This course will introduce students to team building. Students will leave this course with easy-to-use, practical guidelines on how to go about building a team, how to diagnose what is wrong with current teams and their teamwork, and thus will know what steps to take to develop better teamwork so that they can develop non-performing teams into effective business units.

Dynamic Team Building for Success

A practical guide to building high-performance teams

Ron Ainsbury, Visiting Fellow

Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility

Cranfield University

Time: 13:30 – 17:00

Dates: September 26-30, 2011

Lecturer                                                                    

Ron Ainsbury (B. Sc. Honours Cape Town, M. Sc. Oxford, M. Phil. Oxford) has lived and worked in Asia and Australasia for 30 years and brings a wealth of hands-on experience and practical knowledge to the classroom.

He has been Managing Director of two successful marketing companies, Swedish Motors (Volvo) in Thailand and New Zealand Breweries (Steinlager) in Auckland, New Zealand.

As a business strategy consultant he has undertaken studies in a wide range of industries and countries (including the USA and Japan), working with some of the world’s leading brands, including Beck’s, Steinlager, Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Volvo, Toyota, Kimberly-Clark, Michelin, GE Motors, Maserati, Chrysler, Smirnoff, and Coca-Cola.

As a consultant based in Thailand, he assisted in the building of several new ventures, sat on various committees representing the foreign business community, and was a director of the Board Of Trade of Thailand for five years. Ron has helped many international firms build successful business teams in Asia helping them meet the cross-cultural challenges they face.

More recently, Ron completed seven years as Director of Corporate Relations for Diageo Australasia, where he had responsibility for Government, Industry, and Public Affairs, Corporate and Employee Communications, Brand PR, Diageo's Corporate Citizenship programme, and for developing Responsible Drinking programmes within Diageo and the local community.

He has taught business subjects to MBA students at leading Universities in Thailand: Thammasat, Chulalongkorn, Burapa, and Webster (US) University's Thai Campus, and supervised doctoral students at the University of South Australia's Thai Campus. He has also taught various management courses in Vietnam for Royal Business School since 2001.

He was appointed a Visiting Fellow at the UK's Cranfield University in 2008 and continues to run his private consulting company Jacaranda (www.jacaranda-consulting.com) focusing on Sustainable Business Strategy.

Teaching Method

Lecturer

Ron has a very informal style of teaching. He says he doesn’t teach, rather he helps students learn! Thus, he expects the full participation of each student.

Of course he will use PowerPoint slides to present the main elements of team building but most of the learning will be through practical sessions and exercises

Class Discussion

In class, students will be divided into small teams of four to six students.  Each team will be given practical team-building exercises to undertake, working as a team, taking turns to be a team leader.

Students are expected to participate in team exercises – nothing strenuous but a little physical activity is involved. Students are advised to dress casually for class.

Course Objective

This course will introduce students to team building. Students will leave this course with easy-to-use, practical guidelines on how to go about building a team, how to diagnose what is wrong with current teams and their teamwork, and thus will know what steps to take to develop better teamwork so that they can develop non-performing teams into effective business units.

Content Overview

Building a team is not as easy as simply selecting individuals and giving them a task or an objective to achieve. Developing a successful, effective, performing team requires skilful management. When managed and led successfully, an effective team delivers outstanding performance and creates an environment that attracts the best talent to an enterprise. In addition to learning the theory behind teams and teamwork, students will be led through a variety of practical exercises that they can use with their own teams. Several topics will be covered in detail:

Ø  Why Teams?

Ø  Stages of team development

Ø  Team skills

Ø  Leadership styles

Ø  Building capability, managing change.

Course Outline

Day 1 – So you need to assemble a Project Team

Why are teams important?

When is the right time to use a team?

What are the critical components of effective teams?

How do you choose team members?

Ø  Goals

Ø  Roles

Ø  Responsibilities

Ø  Relationships

Day 2 – 3: Team Organization

Day 2: Stages of team development

Teams go through several stages of development. We will learn about these stages, what the management issues are in each stage, and how managers can lead the team through these stages quickly to develop performing teams.

Ø  Forming

Ø  Storming

Ø  Norming

Ø  Performing

Day 3 – Team skills

There are important skills that individuals need to master if they are to participate in performing teams: These skills can be practiced.

Ø  Listening – active listening

Ø  Giving and Receiving feedback

Ø  Trust

Day 4 – Leadership styles

At each stage of the team development the role of the leader will change. We will explore the different styles of leadership that are needed.

Ø  Tasks of the team

Ø  Relationships within the team

Day 5 – Building capability, repairing a team, managing change

Once a team is established, it is inevitable that there will be change.

Team performance can drop, a variety of factors can disrupt the team – how does the leader recover and rebuild the team?

Team members move, new ones join, or the tasks of the team change due to changing circumstances in the business.