4 Reasons Your Team Should Be Engaging in Team Learning Experiences
Team-based learning experiences are essential to enhance team learning, creativity, problem-solving, and innovation. Team learning experiences are developmental in nature, and developing teams through various team learning experiences positively affects team performance.
Let's explore the four reasons your teams should be engaging in team learning experiences.
1. Improves Team Dynamics
Team dynamics are the complex and evolving relationships, interactions, and communication patterns among team members. These dynamics significantly impact a team's ability to thrive and, consequently, their contributions to the success of a business.
Team dynamics, if managed properly, can provide stability to teams as they go through the different stages and activities of their work necessary to accomplish their objectives.
Team learning experiences, such as the ones offered by Thriving Teams Institute, are great environments for teams to deliberately develop dynamics for the different activities required to achieve their performance goals.
2. Creates Shared Understanding
Team-based work allows individual team members to bring their diverse perspectives to problem-finding and problem-solving, improving the chances of the team's success in designing and creating solutions for the business challenges they face.
However, there must be a shared understanding of why the team exists and what is expected of team members.
Shared understanding in teams is created and maintained through:
😀Clear communication
😀Active and responsive listening
😀Regular team learning sessions such as before-action and after-action reviews
😀Frequent alignment checks to make sure the team is aligned with the overall mission and vision of the team and organization
A lack of shared understanding can lead to:
😡Poor communication
😡Lack of team cohesion
😡Lack of clarity about roles and responsibilities
😡 Lack of alignment with overall organizational mission
Team learning experiences help create shared understanding, which creates awareness among team members of their knowledge, their roles, the goals and objectives they are working toward, and how they align with the organization's strategic objectives, goals, and vision.
3. Builds System Thinking Skills
Teams and organizations are human systems full of talents waiting to be utilized to create behavior that can lead to high performance. The team as a system sets up the conditions for the humans to perform or not within the system.
Unlocking awareness of how the systems in your team are helping or hindering team performance and innovation is a critical part of the journey to being a thriving team. The team environment influences each member differently.
Team learning experiences help uncover the human system aspect of underlying causes (root causes) of performance obstacles and then empower leaders of teams and teams to drive the change needed to achieve higher performance. By holistically and simultaneously focusing on performance, human connection, team climate, and team learning, a program of team learning experiences can strengthen leaders, teams, and organizations that can communicate effectively, navigate uncertainty, and achieve their business goals.
4. Impacts on Individual and Team Learning and Performance
Team learning is a collaborative team process where team members collectively expand their knowledge and capabilities by sharing insights, experiences, and lessons learned. It involves open communication, mutual respect, and a willingness to constructively challenge each other's ideas. The process helps teams develop a shared understanding of their goals, roles, and the environment in which they operate, leading to improved performance and outcomes.
Team learning experiences can help teams integrate the various activities of the team learning process, which is critical to team performance and achieving its desired goals. For example, ideation could be one team activity, and another session could be converging those ideas into potential prototype solutions for another team learning activity – but they are different and require different team learning dynamics.
Thriving Teams Institute is ready to help you and your team improve your team learning dynamics and team learning processes with our team learning experiences.
Our On-demand team learning experiences allow you to schedule learning experiences when your team needs them and around topics they need to explore the most. Team building can be more than building relationships with team members- it can be focused on team development.
Navigating Team Dynamics and Building Thriving Teams
Teams dynamics are best explored with your team. Uncovering the dynamics that are supporting team thriving and those that are barriers. You will be surprised what you uncover.
Team Problem Solving, Innovating, and Decision-Making
Take the NBI (Neethling Brain Instrument) and then explore a series of fun, engaging and hands-on experience to uncover how your preferences show up on the team.
Uncover how to create an environment where team creativity emerges and thrives. Dig deeper into team creativity strategies and brainstorm small changes your team could make that would unleash new levels of team creativity.
Thriving Workforce: Designing the Path from Engagement to Thriving
HR teams are tasked with retaining top talent, supporting employee well-being, hiring top talent and many more key initiatives that all help an organization thrive. As a team find the data embedded within your organization to shift your focus from employee engagement to thriving.
Reach out to us today to learn more.
You can learn more about our team development courses here.