Building A Championship Organization

Creating Connection at the Core...

In order to build a stable foundation for the future, the relationships and partnerships amongst the executives, managers and staff of any organization need to be aligned as a team, working together to produce extraordinary results, maintaining a competitive technological edge and pioneering new territory.

In a climate of increasing complexity and change, technological breakthroughs have significantly altered the direction and growth of a great many fields of human endeavor.
Yet in this age of amazing technological advancement, little is known about the actual processes or practices that cause breakthroughs in human effectiveness. Nowhere is this lack of technology for effectiveness in dealing with people and organizations more evident than in the field of leadership and management. One thing is clear, however. Real breakthroughs - quantum leaps in productivity, quality or performance - occur when people commit themselves to possibilities beyond the ordinary, beyond what can merely be predicted, beyond what can easily be explained or understood.

Becoming A Championship Team

When an organization becomes a championship team, there is a united spirit and a can-do morale that is invigorating and inspiring. Then the mission of the executives is to skillfully direct the coordinated action of leadership, coaching and management such that people have pride in their work and their organization and experience being a stakeholder in the future viability, success and reputation of the enterprise.

In the fields of sports and the performing arts, people have coaches to inspire them beyond where they normally stop. In our work with companies, managers become coaches, staff and units become teams and employees become valuable players - stakeholders. By applying the art of coaching to business management, we access corporate breakthroughs. The elements required to build a championship organization then become the foundation for a new corporate culture.

The Commitment of the Building A Championship Team

Creating an environment that allows for and sustains the re-establishment and broadening of the current vision, mission and key objectives of an organization, through causing a breakthrough in alignment, partnership, teamwork, cooperation, coordinated action and communication. We are committed to the effectiveness, productivity and satisfaction of each participant such that it forwards the viability and profitability of the organization. We are also committed to building a championship organization that forwards teamwork and fosters a learning environment for your personnel to be effective leaders, managers and coaches.

Overall Program Focus

In this program, we will co-design with the organization’s executives and key players, a process which can be utilized in people’s every day working situations to leave them with leadership, management and coaching skills that have teams produce extraordinary results.

Our program focuses on five key areas we have found powerful in developing organizations that produce outstanding results on a continuous basis:

1. Creating an organizational culture that supports rather than thwarts the CEO and Executive Team’s intentions. We have seen that it is often difficult and slow to have the actions of the people in organizations reflect the velocity and power required to maintain a competitive lead in the marketplace. Our process helps identify those factors that are barriers to change and flexibility. We train people to deal with those barriers in a way that allows change to take place at an accelerated rate.

2. Producing individual and organizational breakthroughs. Given the rapidly changing demands placed on organizations by competition, changing market conditions, and a changing work force, incremental improvements are not sufficient to keep pace or excel. Our work is designed to support individuals and organizations in producing specific, concrete and unprecedented results. Most often this involves seeing new approaches to work rather than throwing more people or effort into the task.

3. Initiating committed, coordinated action. Our program empowers participants in creating breakthroughs in their ability to listen powerfully. Coupled with speaking the language of committed action, this produces openings for action and results that previously didn’t exist. We also examine the nature of commitment, and work with people so that they become responsible for their organization rather than complain about it. People become clear about their own vision for their job and company. They discover that overcoming barriers is a function of their own commitment.

4. Establishing working relationships based on active mutual support. Participants will discover how to use coaching relationships as a powerful way to increase performance and satisfaction. New levels of trust, cooperation, communication and teamwork are established.

5. Handling breakdowns powerfully. Change processes have been stopped by an organization’s inability to handle breakdowns. Our work examines the nature of breakdowns, the normal method of handling breakdowns, and the way in which participants can actually use breakdowns to forward them in realizing their commitments.

The program as six phases...

Phase I

The Leadership and Management Audit

The purpose of Phase I is to analyze and assess the strengths and weaknesses of the organization through a series of interviews and conversations. The intention behind the interview process is to reveal the existing organizational culture.

Oral interviews will be conducted with a select group of the organization’s personnel. Each interview will last approximately 1 hour. The individuals chosen to be interviewed will be selected from a range of executives, managers and down line direct reports. The participants will be asked to comment on the following areas:

1. Communication
2. Management Effectiveness
3. Teamwork
4. Leadership
5. Morale
6. Personal Job Satisfaction
7. Coaching
8. Organization Vision or Mission
9. Organizational Strengths and Weaknesses

Based upon this summation, we will present a thematical Report of Findings which will give you our professional evaluation of the executive culture and the culture of the organization based on trends and themes unconcealed in the interview process.

Phase II
Building a Championship Team Workshop - Part 1
(3 Days, 4 Days with The Ropes Course)

The Building A Championship Team Workshop cements relationships among the organization’s key players and builds a foundation for working as a team to forge a powerful new future.

Over the three days we will:

I. Examine the principles and distinctions of being a championship team
• Team of champions vs. a championship team
• Levels of group interaction
• Warfare
• Peaceful coexistence
• Active mutual support
• Leadership, Management, Coaching
• Shifting the Paradigm from Old Culture to New Culture
• Pro-Active vs. Re-Active Listening
• Filters of Listening

II. Expose the current stops to being a championship team within the organization including issues from the past which prevent people from working together effectively
• Dealing with complaints
• Addressing issues, challenges and concerns
• Dismantling upsets
• Completing the past
• Identifying rackets
• Emptying the “Gunnysack”

III. Establish a background of relatedness for building a powerful team for the future
• Appreciation and acknowledgment
• Taking a stand for the future
• Building trust
• Coaching feedback exercise
• Declaration of Championship Team
• Project development

The Ropes Course

The outdoor exercises and ropes courses are combined with classroom sessions
for the purpose of Building a Championship Team through education that is
anchored by a powerful and compelling experience.

With the Ropes Course, participants can step outside their normal boundaries
in a safe atmosphere which allows them to see where they have stopped, where
they have ceased to grow, where they have compromised the true spirit of life
for some concession to convenience, security or ease.

The Ropes Course is comprised of a series of challenges and activities which
are engaged in as a group in a sequential manner. Some of the activities are
performed individually, others in partnerships of two, while still others are
done with the entire group. In the process we see that most of us distort our
abilities, either overestimating or underestimating, but usually it is
underestimating what we are capable of.

The Ropes Course is like a physical and emotional obstacle course which
challenges the participant‚s self perception...be it mental, physical or
emotional.

In the midst of these challenges we find ourselves reaching past normal
barriers, calling upon deeper strengths and contacting the power which gives
us the ability to accomplish anything. In discovering and accessing these new
strengths we also tap into a huge reservoir of self confidence, fulfillment,
and love seldom accessible to us. Through using challenges which require
maximum participation and cooperation from the group members, habitual self-
imposed limitations begin to dissolve as the course continues into a greater
sense of accomplishment, depth of feeling and fulfillment for the individuals
and team as a whole.

Essentially the program is divided into three phases. The first phase is
directed towards dissipating inhibitions, allowing people to become more
comfortable with each other, and beginning to build trust in the group...in
other words, to solidify the group members into a working unified team. Often
during this phase participants will be presented with initiative problems
requiring that all the physical and intellectual resources of the group be
used in a cooperative effort.

The actual task to be accomplished is not the key ingredient, but rather the
dynamic of group process and how members utilize it, resist it, contribute to
it, etc.

The second phase of the Ropes Course utilizes even more physically and
emotionally challenging activities which require a combination of
concentration, commitment, and trust.

Some of the activities included in this phase are jumping from a 30 foot high
pole to a suspended trapeze, walking a balance beam 50 feet in the air and
crossing a high tightrope cable using a partner for balance.
The final phase of the program uses a vertical wall 14 feet high. The
challenge here is for the entire group to scale the wall using each other, and
getting everyone over without using ropes or other props.

An exercise such as this gives one first hand experience of the power of
communication, team work and commitment.

Old and unproductive thinking, behavior and perceptions of self and others are
challenged and give way to newer more positive images and attitudes.
Abilities one had thought were either dormant or non-existent within the
individual, or the group, suddenly come alive. This phase is designed as a
model to demonstrate that in truly working together the team can accomplish
and overcome anything.

Upon completion of these challenges there exists a new environment of personal
breakthrough and relational bonding within the group. This allows immense
creativity and innovation to come forth in solving difficult challenges and
problems the individuals and the team are facing. Dynamic networking,
visioning, strategic planning, problem solving, goal setting or whatever
agenda the group intends to accomplish proceeds with ease, innovation and
alignment.

These training‚s are specifically designed to model and yield optimum
performance. Teams and individuals discover new levels of productivity
through leadership, partnership, risk-taking and innovation. Programs have
been conducted for 13 years for over 110,000 people in the United States,
Canada and Asia including top executives from:

AT&T Los Alamos National Laboratory
Dupont Pillsbury
Frito Lay Porsche Motor Company
General Foods Sears
GTE Squibb Pharmaceutical
Hawaii Government Texaco
Hewlett Packard TRW
Honeywell John Wiley & Sons
KOA Corporation Williams Field & Pipeline Services
Lexus Young Presidents Organization
Lucent Tech

By the end of Phase II, people will have taken on concrete measurable projects that will resolve particular issues, challenges and concerns. These will be projects that will serve to usher in a new paradigm and a new culture for the organization.

Phase III
Project Coaching Sessions

We would meet with various project teams to coach them in the development of their projects and deepen the utilization of the tools from the workshop. The project coaching would occur on an as needed basis throughout the course of the training and development process.

The Coaching Sessions are designed to resolve fundamental issues, carve out new practices for leadership, management and coaching and develop the ability to live out of a powerful future called being a championship team.

Phase IV
Building a Championship Team Workshop - Part 2
(3 Days, 4 Days with Ropes Course)

During this three-day workshop, the conversations necessary to build a championship team and to usher in the new organizational culture would continue.

Over the three days we will:

I. Train the team in a technology for accomplishment
• Background of Relatedness
• Conversations for Possibility
• Conversation for Opportunity
• Conversation for Action
• Practice making requests and promises

II. Reporting on the movement and results being
produced from each project
• Outlining steps for projects to breakthrough
• Operating States for Project Development
- - - Formulation
- - - Concentration
- - - Momentum
- - - Stability
- - - Breakthrough
- - - Mastery

III. Technology for breakdowns and problem solving
• Having breakdowns forward your commitment
• Opportunity to increase teamwork

At the end of this workshop participants will be left with a set of tools consistent with being committed speakers and listeners that will allow them to usher in the new culture at their organization.

Phase V
Leadership By Design  
(6 days)

A powerful six-day program for those who are willing to challenge their assumptions and conclusions regarding leadership and are open to thoroughly examining their own effectiveness.

Individual Reinvention
Many people are oblivious both to what holds them back and to the sources of their own effectiveness. By gaining greater awareness of these blind spots they can free themselves and others to discover a new power in learning and leading.

The Myths And Realities Of Leadership
The current model, or paradigm, of leadership is bankrupt. Leadership is not about qualities, charisma, or special styles of behavior. Leadership occurs in the process of continuously creating and empowering oneself and others to act in the face of existing circumstances and inevitable breakdowns that come with change.

A Breakthrough In Your Personal Leadership Effectiveness
This program helps people uncover the personal strategies that they have adopted to succeed in their organization. These strategies actually rob people of the very power needed for real accomplishment. Through video work and personal coaching, participants will have a breakthrough in their personal style of leadership and gain new competencies required to create a powerful future for themselves and their organization.

The Power Of Language And Relationship In Organizations
It is no longer a question of whether an individual or organization must continually transform to meet the intense pace of global change— it is an issue of when, how and how quickly one can reach the next level of agility, flexibility and responsiveness.
Examine any business organization and you will find language and relationship at the core — whether it is enrolling employees in a vision, building teams, or selling a product. Learning to manage what is in the background of language and relationship (the unseen, unspoken, unexamined and inaccessible) is the essential tool for leaders who intend to move themselves and their organizations forward into extraordinary accomplishment. Leading and managing in this new and powerful way takes tremendous focus and clarity of intent. These are the areas directly addressed in Leadership By Design.

Participants in Leadership By Design will:

• Discover how they motivate and inspire a work environment that is feeling the fears and pressures of a demanding and accelerating marketplace.
• Learn how to keep oneself and others inspired and on-track. Clearly, leadership cannot continue to imply a life of imbalance and overwhelm.
• Step beyond the limitations of one's current thinking, the boundaries of future plans and expected projections.
• Move out of the past, toward a future of one's own making and design.
• Inquire into issues at the heart of being a leader that determine the quality of one's life and your organization’s success.
• Produce a breakthrough in thinking and personal ability so necessary to lead one's self and organization through today’s significant rate of change.

Phase VI
Completion and Acknowledgment

This would be a two day session in which participants would make a final presentation of their projects and present a visual display of the results that have been produced.
It will also be a time for them to acknowledge the growth and development in being a championship team.

This two day session could culminate in some form of evening celebration, dinner or event. This could include executives and/or spouses who could be brought up to date on the state of the organization.