Process
utilized by
Team Leadership Results

Team

Collaborative Potential

The team leadership model is emphasized over the trait leadership model. Our model assumes that every person on the team has leadership potential. The discovery of under-utilized leadership capacities and resources within a team is a common experience on the course. This implies that every team has a collaborative potential that when amplified by synergy can have significant effects on productivity, quality and innovation.
 

Balancing Task and Team

The soft skills of facilitating group process turn out to be the "very hardest" management skills to acquire. When a team doesn't balance task concerns with process or maintenance concerns, it sets itself up for failure. A TLR program is an opportunity to step back, examine the state of health of the group's processes and make fresh commitments to get back on the path.
 

Team Development

Different stages of team development call for different programs. TLR's methodology is flexible and adaptable, allowing the group to understand its present stage and to begin to move forward from the place it finds itself. High performing teams find the course valuable for process improvement - a pit stop in which to re-group after a period of task intensive work.
 

Synergy

Synergy is a real phenomenon with far ranging effects. Even a short program can provide groups with a tangible, visceral experience of what synergy looks and feels like. This experience motivates team members to be more assertive and collaborative to achieve this experience in the work place.
 

Collective IQ

Collective intelligence is the result of effective team inquiry. Though many TLR facilitators have strong organizational backgrounds, they don't take the role of consultants or experts. Instead, they help groups articulate their most important questions and then move toward effective inquiry into alternative future scenarios.
 

Outdoor

Fresh Air

The fresh air of TLR's outdoor environments is invigorating in more ways than one. TLR's programs are about breathing life into teams that are at a crossroads and instilling inspiration within teams that are just setting out to climb the mountain in front of them.
 

System Metaphors

Nature is a perennial resource for instructive metaphors and archetypes. It is the perfect setting in which to pause and reflect upon systemic change. As a team attempts to develop a shared vision of a complex web of cooperative relationships, the best "textbook" on the subject is open to study on every side.
 

Uncluttered Focus

Highly functional relationships do not happen by chance. TLR programs take place off site, in a setting where what is left behind is everything that reminds one of manmade organizational structure, hierarchy, office and title. This allows team members to focus on the one thing that remains, namely the hearts and minds of the people who work together on a daily basis.
 

Getting "Real"

Somehow genuineness and authenticity appear more readily in this environment. The serenity of a naturally wooded environment is at the same time stimulating and soothing. Loose, comfortable clothing and soft shoes promote a climate of casual informality in which people drop their superficial defenses and become more "real" to one another.
 

Experiential

Risk=Opportunity

Extending out of the comfort zone and into the world of "I don't know" is essential to learning, but mistakes and even failure are inevitable outcomes. Mistakes on the challenge course will not cost the company anything, and the learning from these mistakes will be processed to understand what will support or discourage risk taking and empowerment.
 

Unique and Open-Ended

An open ended, flexible and adaptable process allows each program to be co-designed with the team's needs and objectives in mind. Being open ended means that there is no one right way to resolve the tension created by the gap between the current state and the desired state. TLR program designers draw from over a hundred challenge initiatives to create a program that will place the focus where it needs to be.
 

Climate Change

The issues impairing a team's progress are often beneath the surface and won't emerge until the internal climate improves. The support extended to a team-mate who trusts others enough to take a physical risk can provide a meaningful metaphor for taking other risks that must be taken if the internal climate is to change. These breakthroughs are common in TLR programs.
 

Getting Specific

Communication is a big word that covers a lot of territory. Like the word "respect," it means different things to different people. TLR programs allow groups to break these global terms down into specific experiential behaviors that can be focused upon for meaningful change.
 

Buy-In=Ownership

Decision making that invites broad participation results in strong ownership and responsibility. TLR program participants use the ladder of inference and mental models research to experience the importance of collaboration and buy in to organizational success.
 

Spirit of Achievement

Celebration and recognition are given a lot of lip service because everyone recognizes the momentum that a team gains when it celebrates the milestones enroute to big achievements. The shared experience of celebrating challenge course victories helps teams develop the spirit of a winning organization.