it happen—not to mention devoting a lot of time, effort and money to seeing it through to fruition.

So why didn't it take off as expected? It's possible that it wasn't really such a well researched or thought out idea in the first place. More likely, it was a viable concept but the team just couldn't get behind it to see it through. If this has happened to you, it's not something you want to repeat—because it's not pretty to have seemingly wasted all these precious resources. And then you have to punt and go to Plan B, which never seems to have as much steam as the original plan and you end up not meeting your objectives and falling short of your goals.

No matter what the strategic initiative to be implemented is, the team must function like a well-oiled machine. “Team Advantage” is a transformational process that accelerates team movement to accomplish the goal. This cutting-edge coaching program focuses on “action learning” to implement important strategic business goals more effectively while the entire team is being masterfully supported with a highly skilled coach guiding their efforts.

In the process, the team itself creates the goal, rather than just the managers, giving each member the pride of ownership. The initial goal is one that addresses the most significant gap that the team identifies in the kickoff; one that the team can impact, but will require a stretch beyond normal ways of operating, and one that links to overall strategic objectives of the organization. With this method, each member fully understands why they are doing this and the team is able to fully get behind the goal and proceed like clockwork to make it happen. The interpersonal dynamics of the entire team are freely and comfortably supported every step of the way. With any potential roadblocks being swiftly and effectively removed, the team enthusiastically moves forward functioning at warp speed.

The “Team Advantage” program essentially turns a real strategic initiative into a game designed to span sixteen weeks. It's not a role playing scenario or training exercise. The team-building process incorporates the completion of an actual stretch goal—one that truly requires imagination and clarity of focus to accomplish. And the beauty of it, aside from a highly successful project launch, is that the entire team now has a standard to meet with every new objective. Think “team” as in sports. There's a reason why we call our staff members a “team” and why every team needs a coach. The coach facilitates accountability and challenges team members to stretch. With this approach implemented properly, the attitude (which by the way is contagious) becomes: “If we did it then, we can do it again!” Or better yet—“That was actually fun—let's see if we can't top that. Let's go out there with all we've got and win one just for the Gipper!”

Look for more details about what the “Team Advantage” program is and how it will benefit your organization in the upcoming issues of The Coaching Link between now and mid June. If you prefer not to wait until then, just give me a call and I'll be happy to discuss the program with you and answer any questions. Until next time…

Note from the Coach

I'm excited to unveil “Team Advantage” The Complete Coaching Guide for Team Transformation. This innovative program, based on action learning, is a proven solution for developing successful high impact teams. Decades of research has shown that this type of real-time action learning on the job is highly effective and provides more dramatic and lasting results. I am one of approximately fifteen coaches currently certified in the U.S. offering this important developmental breakthrough process for teams, a Pfeifer Wiley product, in affiliation with the renowned Pyramid Resource Group.

Warm Regards,

Tim Link, MA, MCC