December/January 2018 GM BUSINESS connect 31 leadership School Playground or High-Performing Team? To how many of the following statements, is your answer YES without the slightest hesitation? • During team meetings, the most important and difficult issues are put on the table to be resolved. • Team members quickly and genuinely apologise to one another when they say or do something inappropriate or possibly damaging to the team. • Team members openly admit their weaknesses and mistakes. • Team members end discussions with clear and specific resolutions and calls to action. • Team members willingly make sacrifices (such as budget, head-count, etc.) in their departments or areas of expertise for the good of the team. If you answered NO …welcome to the realities of how most teams operate! Imagine the following: You are invited embarked on applying the model position of battling against each other, and have powerful and productive in to one of the standard meetings of as well as researching it and testing losing sight and focus of their common conversations. Often, groups for your company or department and you it with intact teams, including Top purpose and goals. various reasons have the illusion they know beforehand who the participants Management Teams. We created the conditions that have communicated, when they have will be. So, you already KNOW I was fascinated by the results for allowed them to speak the unspoken, not, and the David Kantor Model who is going to probably dominate several reasons. First, I realised how articulate their hidden expectations provides the context that challenges the discussion, who is going to be user-friendly the audience found it. and assumptions, and find the path whatever may be taking place within challenging the ideas, and who may One CEO in our initial appointment of their higher purpose beyond their a group and leads participants into a not say a single word? Don’t you? THIS said: “I don’t understand this differences. path of true transformation. on its own tells us that human beings psychobabble but I KNOW that the have consistent behavioural patterns. I believe in a healthy dialogue So, for you as leader of a group or organisation needs this, so do what where groups can articulate what team, this is a methodology that For a very long time I was searching you have to do with them”. When I is happening in their minds, adjust will help you unlock true group and for a methodology to help executives briefed him on the process and he their behaviours in a group setting, organisational potential. uncover group dynamics and agreed to go ahead, he admitted behavioural patterns that were he did not expect his team to react Dr Maria Katsarou CPsychol not useful to them. I was looking in this productive way and to have Chartered Psychologist by the British Psychological Society for a model that would go deep these positive results. This was a case Managing Director, Leadership Psychology Institute enough, and that at the same time where the CEO was new, and the team [email protected] would provide me, with a language had stayed without a CEO for quite that would make sense and most some time after many years under an Maria has 20 years of experience in partnering importantly that it would produce authoritarian leader. with senior teams across many business sectors. tangible results in terms of changing Another case where I used this was She holds a BA in Management and Organisational behaviours and transforming a group to bridge the working relationship Behaviour, MA in Human Resources Management, of people into a high-performing between two departments in a an MSc in Psychology and a Doctorate in Leadership Psychology. team. pharmaceutical business, which, She holds the Henley Certificate in Coaching, is an accredited Coach And I found it. Many years ago I came instead of working WITH each other by the International Coaching Federation as well as accredited in across David Kantor’s model and I seemed to enter into an automatic various psychometrics by the British Psychological Society.

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