Higher Education | Team Effectiveness

Focus: Clarifying the team’s core purpose and aligning them around a clear path forward

Challenge:

A leading university merged two of its schools and added new educational programs. One school was very entrepreneurial, the other very academic. The newly combined Executive Leadership Team struggled to define a shared culture, and to determine how best to function as a new ‘blended’ team. Among other things, they needed to develop a vision for how the different educational offerings would fit together to achieve a more dynamic and progressive curriculum with greater opportunities for graduating students. The primary challenge included integrating cultures, practices, processes, and other systems that would ensure the school performed efficiently and that projects were implemented successfully. Furthermore, the college needed to grow enrollment amidst the dramatic changes taking place within higher education. Achieving all of this would require better communication and improved working relationships among all stakeholders.

The Curci Group Approach:

The Curci Group engaged the leadership teams of both schools to get an understanding of the current dynamics at each. In addition to establishing their shared values, vision and beliefs, they would have to fully understand their new team’s core purpose. What did the institution need from this team? Some initial leadership team exercises helped us come to a shared understanding of current priorities and objectives. We then led them through a program designed to clarify goals and a set of supporting behaviors to drive accountability for those goals. There were opportunities to build trust through storytelling, offer meaningful “feed forward,” and to create a roadmap to follow for the next 24 months. Using a DiSC© assessment, we engaged the team in activities designed to improve understanding, leverage differences in style and improve interpersonal communication. Team members made personal commitments each step of the way to ensure the plan’s timely implementation.

Results Achieved:

Engaging team members in open, honest conversations, and inviting them to create their own shared future, we arrived at a clear path forward for the new college. Team members committed to holding each other accountable for the changes they intended to make, and the future they committed to creating. The college is better positioned to remain a leader in higher education following these results:

• Better tools to improve communication and resolve conflicts among team members
• Clarity around the team’s shared purpose, priorities and timelines
• Improved levels of respect and group cohesion
• A clear set of goals that honor the college’s new shared values
• An action plan and commitments from individual team members