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Outback Team Building & Training Blog

Tips, expert advice, exclusive interviews, and more on team building and employee engagement, 10 team building case studies & training case studies.

The key to a strong business is creating a close-knit team. Here's how 15 corporate teams did so using team building, training, and coaching solutions.

From corporate groups to remote employees and everything in between, the key to a strong business is creating a close-knit team. In this comprehensive case study, we look at how real-world organizations benefited from team building, training, and coaching programs tailored to their exact needs.

We’re big believers in the benefits of team building , training and development , and coaching and consulting programs. That’s why our passion for helping teams achieve their goals is at the core of everything we do. At Outback Team Building and Training, our brand promis e is to be recommended , flexible, and fast. Because we understand that when it comes to building a stronger and more close-knit team, there’s no one-size-fits-all formula. Each of our customers have a unique set of challenges, goals, and definitions of success. And they look to us to support them in three key ways: making their lives easy by taking on the complexities of organizing a team building or training event; acting fast so that they can get their event planned and refocus on all the other tasks they have on their plates; and giving them the confidence that they’ll get an event their team will benefit from – and enjoy. In this definitive case study, we’ll do a deep dive into:

3 Unique Events Custom-Tailored for Customer Needs
3 Momentum-Driving Events for Legacy Customers
4 Successful Activities Executed on Extremely Tight Timelines

Unique Events Custom-Tailored for Customer Needs We know that every team has different needs and goals which is why we are adept at being flexible and have mastered the craft of creating custom events for any specifications

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When the Seattle, Washington -based head office of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – a world-renowned philanthropic organization – approached us in search of a unique charity event, we knew we needed to deliver something epic. Understanding that their team h ad effectively done it all when it comes to charity events, it was important for them to be able to get together as a team and give back in new ways .

Our team decided the best way to do this was to creat e a brand-new event for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which had never been executed before. We created an entirely new charitable event – Bookworm Builders – for them and their team loved it! It allowed them to give back to their community, collaborate, get creative, and work together for a common goal. Bookworm Builders has since gone on to become a staple activity for tons of other Outback Team Building and Training customers!

To learn more about how it all came together, read the case study: A Custom Charity Event for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation .

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Who said hosting an impactful training program means having your full team in the same place at the same time? Principia refused to let distance prevent them from having a great team, so they contacted us to help them find a solution. Their goals were to find better ways of working together and to create a closer-knit company culture among their 20 employees and contractors living in various parts of the country.

We worked with Principia to host an Emotional Intelligence skill development training event customized to work perfectly for their remote team. The result was a massive positive impact for the company. They found they experienced improved employee alignment with a focus on company culture, as well as more emotionally aware and positive day-to-day interactions. In fact, the team made a 100% unanimous decision to bring back Outback for additional training sessions.

To learn more about this unique situation, read the full case study: How Principia Built a Stronger Company Culture Even with its Remote Employees Working Hundreds of Miles Apart .

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W e know that employee training which is tailored to your organization can make the difference between an effective program and a waste of company time. That’s why our team jumped at the opportunity to facilitate a series of custom development sessions to help the Royal Canadian Mint discover the tools they needed to manage a large change within their organization.

We hosted three custom sessions to help the organization recognize the changes that needed to be made, gain the necessary skills to effectively manage the change, and define a strategy to implement the change:

Session One: The first session was held in November and focused on preparing over 65 employees for change within the company.
Session Two: In December, the Mint’s leadership team participated in a program that provided the skills and mindset required to lead employees through change.
Session Three: The final session in February provided another group of 65 employees with guidance on how to implement the change.

To learn more, read the full case study: Custom Change Management Program for the Royal Canadian Mint .

3 Momentum-Driving Events for Legacy Customers We take pride in being recommended by more than 14,000 corporate groups because it means that we’ve earned their trust through delivering impactful results

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1. How a Satellite Employee “Garnered the Reputation” as Her Team’s Pro Event Planner

We’ve been in this business for a long time, and we know that not everybody who’s planning a corporate event is a professional event planner. But no matter if it’s their first time planning an event or their tenth, we love to help make our customers look good in front of their team. And when an employee at Satellite Healthcare was tasked with planning a team building event for 15 of her colleagues, she reached out to us – and we set out to do just that!

Our customer needed a collaborative activity that would help a diverse group of participants get to know each other, take her little to no time to plan, and would resonate with the entire group.

With that in mind, we helped her facilitate a Military Support Mission . The event was a huge success and her colleagues loved it. In fact, she has now garnered the reputation as the team member who knows how to put together an awesome team building event.

To learn more, read the case study here: How a Satellite Employee “Garnered the Reputation” as Her Team’s Pro Event Planner .

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2. Why PlentyOfFish Continues to Choose ‘The Amazing Race’ for Their Company Retreat

In 2013, international dating service POF (formerly known as PlentyOfFish ) reached out to us in search of an exciting outdoor team building activity that they could easily put to work at their annual retreat in Whistler, B.C . An innovative and creative company, they were in search of an activity that could help their 60 staff get to know each other better. They also wanted the event to be hosted so that they could sit back and enjoy the fun.

The solution? We helped them host their first-ever Amazing Race team building event.

Our event was so successful that POF has now hosted The Amazing Race at their annual retreat for five consecutive years .

To learn more, check out our full case study: Why PlentyOfFish Continues to Choose ‘The Amazing Race’ for Their Company Retreat .

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3. How Team Building Helped Microsoft Employees Donate a Truckload of Food

As one of our longest-standing and most frequent collaborators, we know that Microsoft is always in search of new and innovative ways to bring their teams closer together. With a well-known reputation for being avid advocates of corporate social responsibility, Microsoft challenged us with putting together a charitable team building activity that would help their team bond outside the office and would be equal parts fun, interactive, and philanthropic.

We analyzed which of our six charitable team building activities would be the best fit for their needs , and we landed on the perfect one : End-Hunger Games . In this event, the Microsoft team broke out into small groups, tackled challenges like relay races and target practice, and earned points in the form of non-perishable food items. Then, they used their cans and boxes of food to try and build the most impressive structure possible in a final, collaborative contest. As a result, they were able to donate a truckload of goods to the local food bank.

For more details, check out the comprehensive case study: How Team Building Helped Microsoft Employees Donate a Truckload of Food .

4 Successful Activities Executed on Extremely Tight Timelines Time isn’t always a luxury that’s available to our customers when it comes to plan ning a great team activity which is why we make sure we are fast, agile, and can accommodate any timeline

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Nothing dampens your enjoyment of a holiday more than having to worry about work – even if it’s something fun like a team building event. But for one T-Mobile employee, this was shaping up to be the case. That’s because , on the day before the holiday weekend, she found out that she needed to organize a last-minute activity for the day after July Fourth.

So, she reached out to Outback Team Building and Training to see if there was anything we could do to help - in less than three business days . We were happy to be able to help offer her some peace of mind over her holiday weekend by recommending a quick and easy solution: a Code Break team building activity. It was ready to go in less than three days, the activity organized was stress-free during her Fourth of July weekend, and, most importantly, all employees had a great experience.

For more details, check out the full story here: Finding a Last-Minute Activity Over a Holiday .

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At Outback Team Building and Training, we know our customers don’t always have time on their side when it comes to planning and executing an event. Sometimes, they need answers right away so they can get to work on creating an unforgettable experience for their colleagues.

This was exactly the case when Black & McDonald approached us about a learning and development session that would meet the needs of their unique group, and not take too much time to plan. At 10:20 a.m., the organization reached out with an online inquiry. By 10:50 a.m., they had been connected with one of our training facilitators for a more in-depth conversation regarding their objectives.

Three weeks later, a group of 14 Toronto, Ontario -based Black & McDonald employees took part in a half-day tailor-made training program that was built around the objectives of the group, including topics such as emotional intelligence and influence, communication styles, and the value of vulnerability in a leader.

To learn more about how this event was able to come together so quickly, check out the full story: From Inquiry to Custom Call in Under 30 Minutes .

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When Conexus Credit Union contacted us on a Friday afternoon asking if we could facilitate a team building event for six employees the following Monday morning, we said, “Absolutely!”

The team at Conexus Credit Union were looking for an activity that would get the group’s mind going and promote collaboration between colleagues. And we knew just what to recommend: Code Break Express – an activity filled with brainteasers, puzzles, and riddles designed to test the group’s mental strength.

The Express version of Code Break was ideal for Conexus Credit Union’s shorter time frame because our Express activities have fewer challenges and can be completed in an hour or less. They’re self-hosted, so the company’s group organizer was able to easily and efficiently run the activity on their own.

To learn more about how we were able to come together and make this awesome event happen, take a look at our case study: A Perfect Group Activity Organized in One Business Day .

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We’ve been lucky enough to work with Accenture – a company which has appeared on FORTUNE’s list of “World’s Most Admired Companies” for 14 years in a row – on a number of team building activities in the past.

T he organization approached us with a request to facilitate a philanthropic team building activity for 15 employees . The hitch? They needed the event to be planned, organized, and executed within one week.

Staying true to our brand promise of being fast to act on behalf of our customers, our team got to work planning Accenture’s event . We immediately put to work the experience of our Employee Engagement Consultants , the flexibility of our solutions, and the organization of our event coordinators. And six days later, Accenture’s group was hard at work on a Charity Bike Buildathon , building bikes for kids in need.

To learn more about how we helped Accenture do some good in a short amount of time, read the full case study: Delivering Team Building for Charity in Under One Week .

Learn More About Team Building, Training and Development, and Coaching and Consulting Solutions

For more information about how Outback Team Building and Training can help you host unforgettable team activities to meet your specific goals and needs on virtually any time frame and budget, just reach out to our Employee Engagement Consultants.

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Culture

4 Team Building Experiences to Create a Harmonizing Team

Team building experience helps organizations create a positive company culture, align employees with shared values, and improve communication among employees.

A report suggests that the number of companies investing in virtual team building has risen by 2,500, and why wouldn't it? A Gallup study has reported that an engaged team can show immense productivity and record a 23% in profitability showcasing the need to invest in generating team building experience. Take the Bills and Gates Melinda Organization for example.

They aim to enhance the well-being of billions of people globally and they achieve this by supporting initiatives in healthcare, education, and poverty reduction.

So, as a philanthropic organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has a long history of charitable and philanthropic work. Therefore, to come up with a unique team building experience that resonates with the employees in a meaningful way, they collaborated with Outback.

They quickly came up with an activity called 'the Bookworm Builders' for this event. There were small teams of two or three, and the group members collaboratively constructed bookshelves for underprivileged children. Each team designed and built a unique shelf, which was then donated by the organization to Treehouse, a local non-profit dedicated to supporting the education of foster youth.

This initiative provided a valuable opportunity for each team to work together, express their creativity, and contribute to the educational development of local children in a meaningful way. This small event helped them collaborate, communicate, and be understanding of each other.

With the Gallup research showing that “concentrating on employee engagement can help companies withstand, and possibly even thrive, in tough economic times,” it is important to create an engaging team-building experience. This article will explain different types of team building experiences, how to create a good one, and more for your better understanding.

What is a team building experience?

A team building experience is a planned activity or program that helps a group of colleagues work together more effectively. These activities can involve games, challenges, or discussions designed to improve communication, trust, and problem-solving skills among team members.

Team building experiences play a valuable role in shaping a positive corporate culture. When elicited rightly, these activities provide opportunities for employees to,

Collaborate outside the pressures of everyday work.
Fosters better communication, trust, and understanding among colleagues.
Improve their problem-solving skills and develop a stronger sense of camaraderie.

Ultimately, these positive team dynamics contribute to a more productive and enjoyable work environment for everyone.

What are the different types of team-building experiences?

Team-building experiences can take a variety of formats to enhance collaboration and communication within a group. These include:

Outdoor activities : Engaging in physical activities outside the workplace fosters teamwork in a new environment.
Indoor challenges : Problem-solving exercises conducted indoors can encourage creative thinking and communication within a team.
Workshops and seminars: Educational sessions focused on teamwork and communication skills can provide valuable knowledge and tools.
Volunteering and community service: Working together for a charitable cause can build camaraderie and social responsibility within a team.
Team Retreats: Spending dedicated time away from the usual work environment allows teams to focus on collaboration and team development.

How to create a team-building experience?

Effective teamwork is essential for any organization's success. Following is how you can create a successful team-building experience:

1. Identify your objectives

Begin by defining the desired outcome of the team-building activity. Are you aiming to improve communication? Strengthen problem-solving skills? Or perhaps boost overall team morale? A clearly defined objective will guide your selection of activities and ensure the experience is focused and productive.

2. Know your team

Consider the size, personalities, and interests of your team members. This will help you choose an activity that is both engaging and accessible to everyone. For instance, an introverted team might benefit more from a collaborative problem-solving challenge, while an extroverted group might enjoy a high-energy activity that encourages active participation.

3. Plan the timeline

Determine the timeframe for the team-building experience. Will it be a short activity integrated into a regular meeting, a dedicated half-day event to allow for in-depth exploration or a multi-day retreat for a more immersive experience? The ideal timeframe depends on your goals and your team's availability.

4. Select the best activity

Choose an activity that aligns with your goals and is suitable for your team. There are numerous options available, from creative brainstorming sessions to strategic escape rooms or collaborative games. Consider activities that encourage interaction and communication, while also providing opportunities for team members to discover and utilize each other's strengths.

5. Align with team values

Ensure the chosen activity reflects the team's core values and fosters a sense of shared purpose. For example, if your team prioritizes innovation, consider a design thinking challenge. A team focused on client satisfaction might benefit from a role-playing exercise that simulates client interactions. Aligning the activity with team values reinforces these values and strengthens the team's identity.

6. Promote inclusivity

Make sure everyone feels comfortable participating, regardless of background or skill level. Offer options for different abilities and encourage open communication. This might involve providing clear instructions, breaking down complex tasks into smaller steps, or offering alternative ways to contribute. An inclusive environment ensures everyone feels valued and fosters a stronger sense of team spirit.

7. Reflection is key

After the activity, hold a discussion to reflect on the experience. What were the key takeaways? How can these learnings be applied to future teamwork? Encourage honest feedback and open discussion to solidify the learnings and translate them into actionable steps for improved collaboration within the team. By reflecting on the experience, you can ensure that the team-building activity has a lasting positive impact.

What are a few team-building experience ideas?

Some effective team-building experience ideas include:

1. Volunteer activity: Organize an opportunity for team members to work together for a social cause. This will build camaraderie and a sense of shared purpose.

2. Collaborative scavenger hunt: Plan a scavenger hunt that requires teamwork and problem-solving skills. This will encourage communication and collaboration among team members.

3. Professional development workshops: Host workshops or seminars on skill development, industry trends, or leadership. These sessions will allow team members to learn from each other and build relationships.

4. Group sporting event : Organize a sporting event or activity for the team, such as a tournament or a casual game. This can help to break the ice and promote bonding among team members.

Case studies

Following are the two case studies to showcase the significance of generating team building experience.

1. Amazon organize a thrilling scavenger hunt for 30 employees in Milan for enhanced employee engagement

Amazon needs no introduction, and its approach to establishing employee engagement has always remained unique. Amazon recently was planning a conference in Milan and desired a "fun Scavenger Hunt" for their 30 employees.

Since these employees didn't frequently work together, the goal was to create a team-building activity that would encourage exploration of the new city. Meanwhile, they wanted to foster camaraderie and connections within the group. Considering budget constraints for the conference's social events, a cost-effective solution was also a key factor. So, they collaborated with Wildgoose.

Wildgoose proposed a perfect team-building activity for Amazon in Milan. They designed a Self-Managed Milan City Explorer Challenge; a high-tech scavenger hunts accessible through a mobile app on attendees' smartphones.

The content creators at Wildgoose crafted unique challenges around Milan's history, culture, and landmarks. Teams navigated the city centre using the app, encountering trivia questions, photo opportunities, and interactions with locals.

This activity fostered team bonding while allowing participants to experience the beauty of Milan. The teams used the app to form groups, download the software, and access the challenges. A live map guided them throughout the city. An event manager monitored the activity online, scoring photos and videos, and keeping teams engaged.

Nearing the end, the manager prompted teams to return to a designated finish point. A countdown timer added excitement as teams raced to complete final challenges. Afterward, the client received links to a photo/video presentation and final scores to celebrate the winning team.

Clients thoroughly enjoyed exploring the city through our engaging and interactive team challenge. The user-friendly app, accessible on personal devices, allowed Wildgoose to offer a flexible and cost-effective solution that maintained high attendee participation. Furthermore, the remote support team ensured the client's confidence and provided the necessary guidance for a smooth, self-managed experience.

2. Deloitte holds exceptional team building experience to encourage a shared sense of community

Deloitte , a multinational professional services network wanted to hold a thrilling event. They aimed to create a fun and engaging experience for all 140 employees, including a significant number of recent additions to their team. The ideal event would encourage participation from everyone and provide a refreshing change of scenery by taking place outside of the office environment.

Deloitte sought The Big Smoke's assistance in planning a celebratory event for their summer party. The scavenger hunt proved to be the ideal solution for Deloitte's summer celebration. The Big Smoke designed a personalized hunt featuring challenging cryptic clues, puzzles tailored to their company, and activities that resulted in humorous video footage. This experience served as the perfect way to initiate their summer festivities.

This event provided a fun and engaging experience that fostered creativity and teamwork. More importantly, it allowed colleagues who may not have had prior opportunities for social interaction, gel properly with each other. It successfully removed participants from their usual work environment and encouraged collaboration, laughter, and a shared sense of enjoyment.

Conclusion

Team building experiences significantly contribute to employee engagement as it helps foster a sense of friendship, trust, and collaboration among coworkers. These activities help employees develop stronger relationships, which in turn leads to improved communication, problem-solving, and overall job satisfaction. However, to maximize the experience, try implementing Empuls . It helps organizations create a positive company culture, align employees with shared values, and drive multiple people initiatives from a single platform by:

Running employee engagement surveys . Analyze engagement metrics and identify areas for improvement after each team-building experience.
Running employee satisfaction and loyalty survey, namely the Pulse survey , by analyzing employee behavior and providing real-time actionable insights to improve company culture.
Allowing for open communication and collaboration through one-on-one feedback and peer recognition.

Enable continuous feedback and improvement throughout the employee lifecycle through real-time surveys, allow peer-to-peer recognition, and drive multiple people initiatives from Empuls.

Employee Reward Program: 5 Unique Ideas with Examples to Breed Engagement & Satisfaction

14 team building ideas in a budget to strengthen team unity, learn to build and sustain a culture that connects, engages, and motivates your people..

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Effective Team Building Case Studies & Insights

Written by Lisa Lawrence

Game show themes, april 20, 2024.

If you think team building is just a corporate icebreaker, think again. Nearly 75% of employers say teamwork and collaboration are vital.

However, only 18% of staff are evaluated on communication during reviews. This gap highlights a big chance to better team building in companies.

As a Team Building Facilitator on workplace culture, I’ve seen how team building case studies can change how a team works.

Indeed, stories of team building success often begin by highlighting the need for trust and good communication. This is especially true when teams shift from working remotely to being in the office.

But what about real outcomes? Are these efforts making a real difference? That’s what results from team building activities want to show us.

By looking at real examples, their wins, and the planning behind them, companies can use these powerful approaches. They can improve how their teams talk, work together, and get things done.

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Key Takeaways

The importance of team building is underscored by the gap between employer expectations and employee evaluations.
In-depth team building case studies demonstrate the transformative potential of well-engineered team building activities.
Corporate team building success stories often emphasize the role of trust and truthful communication in a cohesive workplace culture.
Quantifying team building activities results is crucial for understanding their true impact on an organization’s performance.
Strategic insights from case studies can guide companies in creating more effective team building experiences.
Focusing on these insights helps businesses transition smoothly from virtual to physical workspaces while maintaining team integrity.

The Link Between Truth-Telling and Trust in Team Building

Teams today often switch between meeting in person and working online. This makes a trustworthy atmosphere more important than ever. Gossip and backbiting can hurt team performance.

This is especially true after working from home. Understanding how truth-telling and trust work together is key for team success.

The Problem: Gossip and Backbiting in Post-Remote Work Environments

Returning to shared workspaces can bring back workplace negativity, like gossip. In these times, clear communication is crucial. Gossip can damage the process of building a strong team .

The Trust Model: A Foundation for Effective Team Building

On the other hand, truth-telling is vital for building a good team. Leaders who are open and honest create a culture of trust. This trust is crucial for the team to work well together.

Companies that embrace honesty see great teamwork and success.

Truth-telling in the workplace is not just a moral imperative but a strategic one that has a profound effect on team alignment and overall business health. – Based on corporate leadership observations

The table below shows how trust can make teams work better:

Embracing the values of the trust model can change workplace culture. This shift is crucial for the long-term success of any team.

Exploring Self-Awareness in Leadership Development Programs

As I explore self-awareness in leadership development programs , I see its huge impact. It’s more than just looking inward; it opens the door to better team interactions.

In essence, it strengthens team building case studies for companies . It’s amazing to see how personal insight and team work together, boosting performance.

>>>> Click here for fun team building games to boost morale.

Leaders who focus on self-awareness make their teams stronger and more united. They handle tough situations better, thanks to empathy and smart planning.

I have found evidence showing the big difference self-aware leaders make. Here’s a brief overview:

Being self-aware is crucial not just for personal growth. It helps leaders create a positive team environment. This makes team members feel important and understood.

In studying leadership development programs , I stress this point: teaching leaders to know themselves benefits the whole organization. It leads to big achievements and success stories.

Assessing Team Building Outcomes with Case Studies for Companies

In my study of team building’s impact, I looked at different kinds. I found many cases showing team building’s big benefits for groups. These examples highlight how well-planned team activities can boost teamwork and spark innovation.

Teaming Strategies in Large Corporations

Big companies like Google and Amazon have shared their experiences. They’ve used team building to improve their complex systems. They aim to overcome department barriers and increase communication across different teams.

Their efforts enhanced teamwork and raised productivity. This gave them an edge in their markets.

Case Studies: Family Firms and Start-Up Dynamics

Family businesses and startups may be smaller but face big challenges. Studies on team building in these setups show it’s very useful. They use specific team activities to connect generations and unite everyone’s goals.

This leads to a smoother and more flexible way of working.

These examples prove investing in team building is essential. It drives long-term success and keeps employees committed.

Dissecting the Five Stages of Team Development

Exploring team evolution reveals the value of the five-stage model. It guides a group from individuals to a united force. This journey is key to facing corporate challenges together.

Case Study: The Storming Phase in Action

The storming phase is crucial in team development . Facing conflicts here promotes open communication. It helps in crafting team building success stories by aligning individual strengths towards a common goal.

Success Stories and Pitfalls

After storming, successful teams reach the norming stage. They set rules and move smoothly into performing. Here, effective team building activities highlight their worth in achieving project success.

Team building success stories always highlight the structured development’s importance. They offer valuable lessons to organizations. These insights help build teams that exceed business goals.

Addressing Inter-Team Conflict with Proven Team Building Activities

In my search to solve inter-team conflict, I’ve learned something important. Team building activities are key to keeping teams together. Such activities help set the right standards and improve how we talk within the group.

The Importance of Normative Behavior for Team Cohesion

Following set behaviors is crucial for a good team vibe. For instance, in our team-building efforts, we emphasize behaviors that match our company values. This guides everyone towards working better together, reducing tension.

Insights into Communication Styles and Conflict Resolution

Team-building exercises are great for checking out different ways to talk to each other. They teach us to chat better and fix disagreements in a peaceful way. It’s the small changes in how we communicate that help a team go from okay to great.

Workshop on Active Listening – Helps us grasp the value of listening well in a team.
Role-playing Scenarios – Lets members try out fixing conflicts in a safe space.
Feedback Circles – Makes us more open and honest in sharing thoughts, improving how we solve problems together.

Let’s look at two examples where these approaches made a big difference:

The workshops and training discussed show how carefully chosen team building can build trust and efficiency. It’s all about picking the right activities to match the team’s needs.

The Role of Transformation in Team Building

Transformation in teams is vital for organizations to succeed in changing markets. My research highlights the crucial role of team building impact analysis in understanding transformation.

It shows how teams can reach their full potential through team building activities results .

Teams that partake in structured team building become more adaptable and resilient. This adaptability is essential in today’s fast-paced work environment.

Adapting to Rapid Change: A Case Study

A tech firm once faced a huge industry shift. By analyzing team building impact, they pinpointed innovation blocks. Strategic team building activities then led to major improvements.

These actions revolutionized the company’s adaptability. It showed how transformation and team dynamics are key for survival and growth.

Surviving and Thriving through Team Transformation

Survival alone isn’t enough for teams. They must also flourish in times of change. Teams need to transform, becoming stronger and more united.

This change isn’t solely for survival. It’s for gaining a competitive advantage. Team building activities are crucial in this transformation journey.

> Click here for fun team building games to boost morale.

In summary, combining team building analysis with real transformation stories shows the importance of adaptability.

The tech firm’s story proves that welcoming change leads to organizational success. Right team building activities turn challenges into opportunities for growth.

Creating Effective Team Building Experiences Across Global Corporations

I work to improve team dynamics in global companies. I’ve learned that cultural differences matter in team building. It’s tough to bring teams together from different parts of the world. They must understand how culture affects communication and teamwork.

Cultural Considerations in Team Dynamics

I’ve looked at many team building cases. It’s clear we must consider each team’s culture. This means more than just language. We must respect social norms and business practices that vary globally. This respect is key to inclusivity and success.

Global Team Building Success: Diverse Approaches and Outcomes

Looking at case studies shows no single way to build a team. Tailoring activities to the team’s diverse needs boosts creativity and team spirit. Mixing social events with business tasks helps create strong bonds.

The key to global team building is valuing each person’s unique input. Building activities that embrace diversity drives innovation. It helps companies stay ahead in the world.

Tailored Team Building for Specific Challenges and Opportunities

Identifying a company’s unique needs and crafting special team building plans is key. It’s amazing how focusing on specific challenges changes team dynamics. This leads to great project results.

Case Example: Overcoming Interdepartmental Silos

Looking at case studies of companies overcoming interdepartmental barriers is enlightening. One effective approach involved cross-training sessions .

These sessions let employees learn about their colleagues’ roles in other departments.

Understanding each other’s work brought employees closer. It created a feeling of unity and shared goals.

Strategies for High-Stakes Project Teams

High-stakes projects need exactness, hard work, and everyone working smoothly together. Including team building activities throughout the project helps improve efficiency. Meeting tight deadlines becomes easier without sacrificing quality.

For example, team retreats with workshops on communication and stress relief boost team performance under stress. I’ve seen these retreats make a big difference in how a team handles pressure.

In my work with various industries, I’ve seen first-hand how these approaches bring strong benefits. Proactively using these strategies significantly boosts team dynamics and project success.

Truly, grasping the unique challenges of a team is crucial for effective team building.

Benefits of Team Building in Organizations Based on Research

My research into team building shows it’s very valuable for companies. These activities boost teamwork and make the workplace better.

Wondering if these efforts matter? Many studies show they do. They lead to:

Improved Communication: Post-team building, employees often report clearer and more open lines of dialogue with their peers.
Enhanced Productivity: A strong team is like a well-oiled machine—coordinated efforts often result in greater output and efficiency.
Better Employee Morale: When staff feel connected and valued, their satisfaction and enthusiasm for work soar.

Team building starts a cycle of improvements. Better morale boosts productivity. In turn, this improves how teams communicate. It’s a cycle that starts with team building.

Team building isn’t just for the moment. It brings long-term changes to a company’s culture. Leaders say it’s key for success.

Here are some stats to show it. I’ve looked at studies to see the real effects of team building.

All the evidence shows team building works. It leads to a stronger, more innovative workplace. This sets a company up for success.

Team Building Case Studies

In the world of corporate growth, I’ve seen a key fact. The real proof of successful team building is in the details of team building activities results . Studying team building impact analysis teaches us a lot.

It’s not just about reaching a goal but how the team changes along the way.

At first glance, team building’s effects may seem hard to measure. But, looking closer at case studies shows us numbers and facts.

A comparative table below shows how different team building activities have helped organizations. It links the activities directly with their results.

The difference between short-term effects and long-term gains shows why team building impact analysis is vital. It ensures that team unity lasts long in a company’s culture .

I’ve seen how well-planned team building can change the work environment. It transforms competitive individuals into team players who trust and depend on each other.

When we talk about team building activities results , let’s think about not just now but the future.

After all, isn’t that the goal of a great team effort?

Verbal communication

Leveraging Insights Tool for Enhanced Team Effectiveness

In my work with team building, the Insights tool has been a game-changer. It helps uncover what teams like and the challenges they face.

What’s great about the Insights tool is its ability to show teams how they work together. This helps them make better decisions for success.

Case Study: Discovering Team Preferences and Blockers

A tech company had trouble with its developers and sales teams communicating. They used the Insights tool and saw they had different ways of talking.

The sales people were fast-paced, while the developers were more detailed. Knowing this, the company started workshops to help both teams understand each other better.

Improving Performance Through Team Preferences Alignment

Another story is about a consumer goods company facing low morale. The Insights tool showed a big difference between what the team liked and the company’s culture.

The leaders changed the workspaces and schedules to match the team’s preferences better. This made employees happier and more likely to stay.

After making changes from what they learned from the Insights tool, the consumer goods company saw a 25% increase in how well the teams did and fewer employees left.

This shows how important it is to match work with personal preferences for success.

These examples show how useful tools like Insights are in solving team issues. By really understanding what each team needs, companies can overcome problems. This leads to better results for teams in all kinds of work.

Innovative Team Building Activities That Work

In my experience, innovative team building exercises improve team connections. They add a fresh twist to usual activities.

For example, The Chocolate Challenge uses hands-on tasks to boost teamwork and think ahead. MBTI tools help with self-knowledge and valuing team variety.

Hands-On Learning: The Chocolate Challenge

The Chocolate Challenge is a great team-building activity. Teams make chocolate products together. This boosts engagement and promotes teamwork and learning.

It lets participants connect in meaningful ways. Here’s what The Chocolate Challenge does for teams:

Unlocking Creativity with Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Programs

MBTI workshops are great for team building. They help teams understand their personality types. This boosts creativity and team work.

MBTI makes teams more cohesive by:

Improving communication and reducing conflicts through understanding differences.
Encouraging innovative problem-solving by valuing unique perspectives.
Focusing on personal development to increase team performance and happiness.

Activities like The Chocolate Challenge and MBTI workshops mix fun, creativity, and growth.

They’re not just original. They blend play with purpose. This helps teams become strong and ready to face any challenge together.

Got Team Building Games? – PRESS PLAY #funatwork #gameshows #boostmorale

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Overcoming Challenges with Tailored Team Building Solutions

Looking closely at team dynamics shows that general solutions don’t always work. A deep insight into each company’s culture is essential.

By understanding what makes each team unique, we apply the most effective team building best practices . This is something many team building case studies have shown to be true.

When a team’s core values are part of their daily routine, they handle problems better. These challenges then help the team grow and innovate together. Team building isn’t just for solving issues. It’s about turning these issues into chances for improvement.

Take a global company dealing with communication problems due to cultural differences. Creating team building activities that value everyone’s background can improve work relationships. It makes cultural diversity a key benefit to the company.

In small businesses, personal conflicts can really hold back progress. Tailored team building that teaches conflict resolution and understanding makes teams stronger.

This way, they can be creative and solve not only current problems but also future ones. This strategy has been proven by many team building case studies .

But, it’s crucial to check if these strategies actually work. We look at feedback, performance data, and team behavior before and after team building. This ensures lasting improvements in teamwork and strength.

In summary, addressing team challenges with specific solutions proves most effective. Giving teams the right tools for their unique needs improves their work and motivation. When done right, the impact on performance and team spirit is incredible.

Measuring Impact and Success of Team Building Interventions

Exploring the real impact of team building in companies is fascinating. We see clear benefits from these efforts. These benefits range from better performance to improved team dynamics.

Quantitative Analysis: Performance Metrics Post Team Building

Quantitative metrics help us see if team building works. We use numbers to look at the positive changes team building makes. By checking performance before and after, we learn about the benefits of these activities.

Qualitative Feedback: Employee Engagement and Morale

Measuring success goes beyond numbers. We also focus on feelings and social changes from team building. Personal stories and surveys show us the unseen advantages.

They tell us about better teamwork, more joy at work, and a more positive culture.

Increases in reported job satisfaction
Testimonials about improved workplace relationships
Growth in employee engagement levels
Expressions of a stronger alignment with company values

To wrap up, looking at both data and stories is key. This way, we see all the benefits of team building . It proves team building is crucial for strong, healthy companies.

Team Building Best Practices from Real-World Applications

I’ve learned a lot about team building by looking at the real world. Transparent communication is key, I found. It strengthens trust and keeps away misunderstandings that could lead to conflict.

Teams work better when everyone feels they are listened to and understood.

In my journey, I saw how important including everyone in decisions is. It brings out creative ideas and strong strategies.

This not only strengthens the team but also improves how well they perform. When each person can share their thoughts and feels valued, the team’s output is amazing.

Support in a team means more than just encouragement. It involves helpful feedback, resources for growth, and celebrating achievements.

Teams that get this kind of support work better together. They have strong connections, high morale, and a united front. These practices aren’t just advice; they’re clear steps towards building a successful, collaborative team.

FAQ – Team Building Case Studies

What are some effective team building case studies.

Companies big and small have benefited from team building. These activities focus on improving communication, trust, and working together.

For instance, tech companies might mix workers from different departments for projects.

Startups may have retreats to unify their teams and set common goals.

How does truth-telling contribute to trust in team building?

Being honest is key in teams. It makes a team’s culture strong and trustworthy. Leaders play a big role by encouraging open talks.

This reduces gossip and helps teams in any work setting.

How is self-awareness integrated into leadership development programs?

Self-awareness is vital in leadership programs. It makes leaders mindful of their impact on the team. Through tools, feedback, and coaching, leaders learn to better the group’s unity and results.

Can you give an example of how large corporations approach team building?

Big companies tackle team building amidst their vast and varied workforce. They use special programs to break down barriers and boost teamwork. Global firms might include training on cultural intelligence to aid diverse teams.

What does the storming phase of team development entail?

The storming phase comes second in developing a team. Members test their limits and roles here. It’s a time for setting how to communicate and solve conflicts in positive ways.

What team building activities can help resolve inter-team conflict?

Focus on activities that foster talking and solving problems together. Workshops on resolving conflicts, role-playing, and team assessments are good. They help see each other’s views and collaborate better.

How can teams adapt to rapid changes effectively?

Ready teams can quickly adjust to changes. A shared goal, good conflict skills, and adaptable rules are key. Training for change helps teams adjust swiftly.

How important are cultural considerations in global team building?

They’re crucial. Cultural differences can confuse and slow down global teams. Building such teams needs an understanding of various cultures to include everyone and work well together.

What specific challenges can tailored team building address?

Custom team building can solve particular problems. It can improve talk between sections, help people collaborate on big projects, or welcome new folks from various cultures. Right activities make a difference.

What are some benefits of team building in organizations?

Studies confirm team building boosts communication, productivity, and morale. It also strengthens bonds, sparks creativity, and helps in solving problems.

How can the Insights tool help improve team effectiveness?

The Insights tool gives a clear view of a team’s preferences and challenges. Knowing this, teams can play to their strengths. This leads to better results and teamwork.

What are some innovative team building activities that have proven successful?

Some fun activities include The Chocolate Challenge for strategy and teamwork. Programs like Myers-Briggs help understand different personalities. These activities are engaging and promote unity.

How do organizations measure the impact of team building interventions?

Results are seen in improved numbers, like better performance and productivity. Feedback and how happy employees feel also show success. Keeping track of these can highlight a program’s value.

What best practices have emerged from real-world team building applications?

Best practices involve open communication, celebrating shared achievements, valuing different ideas, and matching activities with the group’s main values. These help build a lasting spirit of teamwork.

Source Links

https://medium.com/@lafair.sylvia/case-study-for-leadership-development-and-team-collaboration-4b1c1f0d6b89
https://www.insights.com/us/products/insights-team-effectiveness/
https://www.freshtracks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/FreshTracksCaseStudies.pdf

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The Work Issue

What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team

New research reveals surprising truths about why some work groups thrive and others falter.

Credit... Illustration by James Graham

Supported by

By Charles Duhigg

Feb. 25, 2016

L ike most 25-year-olds, Julia Rozovsky wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. She had worked at a consulting firm, but it wasn’t a good match. Then she became a researcher for two professors at Harvard, which was interesting but lonely. Maybe a big corporation would be a better fit. Or perhaps a fast-growing start-up. All she knew for certain was that she wanted to find a job that was more social. ‘‘I wanted to be part of a community, part of something people were building together,’’ she told me. She thought about various opportunities — Internet companies, a Ph.D. program — but nothing seemed exactly right. So in 2009, she chose the path that allowed her to put off making a decision: She applied to business schools and was accepted by the Yale School of Management.

When Rozovsky arrived on campus, she was assigned to a study group carefully engineered by the school to foster tight bonds. Study groups have become a rite of passage at M.B.A. programs, a way for students to practice working in teams and a reflection of the increasing demand for employees who can adroitly navigate group dynamics. A worker today might start the morning by collaborating with a team of engineers, then send emails to colleagues marketing a new brand, then jump on a conference call planning an entirely different product line, while also juggling team meetings with accounting and the party-planning committee. To prepare students for that complex world, business schools around the country have revised their curriculums to emphasize team-focused learning.

Every day, between classes or after dinner, Rozovsky and her four teammates gathered to discuss homework assignments, compare spreadsheets and strategize for exams. Everyone was smart and curious, and they had a lot in common: They had gone to similar colleges and had worked at analogous firms. These shared experiences, Rozovsky hoped, would make it easy for them to work well together. But it didn’t turn out that way. ‘‘There are lots of people who say some of their best business-school friends come from their study groups,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘It wasn’t like that for me.’’

Instead, Rozovsky’s study group was a source of stress. ‘‘I always felt like I had to prove myself,’’ she said. The team’s dynamics could put her on edge. When the group met, teammates sometimes jockeyed for the leadership position or criticized one another’s ideas. There were conflicts over who was in charge and who got to represent the group in class. ‘‘People would try to show authority by speaking louder or talking over each other,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘I always felt like I had to be careful not to make mistakes around them.’’

So Rozovsky started looking for other groups she could join. A classmate mentioned that some students were putting together teams for ‘‘case competitions,’’ contests in which participants proposed solutions to real-world business problems that were evaluated by judges, who awarded trophies and cash. The competitions were voluntary, but the work wasn’t all that different from what Rozovsky did with her study group: conducting lots of research and financial analyses, writing reports and giving presentations. The members of her case-competition team had a variety of professional experiences: Army officer, researcher at a think tank, director of a health-education nonprofit organization and consultant to a refugee program. Despite their disparate backgrounds, however, everyone clicked. They emailed one another dumb jokes and usually spent the first 10 minutes of each meeting chatting. When it came time to brainstorm, ‘‘we had lots of crazy ideas,’’ Rozovsky said.

One of her favorite competitions asked teams to come up with a new business to replace a student-run snack store on Yale’s campus. Rozovsky proposed a nap room and selling earplugs and eyeshades to make money. Someone else suggested filling the space with old video games. There were ideas about clothing swaps. Most of the proposals were impractical, but ‘‘we all felt like we could say anything to each other,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘No one worried that the rest of the team was judging them.’’ Eventually, the team settled on a plan for a microgym with a handful of exercise classes and a few weight machines. They won the competition. (The microgym — with two stationary bicycles and three treadmills — still exists.)

Rozovsky’s study group dissolved in her second semester (it was up to the students whether they wanted to continue). Her case team, however, stuck together for the two years she was at Yale.

It always struck Rozovsky as odd that her experiences with the two groups were dissimilar. Each was composed of people who were bright and outgoing. When she talked one on one with members of her study group, the exchanges were friendly and warm. It was only when they gathered as a team that things became fraught. By contrast, her case-competition team was always fun and easygoing. In some ways, the team’s members got along better as a group than as individual friends.

‘‘I couldn’t figure out why things had turned out so different,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘It didn’t seem like it had to happen that way.’’

O ur data-saturated age enables us to examine our work habits and office quirks with a scrutiny that our cubicle-bound forebears could only dream of. Today, on corporate campuses and within university laboratories, psychologists, sociologists and statisticians are devoting themselves to studying everything from team composition to email patterns in order to figure out how to make employees into faster, better and more productive versions of themselves. ‘‘We’re living through a golden age of understanding personal productivity,’’ says Marshall Van Alstyne, a professor at Boston University who studies how people share information. ‘‘All of a sudden, we can pick apart the small choices that all of us make, decisions most of us don’t even notice, and figure out why some people are so much more effective than everyone else.’’

Yet many of today’s most valuable firms have come to realize that analyzing and improving individual workers — a practice known as ‘‘employee performance optimization’’ — isn’t enough. As commerce becomes increasingly global and complex, the bulk of modern work is more and more team-based. One study, published in The Harvard Business Review last month , found that ‘‘the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50 percent or more’’ over the last two decades and that, at many companies, more than three-quarters of an employee’s day is spent communicating with colleagues.

In Silicon Valley, software engineers are encouraged to work together, in part because studies show that groups tend to innovate faster, see mistakes more quickly and find better solutions to problems. Studies also show that people working in teams tend to achieve better results and report higher job satisfaction. In a 2015 study, executives said that profitability increases when workers are persuaded to collaborate more. Within companies and conglomerates, as well as in government agencies and schools, teams are now the fundamental unit of organization. If a company wants to outstrip its competitors, it needs to influence not only how people work but also how they work together .

Five years ago, Google — one of the most public proselytizers of how studying workers can transform productivity — became focused on building the perfect team. In the last decade, the tech giant has spent untold millions of dollars measuring nearly every aspect of its employees’ lives. Google’s People Operations department has scrutinized everything from how frequently particular people eat together (the most productive employees tend to build larger networks by rotating dining companions) to which traits the best managers share (unsurprisingly, good communication and avoiding micromanaging is critical; more shocking, this was news to many Google managers).

The company’s top executives long believed that building the best teams meant combining the best people. They embraced other bits of conventional wisdom as well, like ‘‘It’s better to put introverts together,’’ said Abeer Dubey, a manager in Google’s People Analytics division, or ‘‘Teams are more effective when everyone is friends away from work.’’ But, Dubey went on, ‘‘it turned out no one had really studied which of those were true.’’

In 2012, the company embarked on an initiative — code-named Project Aristotle — to study hundreds of Google’s teams and figure out why some stumbled while others soared. Dubey, a leader of the project, gathered some of the company’s best statisticians, organizational psychologists, sociologists and engineers. He also needed researchers. Rozovsky, by then, had decided that what she wanted to do with her life was study people’s habits and tendencies. After graduating from Yale, she was hired by Google and was soon assigned to Project Aristotle.

P roject Aristotle’s researchers began by reviewing a half-century of academic studies looking at how teams worked. Were the best teams made up of people with similar interests? Or did it matter more whether everyone was motivated by the same kinds of rewards? Based on those studies, the researchers scrutinized the composition of groups inside Google: How often did teammates socialize outside the office? Did they have the same hobbies? Were their educational backgrounds similar? Was it better for all teammates to be outgoing or for all of them to be shy? They drew diagrams showing which teams had overlapping memberships and which groups had exceeded their departments’ goals. They studied how long teams stuck together and if gender balance seemed to have an impact on a team’s success.

No matter how researchers arranged the data, though, it was almost impossible to find patterns — or any evidence that the composition of a team made any difference. ‘‘We looked at 180 teams from all over the company,’’ Dubey said. ‘‘We had lots of data, but there was nothing showing that a mix of specific personality types or skills or backgrounds made any difference. The ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter.’’

Some groups that were ranked among Google’s most effective teams, for instance, were composed of friends who socialized outside work. Others were made up of people who were basically strangers away from the conference room. Some groups sought strong managers. Others preferred a less hierarchical structure. Most confounding of all, two teams might have nearly identical makeups, with overlapping memberships, but radically different levels of effectiveness. ‘‘At Google, we’re good at finding patterns,’’ Dubey said. ‘‘There weren’t strong patterns here.’’

As they struggled to figure out what made a team successful, Rozovsky and her colleagues kept coming across research by psychologists and sociologists that focused on what are known as ‘‘group norms.’’ Norms are the traditions, behavioral standards and unwritten rules that govern how we function when we gather: One team may come to a consensus that avoiding disagreement is more valuable than debate; another team might develop a culture that encourages vigorous arguments and spurns groupthink. Norms can be unspoken or openly acknowledged, but their influence is often profound. Team members may behave in certain ways as individuals — they may chafe against authority or prefer working independently — but when they gather, the group’s norms typically override individual proclivities and encourage deference to the team.

Project Aristotle’s researchers began searching through the data they had collected, looking for norms. They looked for instances when team members described a particular behavior as an ‘‘unwritten rule’’ or when they explained certain things as part of the ‘‘team’s culture.’’ Some groups said that teammates interrupted one another constantly and that team leaders reinforced that behavior by interrupting others themselves. On other teams, leaders enforced conversational order, and when someone cut off a teammate, group members would politely ask everyone to wait his or her turn. Some teams celebrated birthdays and began each meeting with informal chitchat about weekend plans. Other groups got right to business and discouraged gossip. There were teams that contained outsize personalities who hewed to their group’s sedate norms, and others in which introverts came out of their shells as soon as meetings began.

After looking at over a hundred groups for more than a year, Project Aristotle researchers concluded that understanding and influencing group norms were the keys to improving Google’s teams. But Rozovsky, now a lead researcher, needed to figure out which norms mattered most. Google’s research had identified dozens of behaviors that seemed important, except that sometimes the norms of one effective team contrasted sharply with those of another equally successful group. Was it better to let everyone speak as much as they wanted, or should strong leaders end meandering debates? Was it more effective for people to openly disagree with one another, or should conflicts be played down? The data didn’t offer clear verdicts. In fact, the data sometimes pointed in opposite directions. The only thing worse than not finding a pattern is finding too many of them. Which norms, Rozovsky and her colleagues wondered, were the ones that successful teams shared?

I magine you have been invited to join one of two groups.

Team A is composed of people who are all exceptionally smart and successful. When you watch a video of this group working, you see professionals who wait until a topic arises in which they are expert, and then they speak at length, explaining what the group ought to do. When someone makes a side comment, the speaker stops, reminds everyone of the agenda and pushes the meeting back on track. This team is efficient. There is no idle chitchat or long debates. The meeting ends as scheduled and disbands so everyone can get back to their desks.

Team B is different. It’s evenly divided between successful executives and middle managers with few professional accomplishments. Teammates jump in and out of discussions. People interject and complete one another’s thoughts. When a team member abruptly changes the topic, the rest of the group follows him off the agenda. At the end of the meeting, the meeting doesn’t actually end: Everyone sits around to gossip and talk about their lives.

Which group would you rather join?

In 2008, a group of psychologists from Carnegie Mellon, M.I.T. and Union College began to try to answer a question very much like this one. ‘‘Over the past century, psychologists made considerable progress in defining and systematically measuring intelligence in individuals,’’ the researchers wrote in the journal Science in 2010 . ‘‘We have used the statistical approach they developed for individual intelligence to systematically measure the intelligence of groups.’’ Put differently, the researchers wanted to know if there is a collective I. Q. that emerges within a team that is distinct from the smarts of any single member.

To accomplish this, the researchers recruited 699 people, divided them into small groups and gave each a series of assignments that required different kinds of cooperation. One assignment, for instance, asked participants to brainstorm possible uses for a brick. Some teams came up with dozens of clever uses; others kept describing the same ideas in different words. Another had the groups plan a shopping trip and gave each teammate a different list of groceries. The only way to maximize the group’s score was for each person to sacrifice an item they really wanted for something the team needed. Some groups easily divvied up the buying; others couldn’t fill their shopping carts because no one was willing to compromise.

What interested the researchers most, however, was that teams that did well on one assignment usually did well on all the others. Conversely, teams that failed at one thing seemed to fail at everything. The researchers eventually concluded that what distinguished the ‘‘good’’ teams from the dysfunctional groups was how teammates treated one another. The right norms, in other words, could raise a group’s collective intelligence, whereas the wrong norms could hobble a team, even if, individually, all the members were exceptionally bright.

But what was confusing was that not all the good teams appeared to behave in the same ways. ‘‘Some teams had a bunch of smart people who figured out how to break up work evenly,’’ said Anita Woolley, the study’s lead author. ‘‘Other groups had pretty average members, but they came up with ways to take advantage of everyone’s relative strengths. Some groups had one strong leader. Others were more fluid, and everyone took a leadership role.’’

As the researchers studied the groups, however, they noticed two behaviors that all the good teams generally shared. First, on the good teams, members spoke in roughly the same proportion, a phenomenon the researchers referred to as ‘‘equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.’’ On some teams, everyone spoke during each task; on others, leadership shifted among teammates from assignment to assignment. But in each case, by the end of the day, everyone had spoken roughly the same amount. ‘‘As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well,’’ Woolley said. ‘‘But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.’’

Second, the good teams all had high ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ — a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues. One of the easiest ways to gauge social sensitivity is to show someone photos of people’s eyes and ask him or her to describe what the people are thinking or feeling — an exam known as the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. People on the more successful teams in Woolley’s experiment scored above average on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test. They seemed to know when someone was feeling upset or left out. People on the ineffective teams, in contrast, scored below average. They seemed, as a group, to have less sensitivity toward their colleagues.

In other words, if you are given a choice between the serious-minded Team A or the free-flowing Team B, you should probably opt for Team B. Team A may be filled with smart people, all optimized for peak individual efficiency. But the group’s norms discourage equal speaking; there are few exchanges of the kind of personal information that lets teammates pick up on what people are feeling or leaving unsaid. There’s a good chance the members of Team A will continue to act like individuals once they come together, and there’s little to suggest that, as a group, they will become more collectively intelligent.

In contrast, on Team B, people may speak over one another, go on tangents and socialize instead of remaining focused on the agenda. The team may seem inefficient to a casual observer. But all the team members speak as much as they need to. They are sensitive to one another’s moods and share personal stories and emotions. While Team B might not contain as many individual stars, the sum will be greater than its parts.

Within psychology, researchers sometimes colloquially refer to traits like ‘‘conversational turn-taking’’ and ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ as aspects of what’s known as psychological safety — a group culture that the Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson defines as a ‘‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’’ Psychological safety is ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up,’’ Edmondson wrote in a study published in 1999 . ‘‘It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.’’

When Rozovsky and her Google colleagues encountered the concept of psychological safety in academic papers, it was as if everything suddenly fell into place. One engineer, for instance, had told researchers that his team leader was ‘‘direct and straightforward, which creates a safe space for you to take risks.’’ That team, researchers estimated, was among Google’s accomplished groups. By contrast, another engineer had told the researchers that his ‘‘team leader has poor emotional control.’’ He added: ‘‘He panics over small issues and keeps trying to grab control. I would hate to be driving with him being in the passenger seat, because he would keep trying to grab the steering wheel and crash the car.’’ That team, researchers presumed, did not perform well.

Most of all, employees had talked about how various teams felt. ‘‘And that made a lot of sense to me, maybe because of my experiences at Yale,’’ Rozovsky said. ‘‘I’d been on some teams that left me feeling totally exhausted and others where I got so much energy from the group.’’ Rozovsky’s study group at Yale was draining because the norms — the fights over leadership, the tendency to critique — put her on guard. Whereas the norms of her case-competition team — enthusiasm for one another’s ideas, joking around and having fun — allowed everyone to feel relaxed and energized.

For Project Aristotle, research on psychological safety pointed to particular norms that are vital to success. There were other behaviors that seemed important as well — like making sure teams had clear goals and creating a culture of dependability. But Google’s data indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work.

‘‘We had to get people to establish psychologically safe environments,’’ Rozovsky told me. But it wasn’t clear how to do that. ‘‘People here are really busy,’’ she said. ‘‘We needed clear guidelines.’’

However, establishing psychological safety is, by its very nature, somewhat messy and difficult to implement. You can tell people to take turns during a conversation and to listen to one another more. You can instruct employees to be sensitive to how their colleagues feel and to notice when someone seems upset. But the kinds of people who work at Google are often the ones who became software engineers because they wanted to avoid talking about feelings in the first place.

Rozovsky and her colleagues had figured out which norms were most critical. Now they had to find a way to make communication and empathy — the building blocks of forging real connections — into an algorithm they could easily scale.

I n late 2014, Rozovsky and her fellow Project Aristotle number-crunchers began sharing their findings with select groups of Google’s 51,000 employees. By then, they had been collecting surveys, conducting interviews and analyzing statistics for almost three years. They hadn’t yet figured out how to make psychological safety easy, but they hoped that publicizing their research within Google would prompt employees to come up with some ideas of their own.

After Rozovsky gave one presentation, a trim, athletic man named Matt Sakaguchi approached the Project Aristotle researchers. Sakaguchi had an unusual background for a Google employee. Twenty years earlier, he was a member of a SWAT team in Walnut Creek, Calif., but left to become an electronics salesman and eventually landed at Google as a midlevel manager, where he has overseen teams of engineers who respond when the company’s websites or servers go down.

‘‘I might be the luckiest individual on earth,’’ Sakaguchi told me. ‘‘I’m not really an engineer. I didn’t study computers in college. Everyone who works for me is much smarter than I am.’’ But he is talented at managing technical workers, and as a result, Sakaguchi has thrived at Google. He and his wife, a teacher, have a home in San Francisco and a weekend house in the Sonoma Valley wine country. ‘‘Most days, I feel like I’ve won the lottery,’’ he said.

Sakaguchi was particularly interested in Project Aristotle because the team he previously oversaw at Google hadn’t jelled particularly well. ‘‘There was one senior engineer who would just talk and talk, and everyone was scared to disagree with him,’’ Sakaguchi said. ‘‘The hardest part was that everyone liked this guy outside the group setting, but whenever they got together as a team, something happened that made the culture go wrong.’’

Sakaguchi had recently become the manager of a new team, and he wanted to make sure things went better this time. So he asked researchers at Project Aristotle if they could help. They provided him with a survey to gauge the group’s norms.

When Sakaguchi asked his new team to participate, he was greeted with skepticism. ‘‘It seemed like a total waste of time,’’ said Sean Laurent, an engineer. ‘‘But Matt was our new boss, and he was really into this questionnaire, and so we said, Sure, we’ll do it, whatever.’’

The team completed the survey, and a few weeks later, Sakaguchi received the results. He was surprised by what they revealed. He thought of the team as a strong unit. But the results indicated there were weaknesses: When asked to rate whether the role of the team was clearly understood and whether their work had impact, members of the team gave middling to poor scores. These responses troubled Sakaguchi, because he hadn’t picked up on this discontent. He wanted everyone to feel fulfilled by their work. He asked the team to gather, off site, to discuss the survey’s results. He began by asking everyone to share something personal about themselves. He went first.

‘‘I think one of the things most people don’t know about me,’’ he told the group, ‘‘is that I have Stage 4 cancer.’’ In 2001, he said, a doctor discovered a tumor in his kidney. By the time the cancer was detected, it had spread to his spine. For nearly half a decade, it had grown slowly as he underwent treatment while working at Google. Recently, however, doctors had found a new, worrisome spot on a scan of his liver. That was far more serious, he explained.

No one knew what to say. The team had been working with Sakaguchi for 10 months. They all liked him, just as they all liked one another. No one suspected that he was dealing with anything like this.

‘‘To have Matt stand there and tell us that he’s sick and he’s not going to get better and, you know, what that means,’’ Laurent said. ‘‘It was a really hard, really special moment.’’

After Sakaguchi spoke, another teammate stood and described some health issues of her own. Then another discussed a difficult breakup. Eventually, the team shifted its focus to the survey. They found it easier to speak honestly about the things that had been bothering them, their small frictions and everyday annoyances. They agreed to adopt some new norms: From now on, Sakaguchi would make an extra effort to let the team members know how their work fit into Google’s larger mission; they agreed to try harder to notice when someone on the team was feeling excluded or down.

There was nothing in the survey that instructed Sakaguchi to share his illness with the group. There was nothing in Project Aristotle’s research that said that getting people to open up about their struggles was critical to discussing a group’s norms. But to Sakaguchi, it made sense that psychological safety and emotional conversations were related. The behaviors that create psychological safety — conversational turn-taking and empathy — are part of the same unwritten rules we often turn to, as individuals, when we need to establish a bond. And those human bonds matter as much at work as anywhere else. In fact, they sometimes matter more.

‘‘I think, until the off-site, I had separated things in my head into work life and life life,’’ Laurent told me. ‘‘But the thing is, my work is my life. I spend the majority of my time working. Most of my friends I know through work. If I can’t be open and honest at work, then I’m not really living, am I?’’

What Project Aristotle has taught people within Google is that no one wants to put on a ‘‘work face’’ when they get to the office. No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present at work, to feel ‘‘psychologically safe,’’ we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations. We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency. Rather, when we start the morning by collaborating with a team of engineers and then send emails to our marketing colleagues and then jump on a conference call, we want to know that those people really hear us. We want to know that work is more than just labor.

Which isn’t to say that a team needs an ailing manager to come together. Any group can become Team B. Sakaguchi’s experiences underscore a core lesson of Google’s research into teamwork: By adopting the data-driven approach of Silicon Valley, Project Aristotle has encouraged emotional conversations and discussions of norms among people who might otherwise be uncomfortable talking about how they feel. ‘‘Googlers love data,’’ Sakaguchi told me. But it’s not only Google that loves numbers, or Silicon Valley that shies away from emotional conversations. Most workplaces do. ‘‘By putting things like empathy and sensitivity into charts and data reports, it makes them easier to talk about,’’ Sakaguchi told me. ‘‘It’s easier to talk about our feelings when we can point to a number.’’

Sakaguchi knows that the spread of his cancer means he may not have much time left. His wife has asked him why he doesn’t quit Google. At some point, he probably will. But right now, helping his team succeed ‘‘is the most meaningful work I’ve ever done,’’ he told me. He encourages the group to think about the way work and life mesh. Part of that, he says, is recognizing how fulfilling work can be. Project Aristotle ‘‘proves how much a great team matters,’’ he said. ‘‘Why would I walk away from that? Why wouldn’t I spend time with people who care about me?’’

T he technology industry is not just one of the fastest growing parts of our economy; it is also increasingly the world’s dominant commercial culture. And at the core of Silicon Valley are certain self-mythologies and dictums: Everything is different now, data reigns supreme, today’s winners deserve to triumph because they are cleareyed enough to discard yesterday’s conventional wisdoms and search out the disruptive and the new.

The paradox, of course, is that Google’s intense data collection and number crunching have led it to the same conclusions that good managers have always known. In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.

The fact that these insights aren’t wholly original doesn’t mean Google’s contributions aren’t valuable. In fact, in some ways, the ‘‘employee performance optimization’’ movement has given us a method for talking about our insecurities, fears and aspirations in more constructive ways. It also has given us the tools to quickly teach lessons that once took managers decades to absorb. Google, in other words, in its race to build the perfect team, has perhaps unintentionally demonstrated the usefulness of imperfection and done what Silicon Valley does best: figure out how to create psychological safety faster, better and in more productive ways.

‘‘Just having data that proves to people that these things are worth paying attention to sometimes is the most important step in getting them to actually pay attention,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘Don’t underestimate the power of giving people a common platform and operating language.’’

Project Aristotle is a reminder that when companies try to optimize everything, it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences — like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions of who we want to be and how our teammates make us feel — that can’t really be optimized. Rozovsky herself was reminded of this midway through her work with the Project Aristotle team. ‘‘We were in a meeting where I made a mistake,’’ Rozovsky told me. She sent out a note afterward explaining how she was going to remedy the problem. ‘‘I got an email back from a team member that said, ‘Ouch,’ ’’ she recalled. ‘‘It was like a punch to the gut. I was already upset about making this mistake, and this note totally played on my insecurities.’’

If this had happened earlier in Rozovsky’s life — if it had occurred while she was at Yale, for instance, in her study group — she probably wouldn’t have known how to deal with those feelings. The email wasn’t a big enough affront to justify a response. But all the same, it really bothered her. It was something she felt she needed to address.

And thanks to Project Aristotle, she now had a vocabulary for explaining to herself what she was feeling and why it was important. She had graphs and charts telling her that she shouldn’t just let it go. And so she typed a quick response: ‘‘Nothing like a good ‘Ouch!’ to destroy psych safety in the morning.’’ Her teammate replied: ‘‘Just testing your resilience.’’

‘‘That could have been the wrong thing to say to someone else, but he knew it was exactly what I needed to hear,’’ Rozovsky said. ‘‘With one 30-second interaction, we defused the tension.’’ She wanted to be listened to. She wanted her teammate to be sensitive to what she was feeling. ‘‘And I had research telling me that it was O.K. to follow my gut,’’ she said. ‘‘So that’s what I did. The data helped me feel safe enough to do what I thought was right.’’

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times and the paper’s senior editor of live journalism. He is the author of ‘‘The Power of Habit’’ and the forthcoming book ‘‘Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Productivity in Life and Business,’’ from which this article is adapted.

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Teams That Changed The World (Team Case Studies)

Written by Victoria Allen

Apr 13, 2018 - Last updated: Aug 30, 2023

During our lifetime there are an abundance of occasions in which we are required to work as part of a team; most notably in the workplace, and because of this, organisations are habitually faced with complex problems, sometimes in higher levels of pressure circumstances.

Team development is more than just running team meetings and ticking of boxes. It involves making hard decisions, and working for the good of others even when the end is not in sight. Great teams cultivate a sense of psychological safety across the organization— from senior executive all the way down to entry-level colleagues.

What it Takes to Build a Top-Performing Team

The proper formation and careful maintenance of a team is crucial to the team's performance and success. Establishing a diverse team with mixed skills and strengths can improve team effectiveness and productivity. They also have a positive effect on the team's dynamics and help everyone achieve key goals individually and together.

Another vital element is communication. By communicating with one another and understanding each other’s communication styles and preferences, a shared culture is created.

Disagreements can be avoided (or easily resolved), with people understanding their individual and group roles in order for each team member to be striving for the same collective goal.

Research lead by Google has concluded that the best teams included team members who listen to one another and show sensitivity. Studies have also shown that when people work in high performing teams, in contrast to working alone, they are more productive and report greater job satisfaction.

Working in a team results faster innovation, quicker mistake detection and correction, better problem-solving, and greater performance according to research findings.

History is littered with top performing team case studies, and in this article we will look at the three top performing teams that we believe changed the world as we know it.

Before we dive into the case studies, if you're wanting to build a high performing team then you should take a look at QuizBreaker . It's an all-in-one team engagement platform that helps brings teams closer together through a variety of great tools. They offer a 7 day free trial too.

NASA’s Apollo 11

A huge milestone for science and for mankind, NASA’s 1969 Apollo 11 mission is a great demonstration of high-performing teams.

Televised across the world, three astronauts made the revolutionary journey toward the moon and two of the three astronauts stepped foot onto the moon’s surface, creating history.

Whilst Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins are the well-known faces of this prodigious achievement, they wouldn’t have made it to the history books without the efforts of their supporting team - years of previous research and expertise allowed this mission to take place and succeed.

For two years prior to the operation, mission planners studied the moon’s surface using photographs from satellites and the Surveyor spacecraft, to find the best place for Apollo 11 to land. They needed to consider the geography of the surface, factoring in craters, boulders and cliffs, as well as the best time to land due to the positioning of the sun.

NASA has estimated that more than 400,000 people made the moon landings possible; scientists, engineers and technicians, who had never worked in aerospace before, were given contracts to design a machine capable of transporting humans safely to out of space.

The astronauts visited the laboratories in order to create a human connection to foster a more cohesive team – the workers met the men whose lives were in their hands. In the operations control room, during each flight, there were numerous technicians guiding and supporting those heading into outer space. Essentially, each step of the way, communication was paramount, enabling the team behind NASA’s Apollo 11 to achieve a historical milestone.

The Manhattan Project

The American-led mission to develop the world’s first atomic weapon during WW2 was code-named the Manhattan Project .

It was and still is, thought of as a highly controversial assignment, though it is hard to dispute that it is an excellent example of a top performing senior leadership team.

The task began in 1942 after authorisation from U.S. President Roosevelt. Utilising the minds’ of some of the world’s leading scientists and military personnel, the Manhattan Project started as an attempt to beat the Nazis in a race against time to build a nuclear weapon. However, with hindsight, we now know that the Nazis would not be successful in their attempts to build an atomic bomb.

Involving over 130,000 individuals, spread across 13 locations in the United States of America and Canada, and all sworn to secrecy, this mammoth of a project had a huge risk of exposure and sabotage and therefore communication and coordination would be vital to this mission’s success.

One of the reasons why the Manhattan Project is considered one of the greatest examples of the top performing team case studies is that often, within the realm of research and invention, scientists have a desire to compete against others in order to gain notoriety for their work.

However in this instance, scientists (and other specialists) worked within a team and adopted a group mentality in order to achieve a shared goal.

The Royal Society of London

The Royal Society of London is a classic and old example of a top performing team. Granted a royal charter by King Charles II, the Royal Society of London was the first national scientific institution in the world.

Founded in 1660 and often referred to as “the invisible college”, the society was orchestrated by its team leaders in order to encourage the exchange of scientific and philosophic ideas and theories. The society’s motto “Nullius in verba” is translated as “take nobody’s word for it”. The motto was upheld as a manifest of the members’ drive to verify all statements by the means of scientific facts and experimental research findings.

Notable members over the years have included the legendary Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking.

When the society was formed, during a time dominated by prejudice, war and political unrest, the group prided itself of the fact that it accepted members of all backgrounds.

Papers were exchanged between the scientific scholars, and within the space of just 70 years the science we employ in everyday life today was developed. This includes the sciences of anatomy, astronomy, botany, chemistry, physics and zoology.

The team’s achievements were established on a foundation of trust, support and respect, as well as a collective goal – the advancement of science.

Many of us use Wikipedia on a regular basis and do not stop to think what a great example of teamwork the website portrays.

Volunteer writers and editors contribute by inputting knowledge and facts about the world onto the website in order to create an accessible and easily understood encyclopedic database. Without an army of regular employees, the team worked together to build the biggest database of information of all time.

Wikipedia is one of the most viewed websites in the world and is the result of the cumulative efforts of a vast, and somewhat anonymous, team.

In the world of sports, when thinking about top performing team case studies, one famous team in particular comes to mind.

The New Zealand national rugby union team

The All Blacks , are considered to be one of the greatest performing international teams in history.

Representing a country of just 4.5 million inhabitants, the All Blacks appear to be an untouchable team. They have won the title in 3 World Cups and accomplish a better ratio of wins than other sports teams, making them the foremost sports franchise in history.

In their 125 year long history, the All Blacks have won more than three-quarter of the games they have participated in which is a statistic unsurpassed by any other national sports team. Despite the frequent long periods of time spent away from family whilst touring for matches internationally, the team have a strong determination and drive to achieve a common goal - to win every game and maintain their reputation. All Black team players, including the coach, are seen as equal and as important components in the creation and maintenance of a successful team.

Nature - Birds

There are even examples of effective team performance in nature; think of geese, for example, each winter the flock work together in order to achieve their common goal - reaching their seasonal destination. Communicating by honking at one another, they encourage those who appear to be losing momentum or getting tired.

Or, by flying in a v-shape formation, the geese reduce the drag for those behind them. The same principles could be implemented in an organisational team. Or, by nurturing a team mentality, all members share a common goal and feel supported by one another.

History teaches us that in order for teams to be successful, the conditions must be right. Nurturing management styles, and awareness of others working styles are just some of the contributing factors that aid the creation of a high performance team.

Google’s " Project Aristotle " has highlighted the fact that when individuals join an organisational team, they do not want to leave their individuality and personality at home. People want to be their true selves and feel that they are free to share ideas and thoughts in a psychologically safe environment.

Communication, empathy and mutual understanding all create a productive environment for increased performance and job satisfaction.

By understanding each other’s work styles, strengths and attributes, work stops becoming an act of labour and becomes a collective goal or mission.

No man is an island. Business is a team sport!

About the author

Victoria is a Psychology Masters graduate and works in psychology research/copywriting. She has a background in marketing and has previously worked within the NHS in the Mental Health services. Victoria loves animals and is a self-confessed Pinterest-addict. She is always dreaming of her next travel adventure.

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Stop Wasting Money on Team Building

Carlos Valdes-Dapena

There are better ways to learn collaboration.

Many companies, when they decide to invest in team building, decide to do offsite events like bowling nights or ropes courses. Some spend thousands on special events, hoping to improve collaboration. These efforts often fail, so Mars Inc. took a different approach. HR leaders decided to interview and survey 125 teams. They used this data to develop a team-building approach that focused on the work itself. In an intensive two-day workshop, they asked a pilot group to discuss two questions: Why is their collaboration essential to achieving their business results? And second: What work, which specific tasks, would require collaboration to deliver those results? The results from these discussions were so good that Mars rolled out this approach to the whole company.

Most corporate team building is a waste of time and money. I say this based on my 25+ years of research and practice in the field of team effectiveness. Seventeen of those years were with Mars Inc., a family-owned $35 billion global business with a commitment to collaboration.

CV Carlos Valdes-Dapena is the CEO of Corporate Collaboration Resources and the author of Lessons from Mars: How One Global Company Cracked the Code on High Performance Collaboration and Teamwork .

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Team Building Exercises – Problem Solving and Decision Making

Fun ways to turn problems into opportunities.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Whether there's a complex project looming or your team members just want to get better at dealing with day-to-day issues, your people can achieve much more when they solve problems and make decisions together.

By developing their problem-solving skills, you can improve their ability to get to the bottom of complex situations. And by refining their decision-making skills, you can help them work together maturely, use different thinking styles, and commit collectively to decisions.

In this article, we'll look at three team-building exercises that you can use to improve problem solving and decision making in a new or established team.

Exercises to Build Decision-Making and Problem-Solving Skills

Use the following exercises to help your team members solve problems and make decisions together more effectively.

Exercise 1: Lost at Sea*

In this activity, participants must pretend that they've been shipwrecked and are stranded in a lifeboat. Each team has a box of matches, and a number of items that they've salvaged from the sinking ship. Members must agree which items are most important for their survival.

Download and print our team-building exercises worksheet to help you with this exercise.

This activity builds problem-solving skills as team members analyze information, negotiate and cooperate with one another. It also encourages them to listen and to think about the way they make decisions.

What You'll Need

Up to five people in each group.
A large, private room.
A "lost at sea" ranking chart for each team member. This should comprise six columns. The first simply lists each item (see below). The second is empty so that each team member can rank the items. The third is for group rankings. The fourth is for the "correct" rankings, which are revealed at the end of the exercise. And the fifth and sixth are for the team to enter the difference between their individual and correct score, and the team and correct rankings, respectively.
The items to be ranked are: a mosquito net, a can of petrol, a water container, a shaving mirror, a sextant, emergency rations, a sea chart, a floating seat or cushion, a rope, some chocolate bars, a waterproof sheet, a fishing rod, shark repellent, a bottle of rum, and a VHF radio. These can be listed in the ranking chart or displayed on a whiteboard, or both.
The experience can be made more fun by having some lost-at-sea props in the room.

Flexible, but normally between 25 and 40 minutes.

Instructions

Divide participants into their teams, and provide everyone with a ranking sheet.
Ask team members to take 10 minutes on their own to rank the items in order of importance. They should do this in the second column of their sheet.
Give the teams a further 10 minutes to confer and decide on their group rankings. Once agreed, they should list them in the third column of their sheets.
Ask each group to compare their individual rankings with their collective ones, and consider why any scores differ. Did anyone change their mind about their own rankings during the team discussions? How much were people influenced by the group conversation?
Now read out the "correct" order, collated by the experts at the US Coast Guard (from most to least important): - Shaving mirror. (One of your most powerful tools, because you can use it to signal your location by reflecting the sun.) - Can of petrol. (Again, potentially vital for signaling as petrol floats on water and can be lit by your matches.) - Water container. (Essential for collecting water to restore your lost fluids.) -Emergency rations. (Valuable for basic food intake.) - Plastic sheet. (Could be used for shelter, or to collect rainwater.) -Chocolate bars. (A handy food supply.) - Fishing rod. (Potentially useful, but there is no guarantee that you're able to catch fish. Could also feasibly double as a tent pole.) - Rope. (Handy for tying equipment together, but not necessarily vital for survival.) - Floating seat or cushion. (Useful as a life preserver.) - Shark repellent. (Potentially important when in the water.) - Bottle of rum. (Could be useful as an antiseptic for treating injuries, but will only dehydrate you if you drink it.) - Radio. (Chances are that you're out of range of any signal, anyway.) - Sea chart. (Worthless without navigational equipment.) - Mosquito net. (Assuming that you've been shipwrecked in the Atlantic, where there are no mosquitoes, this is pretty much useless.) - Sextant. (Impractical without relevant tables or a chronometer.)

Advice for the Facilitator

The ideal scenario is for teams to arrive at a consensus decision where everyone's opinion is heard. However, that doesn't always happen naturally: assertive people tend to get the most attention. Less forthright team members can often feel intimidated and don't always speak up, particularly when their ideas are different from the popular view. Where discussions are one-sided, draw quieter people in so that everyone is involved, but explain why you're doing this, so that people learn from it.

You can use the Stepladder Technique when team discussion is unbalanced. Here, ask each team member to think about the problem individually and, one at a time, introduce new ideas to an appointed group leader – without knowing what ideas have already been discussed. After the first two people present their ideas, they discuss them together. Then the leader adds a third person, who presents his or her ideas before hearing the previous input. This cycle of presentation and discussion continues until the whole team has had a chance to voice their opinions.

After everyone has finished the exercise, invite your teams to evaluate the process to draw out their experiences. For example, ask them what the main differences between individual, team and official rankings were, and why. This will provoke discussion about how teams arrive at decisions, which will make people think about the skills they must use in future team scenarios, such as listening , negotiating and decision-making skills, as well as creativity skills for thinking "outside the box."

A common issue that arises in team decision making is groupthink . This can happen when a group places a desire for mutual harmony above a desire to reach the right decision, which prevents people from fully exploring alternative solutions.

If there are frequent unanimous decisions in any of your exercises, groupthink may be an issue. Suggest that teams investigate new ways to encourage members to discuss their views, or to share them anonymously.

Exercise 2: The Great Egg Drop*

In this classic (though sometimes messy!) game, teams must work together to build a container to protect an egg, which is dropped from a height. Before the egg drop, groups must deliver presentations on their solutions, how they arrived at them, and why they believe they will succeed.

This fun game develops problem-solving and decision-making skills. Team members have to choose the best course of action through negotiation and creative thinking.

Ideally at least six people in each team.
Raw eggs – one for each group, plus some reserves in case of accidents!
Materials for creating the packaging, such as cardboard, tape, elastic bands, plastic bottles, plastic bags, straws, and scissors.
Aprons to protect clothes, paper towels for cleaning up, and paper table cloths, if necessary.
Somewhere – ideally outside – that you can drop the eggs from. (If there is nowhere appropriate, you could use a step ladder or equivalent.)
Around 15 to 30 minutes to create the packages.
Approximately 15 minutes to prepare a one-minute presentation.
Enough time for the presentations and feedback (this will depend on the number of teams).
Time to demonstrate the egg "flight."
Put people into teams, and ask each to build a package that can protect an egg dropped from a specified height (say, two-and-a-half meters) with the provided materials.
Each team must agree on a nominated speaker, or speakers, for their presentation.
Once all teams have presented, they must drop their eggs, assess whether the eggs have survived intact, and discuss what they have learned.

When teams are making their decisions, the more good options they consider, the more effective their final decision is likely to be. Encourage your groups to look at the situation from different angles, so that they make the best decision possible. If people are struggling, get them to brainstorm – this is probably the most popular method of generating ideas within a team.

Ask the teams to explore how they arrived at their decisions, to get them thinking about how to improve this process in the future. You can ask them questions such as:

Did the groups take a vote, or were members swayed by one dominant individual?
How did the teams decide to divide up responsibilities? Was it based on people's expertise or experience?
Did everyone do the job they volunteered for?
Was there a person who assumed the role of "leader"?
How did team members create and deliver the presentation, and was this an individual or group effort?

Exercise 3: Create Your Own*

In this exercise, teams must create their own, brand new, problem-solving activity.

This game encourages participants to think about the problem-solving process. It builds skills such as creativity, negotiation and decision making, as well as communication and time management. After the activity, teams should be better equipped to work together, and to think on their feet.

Ideally four or five people in each team.
Paper, pens and flip charts.

Around one hour.

As the participants arrive, you announce that, rather than spending an hour on a problem-solving team-building activity, they must design an original one of their own.
Divide participants into teams and tell them that they have to create a new problem-solving team-building activity that will work well in their organization. The activity must not be one that they have already participated in or heard of.
After an hour, each team must present their new activity to everyone else, and outline its key benefits.

There are four basic steps in problem solving : defining the problem, generating solutions, evaluating and selecting solutions, and implementing solutions. Help your team to think creatively at each stage by getting them to consider a wide range of options. If ideas run dry, introduce an alternative brainstorming technique, such as brainwriting . This allows your people to develop one others' ideas, while everyone has an equal chance to contribute.

After the presentations, encourage teams to discuss the different decision-making processes they followed. You might ask them how they communicated and managed their time . Another question could be about how they kept their discussion focused. And to round up, you might ask them whether they would have changed their approach after hearing the other teams' presentations.

Successful decision making and problem solving are at the heart of all effective teams. While teams are ultimately led by their managers, the most effective ones foster these skills at all levels.

The exercises in this article show how you can encourage teams to develop their creative thinking, leadership , and communication skills , while building group cooperation and consensus.

* Original source unknown. Please let us know if you know the original source.

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Case Interview: Complete Prep Guide

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Welcome to our preparation tips for case interviews! Whether you are just curious about case interviews or are planning to apply for consulting internships or full-time jobs, these tips and resources will help you feel more prepared and confident.

A case interview is a role playing exercise in which an employer assesses how logically and persuasively you can present a case. Rather than seeing if you get the “correct” answer, the objective is to evaluate your thought process. ( Adapted with permission from Case In Point: Complete Case Interview Preparation by Marc Cosentino).

Case interviews are very commonly used in the interview process for consulting firms and companies in similar industries. In the case interview, you will typically be given a business problem and then asked to solve it in a structured way. Learning this structure takes preparation and practice. You can learn more and practice using the resources listed below.

Why are Case Interviews Used?

Case interviews allow employers to test and evaluate the following skills:

Analytical skills and logical ability to solve problems
Structure and thought process
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How can I prepare for Case Interviews?

1.) Read Management Consulted’s “Case Interview: Complete Prep Guide (2024)”

Management Consulted is a FREE resource for Tufts students : case and consulting resources such as 500 sample cases, Case Interview Bootcamp, Market Sizing Drills, Math Drills, case videos, consulting firm directory, and more

2.) Review additional resources:

Case in Point – This book, by Marc Cosentino, is a comprehensive guide that walks you through the case interview process from beginning to end. This guide has helped many students over the years and can serve as an excellent foundation for how to approach business problems
Casequestions.com – The companion website to Marc Cosentino’s book listed above offers preparation for case interviews, along with links to top 50 consulting firms
Management Consulting Case Interviews: Cracking The Case – tips for case interviews from the other side of the table, from Argopoint, a Boston management consulting firm specializing in legal department consulting for Fortune 500 companies
Preplounge.com – Free case preparation access for to up to 6 practice interviews with peers, selected cases, and video case solutions
RocketBlocks – Features consulting preparation such as drills and coaching
Practice sample online cases on consulting firm websites such as McKinsey , BCG , Bain , Deloitte and more!

3.) Schedule a mock case interview appointment with Karen Dankers or Kathy Spillane , our advisors for the Finance, Consulting, Entrepreneurship, and Business Career Community.

4.) PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE cases out loud on your own (yes, that can feel odd) or preferably, with another person. See #2 and #3 above for resources and ideas to find partners to practice live cases

5.) Enjoy and have fun solving business problems!

Open access
Published: 10 May 2024

Community-based participatory-research through co-design: supporting collaboration from all sides of disability

Cloe Benz ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6950-8855 1 ,
Will Scott-Jeffs 2 ,
K. A. McKercher ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4417-585X 3 ,
Mai Welsh ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7818-0115 2 , 4 ,
Richard Norman ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3112-3893 1 ,
Delia Hendrie ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5022-5281 1 ,
Matthew Locantro 2 &
Suzanne Robinson ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5703-6475 1 , 5

Research Involvement and Engagement volume 10 , Article number: 47 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

820 Accesses

Metrics details

As co-design and community-based participatory research gain traction in health and disability, the challenges and benefits of collaboratively conducting research need to be considered. Current literature supports using co-design to improve service quality and create more satisfactory services. However, while the ‘why’ of using co-design is well understood, there is limited literature on ‘ how ’ to co-design. We aimed to describe the application of co-design from start to finish within a specific case study and to reflect on the challenges and benefits created by specific process design choices.

A telepractice re-design project has been a case study example of co-design. The co-design was co-facilitated by an embedded researcher and a peer researcher with lived experience of disability. Embedded in a Western Australian disability organisation, the co-design process included five workshops and a reflection session with a team of 10 lived experience and staff participants (referred to as co-designers) to produce a prototype telepractice model for testing.

The findings are divided into two components. The first describes the process design choices made throughout the co-design implementation case study. This is followed by a reflection on the benefits and challenges resulting from specific process design choices. The reflective process describes the co-designers’ perspective and the researcher’s and organisational experiences. Reflections of the co-designers include balancing idealism and realism, the value of small groups, ensuring accessibility and choice, and learning new skills and gaining new insights. The organisational and research-focused reflections included challenges between time for building relationships and the schedules of academic and organisational decision-making, the messiness of co-design juxtaposed with the processes of ethics applications, and the need for inclusive dissemination of findings.

Conclusions

The authors advocate that co-design is a useful and outcome-generating methodology that proactively enables the inclusion of people with disability and service providers through community-based participatory research and action. Through our experiences, we recommend community-based participatory research, specifically co-design, to generate creative thinking and service design.

Plain language summary

Making better services with communities (called co-design) and doing research with communities (e.g. community-based participatory research) are ways to include people with lived experience in developing and improving the services they use. Academic evidence shows why co-design is valuable, and co-design is increasing in popularity. However, there needs to be more information on how to do co-design. This article describes the process of doing co-design to make telepractice better with a group of lived experience experts and staff at a disability organisation. The co-design process was co-facilitated by two researchers – one with a health background and one with lived experience of disability. Telepractice provides clinical services (such as physiotherapy or nursing) using video calls and other digital technology. The co-design team did five workshops and then reflected on the success of those workshops. Based on the groups’ feedback, the article describes what worked and what was hard according to the co-designers and from the perspective of the researchers and the disability organisation. Topics discussed include the challenge of balancing ideas with realistic expectations, the value of small groups, accessibility and choice opportunities and learning new skills and insights. The research and organisational topics include the need to take time and how that doesn’t fit neatly with academic and business schedules, how the messiness of co-design can clash with approval processes, and different ways of telling people about the project that are more inclusive than traditional research. The authors conclude that co-design and community-based participatory research go well together in including people with lived experience in re-designing services they use.

Peer Review reports

Introduction

Co-design has the potential to positively impact co-designers and their community, researchers, and organisations. Co-design is defined as designing with, not for, people [ 1 ] and can reinvigorate business-as-usual processes, leading to new ideas in industry, community and academia. As co-design and community-based participatory research gain traction, the challenges and benefits of collaborative research between people with lived experience and organisations must be considered [ 2 ].

Disability and healthcare providers previously made decisions for individuals as passive targets of an intervention [ 3 ]. By contrast, the involvement of consumers in their care [ 4 ] has been included as part of accreditation processes [ 4 ] and shown to improve outcomes and satisfaction. For research to sufficiently translate into practice, consumers and providers should be involved actively, not passively [ 4 , 5 ].

Approaches such as community-based participatory research promote “a collaborative approach that equitably involves community members, organisational representatives and researchers in all aspects of the research process” [ 6 ] (page 1). This approach originated in public health research and claims to empower all participants to have a stake in project success, facilitating a more active integration of research into practice and decreasing the knowledge to practice gap 6 . Patient and public involvement (PPI) increases the probability that research focus, community priorities and clinical problems align, which is increasingly demanded by research funders and health systems [ 7 ].

As community-based participatory research is an overarching approach to conducting research, it requires a complementary method, such as co-production, to achieve its aims. Co-production has been attributed to the work of Ostrom et al. [ 8 ], with the term co-design falling under the co-production umbrella. However, co-design can be traced back to the participatory design movement [ 9 ]. The term co-production in the context of this article includes co-planning, co-discovery, co-design, co-delivery, and co-evaluation [ 10 ]. Within this framework, the concept of co-design delineates the collaborative process of discovery, creating, ideating and prototyping to design or redesign an output [ 11 ]. The four principles of co-design, as per McKercher [ 1 ], are sharing power, prioritising relationships, using participatory means and building capacity [ 1 ]. This specific method of co-design [ 1 ] has been used across multiple social and healthcare publications [ 10 , 12 , 13 , 14 ].

A systematic review by Ramos et al. [ 15 ] describes the benefits of co-design in a community-based participatory-research approach, including improved quality and more satisfactory services. However, as identified by Rahman et al. [ 16 ], the ‘ why ’ is well known, but there is limited knowledge of ‘ how ’ to co-design. Multiple articles provide high-level descriptions of workshops or briefly mention the co-design process [ 13 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Pearce et al. [ 5 ] include an in-depth table of activities across an entire co-creation process, however within each part i.e., co-design, limited descriptions were included. A recent publication by Marwaa et al. [ 20 ] provides an in-depth description of two workshops focused on product development, and Tariq et al. [ 21 ] provides details of the process of co-designing a research agenda. Davis et al. [ 11 ] discuss co-design workshop delivery strategies summarised across multiple studies without articulating the process from start to finish. Finally, Abimbola et al. [ 22 ] provided the most comprehensive description of a co-design process, including a timeline of events and activities; however, this project only involved clinical staff and did not include community-based participation.

As “We know the why, but we need to know the how-to” [ 16 ] (page 2), of co-design, our primary aim was to describe the application of co-design from start to finish within a specific case study. Our secondary aim was to reflect on the challenges and benefits created by specific process design choices and to provide recommendations for future applications of co-design.

Overview of telepractice project

The case study, a telepractice redesign project, was based at Rocky Bay, a disability support service provider in Perth, Australia [ 23 ]. The project aimed to understand the strengths and pain points of telepractice within Rocky Bay. We expanded this to include telepractice in the wider Australian disability sector. The project also aimed to establish potential improvements to increase the uptake and sustainability of Rocky Bay’s telepractice service into the future. Rocky Bay predominantly serves people under the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) [ 24 ] by providing a variety of services, including allied health (e.g. physiotherapy, dietetics, speech pathology, etc.), nursing care (including continence and wound care), behaviour support and support coordination [ 23 ]—Rocky Bay services metropolitan Perth and regional Western Australia [ 23 ].

The first author, CB, predominantly conducted this research through an embedded researcher model [ 25 ] between Curtin University and Rocky Bay. An embedded researcher has been defined as “those who work inside host organisations as members of staff while also maintaining an affiliation with an academic institution” [ 25 ] (page 1). They had some prior contextual understanding which stemmed from being a physiotherapist who had previously delivered telehealth in an acute health setting. A peer researcher, WSJ, with lived experience of disability, worked alongside CB. They had no previous experience in research or co-design, this was their first paid employment and they had an interest in digital technology. Peer Researcher is a broad term describing the inclusion of a priority group or social network member as part of the research team to enhance the depth of understanding of the communities to which they belong [ 26 ]. Including a peer researcher in the team promoted equity, collective ownership, and better framing of the research findings to assist with connecting with people with lived experience. These outcomes align with key components of community-based participatory research and co-design [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ].

Person-first language was used as the preference of experts with lived experience who contributed to this research to respect and affirm their identity. However, we respect the right to choose and the potential for others to prefer identity-first language [ 31 ].

A summary of the structure of the phases completed before co-design workshops are represented in Fig. 1 below. Ethical approval for the project was received iteratively before each phase on the timeline (Fig. 1 ) from the Curtin Human Research Ethics Committee (HRE2021-0731). The reporting of this article has been completed in line with the Guidance for Reporting Involvement of Patients and the Public (GRIPP2) checklist [ 7 ].

Summary of telepractice co-design project structure [ 1 ]

Here, we present an outline of the chosen research methods with descriptions of each process design choice and supporting reasons and examples specific to the study. The format is in chronological order, with further details of each step provided in Appendix 1 (Supplementary Material 1).

Methods and results

Process of co-production and preparation for co-design.

Co-production was chosen as the planning method for the study, as the inclusion of community members (Rocky Bay Lived experience experts and Staff) in each step of the research process would increase buy-in and make the research more likely to meet their needs [ 5 ]. An example of co-planning (part of co-production) includes the study steering committee, with a lived experience expert, clinician and project sponsor representatives collaborating on the selection of study aim, methods and recruitment processes. Another example of co-planning, co-design, and co-delivery was recruiting a peer researcher with disability, who worked with the embedded researcher throughout the study design and delivery.

The second process design choice was to attempt to build safe enough conditions for community participation, as people who feel unsafe or unwelcome are less likely to be able to participate fully in the research [ 1 ]. Building conditions for safety was applied by repeatedly acknowledging power imbalances, holding space for community input, and anticipating and offering accessibility adjustments without judgment.

Getting started

Understanding and synthesising what is already known about telepractice experiences and learning from lived experience was prioritised as the first step in the process. We paired a scoping review of the literature with scoping the lived experiences of the community [ 32 ]. Our reasoning was to understand whether the findings aligned and, secondly, to learn what had already been done and to ask what was next, rather than starting from the beginning [ 1 ]. Examples of strategies used in this step included interviewing clinicians and service provider Managers across Australia to establish how they implemented telepractice during the pandemic and understand their views of what worked and what did not. The second learning process occurred onsite at Rocky Bay, with people with lived experience, clinicians and other support staff, whom the embedded researcher and peer researcher interviewed to understand experiences of telepractice at Rocky Bay.

The authors presented the interview findings during focus groups with Rocky Bay participants to share the learnings and confirm we had understood them correctly. The groups were divided into staff and lived experience cohorts, allowing for peer discussions and sharing of common experiences. This helped build relationships and a sense of familiarity moving into the workshop series.

Co-design workshops

This section outlines specific components of the co-design workshop preparation before describing each of the five workshops and the final reflection session.

Staff and community co-designers

Two process design choices were implemented to form the co-design group. The first was to prioritise lived experience input as there are generally fewer opportunities for lived experience leadership in service design [ 16 ], and because the disability community have demanded they be included where the focus impacts them [ 33 ]. To acknowledge the asymmetry of power between community members, people with lived experience of disability and professionals, we ensured the co-design group had at least the same number of lived experience experts as staff.

The second priority for the co-design group was to include people for whom involvement can be difficult to access (e.g. people who are isolated for health reasons and cannot attend in-person sessions, people who live in supported accommodation, part-time staff, and people navigating the dual-role of staff member while disclosing lived experience). It was important to learn from perspectives not commonly heard from and support equity of access for participants [ 4 ].

Workshop series structure

When structuring the workshop series, lived experience co-designers nominated meeting times outside standard work hours to reduce the impact of co-design on work commitments and loss of income while participating. The workshops were designed to be delivered as a hybrid of in-person and online to give co-designers a choice on how they wanted to interact. The workshops were designed as a series of five sequential 90-minute workshops, where co-designers voted for the first workshop to be predominantly in-person and the remainder of the workshops online. Some co-designers chose to attend the initial session in person to build rapport. However, the virtual option remained available. The subsequent online sessions reduced the travel burden on co-designers, which the co-designers prioritised over further face-to-face meetings.

Workshop facilitators

To maintain familiarity and ensure predictability for co-designers, the workshops were co-facilitated by the embedded researcher and peer researcher. The co-facilitators built on relationships formed through previous interactions (interviews and focus groups), and each facilitator represented part of the co-designer group as a clinician or a person with disability. An extra support person was tasked with supporting the co-designers with disability to break down tasks and increase the accessibility of activities. The reason for selecting the support person was that they could contribute their skills as a school teacher to support the communication and completion of activities, and they had no previous experience with disability services to influence the co-designers opinions. This role was adapted from the provocateur role described by McKercher [ 1 ].

Pre-workshop preparations

To prepare for the workshops, each co-designer was asked to complete a brief survey to ensure the co-facilitators understood co-designers collect preferences and needs ahead of the session to enable preparation and make accommodations. The survey included pronouns, accessibility needs and refreshment preferences. Following the survey, the co-facilitators distributed a welcome video; the peer researcher, a familiar person, was videoed explaining what to expect, what not to expect and expected behaviours for the group to support a safe environment [ 1 ]. This process design choice was made to allow co-designers to alleviate any potential anxieties due to not having enough information and to increase predictability.

Workshop resources and supports

As the first workshop was in-person, specific process choices were made to ensure co-designers felt welcome and to uphold the dignity of co-designers with lived experience [ 34 ]. Examples of process design choices include facilitating transport and parking requests, providing easy access to the building and room, making a sensory breakout room available and having the peer researcher waiting at the entrance to welcome and guide people to the workshop room.

After reaching the workshop room, all co-designers received an individualised resource pack to equalise access to workshop materials, aiming again to balance power in a non-discriminatory way [ 11 ]. The resource pack included name tags with pronouns, individualised refreshments, a fidget toy [ 35 ] whiteboard markers and a human bingo activity described in a later section. An easy-to-apply name tag design was selected after consulting a co-designer with an upper limb difference. Further details on the resource packs are included in Appendix 1 (Supplementary Material 1).

Enabling different kinds of participation

We provided non-verbal response cards to each co-designer as communication preferences vary significantly within the disability community. The cards were intended to benefit any co-designer who struggled to use the response buttons on MS teams. The co-facilitators co-created the Yes, No, and In-the-middle response cards (Fig. 2 ) and were guided by recommendations by Schwartz and Kramer [ 29 ]. They found that people with intellectual disability were more likely to respond “yes” if the negative option included a frowning face or red-coloured images, as choosing these types of alternatives was perceived as being negative or would cause offence [ 29 ].

Non-verbal response cards

A summary of the structure and purpose of each of the five workshops is shown in Fig. 3 , followed by a more in-depth discussion of the strategies employed in each workshop.

Outline of workshop and group structures

Workshop 1: the beginning

Human Bingo was the first workshop activity, as it aimed to support relationship building in an inclusive way for both in-person and online attendees. The activity asked each co-designer to place a name in each worksheet box of someone who fit the described characteristic of that square(for example, someone who likes cooking). To include the two online attendees, laptops were set up with individual videocall streams and noise cancelling headphones enabling the online co-designers to interact one-on-one with others during the activities.

The second activity used The Real Deal cards by Peak Learning [ 36 ] to ask the co-designers to sort cards to prioritise the top five experiences and feelings they would want in a future version of telepractice. This activity aimed to set initial priorities for the redesign of telepractice [ 1 ]. Small groups with a mix of lived experience experts and staff were tasked with negotiating and collaborating to produce their top five desired experiences and feelings for future service success.

A follow-up email was sent after the session to thank co-designers, provide closure, invite feedback and let co-designers know what to expect from the next session.

Workshop 2: mapping the journey

In the second workshop, held online, the co-facilitators explained the journey mapping process and showed a draft of how the visual representation would likely look (Fig. 4 ). As the first step, co-designers were tasked with completing a series of activities to analyse lived experience interview data on the current experience of telepractice for lived experience experts. Small mixed groups were created, prioritising the needs of the lived experience experts to have staff who would be the best fit in supporting them to work through the task [ 1 ]. The small groups were allocated interview quotes corresponding to the steps of a customer journey through telepractice and asked to identify strengths, challenges and emotions associated with the current Telepractice service journey at Rocky Bay [ 1 ]. Further details on the journey map analysis are described in Appendix 1 (Supplementary Material 1) and in a published article co-authored by the co-designers (Benz et al. [ 37 ]).

Draft journey map visualisation

After workshop two, the embedded researcher drafted a journey map by compiling the co-designer group responses to the analysis activity, which was then circulated for feedback and confirmation. The completed journey map is published with further details on the process in an article co-authored with the co-designers, Benz et al. [ 37 ].

Workshop 3: ideas for addressing pain points

For the third workshop, the co-facilitators selected activities to be completed separately by lived experience and staff co-designers. The lived experience expert activity involved exploring preferences for improving pain points identified through the journey map. The lived experience expert activity was facilitated by the peer researcher and support person and included questions such as, how would it be best to learn how to use telepractice? Visual prompt cards were shared to support idea creation, where lived experience expert co-designers could choose any option or suggest an alternative (Fig. 5 ).

Option cards for Lived experience expert co-designer workshop activity

Simultaneously, the staff co-designers completed a parallel activity to address pain points from a service delivery point of view. These pain points were identified in the clinical and non-clinical staff interviews and from the journey map summary of lived experience expert interviews (analysed in Workshop 2). Staff co-designers completed a mind map based on service blueprinting guidelines by Flowers and Miller [ 38 ]. The activity used service blueprinting to identify a list of opportunities for improvement, with four prompts for co-designers to commence planning the actions required to implement these improvements. The foci of the four prompts were roles, policies, technology and value proposition [ 38 ] (described further in Appendix 1 (Supplementary Material 1)). Each of the four prompts were completed for the ten proposed opportunities for improvement to draft plans for future telepractice service delivery.

Workshop 4: story telling and generation of future state solutions

In the fourth workshop, we introduced the concept of prototyping [ 39 ] as a designerly way to test co-designers’ ideas for improving telepractice according to desirability, feasibility and viability with a wider audience of lived experience experts and staff. The co-designers helped to plan the prototyping, and accessibility was a key consideration in selecting a prototype, as the group were conscious of the target audience.

Creating the prototype was collaborative, allowing co-designers to produce an output representing their ideas. They selected a video storyboard prototype with a staff and customer version formatted similarly to a children’s book. It included cartoon animations completed on PowerPoint, voiceover narration, closed captioning and an introductory explanation from two co-designers.

After workshop four, the co-designers collaborated on the customer and staff prototypes during the two weeks between workshops four and five, with support and input from the facilitators. The prototype files were co-produced, with different co-designers working on the visual aspects, the script for the main audio narration and the introductory explanation.

Workshop 5: finishing the story

The co-design group reviewed the draft prototypes in the final workshop, with specific attention paid to the story’s cohesiveness.

The feedback questionnaire was then created to be completed by viewers outside of the co-design group after engaging with either the staff or the customer prototype. The survey allowed Rocky Bay customers and staff to contribute ideas. Following thoughtful discussions, consensus was reached by all co-designers on the final survey questions (Appendix 2 (Supplementary Material 1)).

A reflection activity concluded the final workshop, allowing co-designers to provide feedback on the co-design process, elements for improvement and aspects they valued in participating in the project. Their reflections on the benefits and challenges of co-design in this study are included in the section Co-designer’s perspectives of the workshop series , with the reflection questions included in Appendix 3 (Supplementary Material 1).

Post prototype reflection session

The prototype feedback responses were reviewed with co-designers in a final reflection session. The group then discussed adaptations to the implementation plan for proposal to Rocky Bay. Following the survey discussion, co-designers reviewed proposed service principles for the new telepractice implementation recommendations. These principles aim to align any future decisions in the implementation and service provision stages of the telepractice project with the intentions of the co-designers. An additional reflection activity was completed, specific to the telepractice proposal they had produced and the prototyping process. Feedback relevant to subsequent discussions of the challenges and benefits of co-design is included in the following section: Co-designer’s perspectives of the workshop series , with the reflection prompts in Appendix 3 (Supplementary Material 1).

Benefits and challenges

Learnings derived from completing a study of this kind are complex. However, it is necessary to reflect on which strategies used in the project were beneficial and which strategies created challenges - anticipated and unexpected. These reflections are discussed in two sections, the first being the challenges and benefits reflected upon by co-designers. The second set of reflections relates to organisational and research project-level benefits and challenges from the perspective of clinical department managers and researchers involved in the project.

Co-designer’s perspectives of the workshop series

Co-designers were positive overall about the workshop series. Responses to a prompt for one-word descriptors of their experience included “captivating, innovative, fulfilling, exciting, insightful, helpful, eye-opening and informative ” .

Co-designing as a team

A foundational strategy implemented in this project was the intentional collaboration of lived experience experts with staff; this linked to the co-design principle of prioritising relationships and sharing power. Multiple reflections commented on feeling like a team and that having diverse perspectives across the group was beneficial.

It was especially interesting to hear the perspective of clinicians (for us, the other side of Telepractice). [Lived experience expert Co-designer]

Additionally, the combination of facilitators, including an embedded researcher with an allied health clinical background, a peer researcher with lived experience and a support person with strengths in breaking down tasks, provided different facets of support and task modelling to the co-designers throughout the process.

Balancing idealism and realism

There is an inherent challenge in collaboration between lived experience experts and service providers, whereby co-designers formulate ideas for service improvement and then, in good faith, propose required changes to be implemented. Strategies to support imagination and idealism while being honest about the constraints of what can be delivered were implemented in the context of this project. This was essential to reinforce to co-designers that their contributions and ideas are valid while tempering their hopes with the truth that organisational change is challenging and funding for change is limited. Co-designers were encouraged to be cognisant of ideas that would require high investment (cost and time) and which ideas faced fewer barriers to implementation. This strategy did not prevent the ideation of changes and prioritising what mattered most to them, and co-designers felt it was beneficial in adding a level of consideration regarding what investments they deemed necessary versus those that would be nice to have. For example, having a person to call for help was viewed as necessary, while a nice to have was more advanced technological features.

I feel that the prototype is useful; however, I worry that nothing will be carried over to the Rocky Bay Service. I feel like more customers will want to access telepractice, and Rocky Bay now needs to start the implementation process to ensure that telepractice is utilised, including processes, education and training. [Clinician Co-designer]

The value of small groups

Working in small groups was another beneficial strategy, aiming to create a more hospitable environment for co-designers to voice their thoughts. The small groups varied across activities and workshops, with facilitators intentionally pairing groups that would best support the lived experience of expert co-designers completing activities. As described in the workshop sections, some activities suited mixed groups, whereas others suited lived experience expert and staff-specific groups. Two reflective comments demonstrated the benefit of the small groups, one from a clinician who reflected on supporting a fellow co-designer:

I found that in our group, all of us had a say; however, [Lived Experience Co-designer name] was a bit overwhelmed at times, so I tried to support her with that. [Clinician Co-designer]

And a lived experience expert co-designer additionally reflected:

The breakout rooms were a very good idea. It can be quite intimidating speaking in front of the main group. I found it much easier to participate in the smaller groups . [Lived experience expert Co-designer]

The second session included an unplanned whole group activity, which challenged co-designers. Co-designers reflections of this experience demonstrate the benefits of smaller groups:

I did feel that at the end when the whole group did the task, there wasn’t as much collaboration as there were quite a few more assertive participants, so the quieter ones just sat back. [Clinician Co-designer]

Accessibility and choice

A challenge navigated throughout the workshop series with a diverse group of co-designers was meeting their varying individual health and other needs. This required responding in sensitive, non-judgemental, and supportive ways to encourage co-designers to engage fully. Examples of support include the presence of a support person and adaption of resource packs for co-designers who have difficulty swallowing (re: refreshments), as well as the previously mentioned non-verbal response cards and accessible name tags.

Accessibility supports were also provided for the peer researcher during facilitation activities, including pre-written scripts to provide clarity when explaining tasks to the co-design group, written reminders and regular check-ins. A lived experience expert co-designer reflected that it was beneficial that they could tell the peer researcher was nervous but appreciated that he was brave and made them feel like they did not need to be perfect if the peer researcher was willing to give it a go.

When facilitating the sessions, the embedded researcher and peer researcher identified that the workshops were long and, at times, mentally strenuous. One co-designer requested “more breaks during each session” . Breaks were offered frequently; however, upon reflection, we would schedule regular breaks to remove the need for co-designers to accept the need for a break in front of the group. The instructions for each activity were visual, verbal and written and given at the start of a task. However, once the co-designers were allocated to breakout rooms, they could no longer review the instructions. Many co-designers suggested that having the instructions in each breakout room’s chat window would have been a valuable visual reminder.

One thing I think might of helped a little is having the instructions in the chat as I know I that I listened but couldn’t recall some of the instructions for the group task. [Lived experience expert Co-designer]

Learning new skills and gaining new insight

The co-designers considered that the benefits of working together included learning new skills and widening their understanding of research, the services they provide or use, and the differences between the priorities of lived experience experts and staff. Two lived experience experts commented that the opportunity to learn collaboration skills and create cartoons using PowerPoint were valuable skills for them to utilise in the future. One clinician reflected that the process of co-design had improved their clinical practice and increased their use of telepractice:

My practice is 100% better. I am more confident in using telepractice and more confident that, as a process, it doesn’t reduce the impact of the service- in some ways, it has enhanced it when customers are more relaxed in their own environments. I have not seen my stats, but my use of telepractice has increased significantly, too. [Clinician Co-designer]

The management co-designer acknowledged that although ideas across the group may be similar, prioritisation of their importance can vary dramatically:

Whilst all the feedback and potential improvements were very similar, some things that I viewed as not an issue, was very different to a customer’s perspective. [Management Co-designer]

Overall, the workshop series challenged co-designers. However, the provision of a supportive and accessible environment resulted in mutual benefits for the research, organisation, and co-designers themselves. The strategy for facilitating the workshops was to pose challenges, support the co-designers in rising to meet them, and take into account their capabilities if provided with the right opportunity. A lived experience expert co-designer summarised the effectiveness of this strategy:

I found the activities to be challenging without being too difficult. Each activity provided enough guidance and structure to encourage interesting group discussions and make collaboration easy. [Lived experience expert Co-designer]

Research and organisational reflections of benefits and challenges of co-design

A significant challenge in completing this project was that building foundational relationships and trust takes time. While the authors view this trust as the foundation on which community-based participatory research and co-design are built, they note the direct tension of the time needed to develop these foundational relationships with the timeline expectations of academic and organisational decision-making. The flexibility required to deliver a person-centred research experience for the co-designers resulted in regular instances when timeline extensions were required to prioritise co-designer needs over efficiency. The result of prioritising co-designer needs over research timeline efficiency was an extended timeline that was significantly longer than expected, which sometimes created a disconnect between the flexibility of co-design and the rigidity in traditional academic and organisational processes.

The impacts of a longer-than-expected timeline for completion of the co-design process included financial, project scope, and sponsorship challenges. The project’s initial scope included a co-implementation and co-evaluation phase; however, due to the three-year time constraint, this was modified to conclude following the prototyping process. Whilst the three-year period set expectations for project sponsors and other collaborators from Rocky Bay, the wider context for the project varied significantly and rapidly over this period. This included two changes in Rocky Bay supervisor and one change in Rocky Bay project sponsor. Additionally, one of the academic supervisors left Curtin. This challenge indicates that the project would benefit from key role succession planning.

The peer researcher role was beneficial in providing an opportunity for a person with lived experience to join the study in a strength-based role and experience academic and business processes. However, challenges arose with the timeline extensions, which required this part-time, casual role to be extended by seven months. While the contract extension posed budgetary challenges, the role was viewed as vital to the completion of the project.

While an essential component of research, particularly involving vulnerable populations, ethical approvals proved challenging due to the non-traditional research methods involved in co-design. It was evident to the authors that while the ethics committee staff adhered to their processes, they were bound by a system that did not have adequate flexibility to work with newer research methods, such as co-design. Multiple methods in this study were heavily integrated into the community, including embedded research, peer research and co-design.

The present ethics process provided a comprehensive review focusing on planned interactions within research sessions (e.g. interviews and workshops). Unfortunately, this failed to account for a wider view, including the initial co-production prior to ethical application and anecdotal interactions that occurred regularly in the organic co-design process. In addition to the repeated submissions required to approve the sequential study format, these interactions created a significant workload for the research team and ethics office. These challenges were compounded by the need to navigate Rocky Bay’s organisational processes and changing business needs within ethical approval commitments.

In the authors’ opinion, prioritising the inclusion of lived experience experts in co-creating outputs to disseminate findings was beneficial. The co-creation enabled an authentic representation of the study to audiences regarding community-based participatory research and co-design method implementation. For example, the presentation of a panel discussion at a conference in which the peer researcher could prerecord his responses to questions as his preferred method of participation. All posters presented by the project were formatted to be accessible to lay consumers and were collaboratively produced, with the additional benefit of the posters being displayed across Rocky Bay hubs for customers and staff to gain study insights.

Due to the co-design method’s dynamic nature, some budgetary uncertainty was challenging to navigate. However, financial and non-financial remuneration for all non-staff participants in the project was prioritised. As previously discussed, the position of peer researcher was a paid role; additionally, all lived experience expert participants were remunerated at a rate of AUD 30/hour in the form of gift cards. The carer representative on the steering committee recommended using gift cards to avoid income declaration requirements from government benefits people may receive. Non-financial remuneration for the valuable time and contribution of the co-designer group included co-authorship on an article written regarding the Journey Map they produced (Benz et al. [ 37 ]) and acknowledgement in any other appropriate outputs. The implementation proposal provided to Rocky Bay included recommendations for continued inclusion and remuneration of co-designers.

Setting a new bar for inclusion

Another benefit to reflect upon, which may be the most significant legacy of the project, was setting the precedence for the inclusion of people with disability in decision-making roles in future projects and research conducted by the University and Rocky Bay. After this project commenced, other Rocky Bay clinical projects have similarly elevated the voices of lived experience in planning and conducting subsequent quality improvement initiatives.

I’m lucky enough to have been part of a lot of projects. But I guess I probably haven’t been a part of continuous workshops, pulling in all perspectives of the organisation perfectly… So, collaboration and getting insight from others I haven’t usually was a very unique experience, and I definitely found value if this were to continue in other projects. [Manager Co-designer]

In summary, the findings from using a co-design method for the telepractice research study produced a series of benefits and presented the researchers with multiple challenges. The findings also addressed a literature gap, presenting in-depth descriptive methods to demonstrate how co-design can be applied to a specific case.

Drawn from these findings, the authors identified six main points which form the basis of this discussion. These include (1) the fact that the necessary time and resources required to commit to co-design process completion adequately were underestimated at the outset, (2) there is a need to support the health, well-being and dignity of lived experience expert participants, (3) academic ethical processes have yet to adapt to address more participatory and integrated research methods, (4) strategies used to foster strong collaborative relationships across a diverse group were valued by all participants, (5) better delineation between terminologies such as co-design and community-based participatory research or patient and public involvement would improve the clarity of research methods and author intent and, (6) broader non-traditional impacts that participatory research can create should be better quantified and valued in the context of research impact. Each point will now be discussed in further detail.

In underestimating the time and resources required to complete the telepractice study, a scope reduction was required. This scope reduction removed the study’s originally planned co-implementation and co-evaluation phases. While Harrison et al. [ 40 ] and Bodden and Elliott [ 41 ] advocate for more frequent and comprehensive evaluation of co-designed initiatives, the authors acknowledge that this became no longer feasible within the study constraints. A growing body of literature indicates expected timelines for completed co-production projects from co-planning to co-evaluation. An example by Pearce et al. [ 5 ] indicated that a timeline of five years was reasonable. In contrast, a more limited co-design process was completed with a shorter timeline by Tindall et al. [ 13 ]. Although neither of these articles were published when this study commenced, they are complementary in building an evidence base for future research to anticipate an adequate timeline.

While co-design and other co-production processes are resource and time-intensive, the investment is essential to prioritise the health and other needs of potentially vulnerable population groups in the context of an imbalance of power [ 42 ]. In exploring the concept of dignity for people with disability, Chapman et al. [ 34 ] indicated that recognising the right to make decisions and proactively eliminating or minimising barriers to inclusion are key to protecting dignity. Community participation in decision-making processes such as this study can result in messy and unpredictable outcomes. However, the onus must be placed on policymakers, organisations, and academia to acknowledge this sufficiently rather than demand conformity [ 15 ].

The authors posit that the study would have benefited from an alternative ethics pathway, which may provide additional required flexibility while upholding the rigour of the ethical review process. The increasing frequency of participatory research studies indicates that challenges experienced by the authors of this study are unlikely to be isolated. Lloyd [ 43 ] described challenges regarding information gathered in-between, before and after structured research sessions, reflecting that they relied on personal judgement of the intent to consent for research use. Similarly, Rowley [ 44 ] reflected on the ethical complexities of interacting with families and respecting their confidentiality within the context of being integrated within an organisation. While these studies were co-production in child protection and education, the ethical challenges of their reflections parallel those experienced in the telepractice study. The risks posed by inadequate ethical support in these contexts are that increased poor ethical outcomes will occur, especially in the in-between times of co-design. Therefore, an ethics pathway that involves more frequent brief liaisons with a designated ethics representative to update project progress and troubleshoot ethical considerations may better support researchers to safeguard study participants.

We believe the decision to complete a sequential workshop series with a consistent group of diverse co-designers, led by co-facilitators, was a strength of the co-design process implemented in the telepractice re-design project. The group worked together across a series of workshops, which enabled them to build solid working relationships. Pearce et al. [ 5 ], Rahman et al. [ 16 ] and Tindall et al. [ 13 ] also demonstrated a collaborative whole-team approach to co-design. By contrast, studies that involved separate workshops with different cohorts or multiple of the same workshop did not demonstrate strong collaboration between co-designers [ 18 , 19 , 20 ]. Nesbitt et al. [ 19 ] explicitly highlighted that they would improve their method by completing sequential workshops with a continuous cohort. Stephens et al. [ 45 ] found that small mixed groups were not sufficient to support the participation of people with disability, indicating that the choice to intentionally balance groups to meet the lived experience expert co-designer’s needs may have been an impacting factor on our success.

A lack of clarity in the terminology used in co-design and community-based participatory practice was identified during the completion of this study. We found that co-design frequently meant either a collaborative design process or good participatory practices [ 46 ]. When viewing the structure of the telepractice re-design project, the overarching research approach was community-based participatory-research, and the method was co-design [ 9 ]. The delineation between the overarching approach and methods clarifies the misappropriation of the term co-design with the intent of meaning public participation [ 46 ] rather than the joint process of creative thinking and doing to design an output [ 11 ]. The use of the two-level structure appears more prominent in the United Kingdom, whereas Fox et al. [ 47 ] systematic review assessing public or patient participants identified that 60% of studies originated from the United Kingdom, compared to the next highest 16% for Canada or 4% from Australia and the United States. To improve clarity and reduce confusion about the terminology used, the authors advocate for greater awareness and implementation of the delineation between the concepts of a community-based-participatory-research/patient or public involvement approach versus the co-design method.

An example of co-design being used where alternate terms such as community-based participatory processes (or research) may be more relevant was the most recent amendment to the act governing the NDIS under which this project resided [ 48 ]. The term co-design could be interpreted as an intent to collaborate with people with disability for equitable involvement in all aspects of the NDIS [ 48 ]. It is proposed that the differentiation of these terms would assist in clarifying the intent of the study and dissuade inaccurate expectations of community involvement or design processes.

Implementing community-based participatory research has demonstrated the potential to create an impact that expands further than the original aim of the study. The skills learned by co-designers, the learning of the research team in collaboration with people with disability, the engagement and skill-building of a peer researcher with lived experience, the organisations who engaged in the co-design process and the academic and lay people who engaged with research outputs, all carry a piece of the impact of the co-design process. Rahman et al. [ 16 ] contend that co-design processes positively impact communities. In the context of this study, the peer researcher was included in the National Disability Insurance Agency’s quarterly report as an example of strength-based employment opportunities, which significantly positively impacted his career prospects [ 49 ]. This project provided skills for people with disability that they value and improved the clinical practice of clinician co-designers, which echoes the conclusions of Ramos et al. [ 15 ], who described that participants felt valued and experienced improved self-esteem. There is additional intent from the authors to positively impact disability providers and academia, to advocate for greater collaboration, and to provide open-access publications to provide a stronger evidence base for co-design in clinical practice and service delivery.

Strengths and limitations

The study provides reflective evidence to support the challenges and benefits experienced during the implementation of the study. However, a limitation in the project’s design was the exclusion of outcome measures to assess the impact of process design choices directly. Stephens et al. [ 45 ] completed targeted outcome measures correlating to accessibility adaptations in co-design and conceded that the variability of findings and individual needs reduced the usefulness of these measures.

The reduction of project scope enabled the completion of the study within the limitations of budgeting and timeline restrictions. Although the scope of the project had some flexibility, there were limitations to how far this could be extended as resources were not infinite, and staffing changes meant that organisational priorities changed. Including implementation and evaluation would have improved the study’s rigour. However, Rocky Bay now has the opportunity to implement internally without potential research delays and restrictions.

The blended and flexible approach to the co-design process was a strength of the study as it met the co-designers needs and maximised the project’s potential inclusivity. This strength has the potential to positively impact other studies that can modify some of the process design choices to suit their context and increase inclusivity [ 11 ]. It is believed that the messiness of co-design is important in meeting the needs and context of each individual study; therefore, no two co-design processes should look the same.

The authors concede that the inclusion of a cohort of people with disability and clinical staff does not represent the entirety of their communities, and their proposed changes may cause some parts of the disability community to experience increased barriers [ 50 ]. It is important to note that while the co-designers who participated in this project provided initial design developments, future opportunities remain to iterate the proposed telepractice service and continue to advocate for equitable access for all.

Recommendations for future studies

Recommendations from this study fall into two categories: recommendations for those intending to utilise the described methods and recommendations for future avenues of research inquiry. For those intending to implement the methods, the primary recommendations are to build ample time buffers into the project schedule, implement key role succession planning and set remuneration agreements at the outset, and work together as partners with the mindset that all contributors are creative [ 51 ] with important expertise and invaluable insights if supported appropriately.

Regarding avenues for future inquiry, we recommend investigating a more dynamic and flexible ethics process that may utilise more frequent short consultations to respond to ethical considerations during the emergent co-design and participatory research.

In the authors’ opinion, supported by co-designers experiences, co-design is a useful and outcome-generating methodology that can proactively enable the inclusion of people with disability and service providers in a community-based participatory research approach. The process is both time and resource-intensive; however, in our opinion, the investment is justified through the delivery of direct research benefits and indirect wider community benefits. We advocate for using community-based participatory-research/processes paired with co-design to generate creative thinking within service design processes. Through co-design processes, we recommend collaborating with a single diverse group of co-designers who have the time and space to build trusting working relationships that enable outputs representative of the group consensus.

Data availability

The dataset supporting the conclusions of this article is predominantly included within the article (and its additional files). However, due to the small number of co-designers reflecting upon the research, despite deidentification, there is a reasonable assumption of identification; therefore, the reflection activity response supporting data is not available.

Abbreviations

Australian Dollar

Guidance for Reporting Involvement of Patients and the Public 2 Checklist

Human Research Ethics Committee

Doctor of Philosophy

Patient and Public Involvement

Microsoft Teams

National Disability Insurance Scheme

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the contribution of Rocky Bay as the industry partner of this project and would like to thank the Co-designers of this project, without whom none of this was possible. The research team would also like to thank Katie Harris for her time and support throughout the workshop series, which were invaluable to the completion of the project and the formation of the published study.

The article forms part of a PhD project funded by the first author, CB’s Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) scholarship.

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Cloe Benz, Richard Norman, Delia Hendrie & Suzanne Robinson

Rocky Bay, Mosman Park, WA, Australia

Will Scott-Jeffs, Mai Welsh & Matthew Locantro

Beyond Sticky Notes, Sydney, Australia

K. A. McKercher

Therapy Focus, Bentley, Australia

Deakin Health Economics, Institute for Health Transformation, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

Suzanne Robinson

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Contributions

CB and MW liaised with the steering committee and conceived the study and structure. SR, DH and RN guided the protocol development and ethics approval. KAM provided methodological support to the project and subject matter expertise. CB and WJS completed participant recruitment, facilitation of workshops and data collection. KAM and CB ideated the format and content of the article. CB completed data analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript and approved of the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cloe Benz .

Ethics declarations

Ethical approval and consent.

The study was approved by the Curtin University Human Research Ethics Committee (ID# HRE2021-0731), and all participants provided written informed consent before engaging in any research activity.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

Cloe Benz, Richard Norman, Delia Hendrie & Suzanne Robinson do not have any competing interests to declare. Will Scott-Jeffs, Matthew Locantro and Mai Welsh, for all or part of the study period were employed by Rocky Bay a Not-For-Profit Disability Service provider who function as the industry partner for the project. K.A. McKercher is the author of a co-design method book referenced in the article. McKercher also runs a business that helps people co-design.

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Appendix 1–3

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Benz, C., Scott-Jeffs, W., McKercher, K.A. et al. Community-based participatory-research through co-design: supporting collaboration from all sides of disability. Res Involv Engagem 10 , 47 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-024-00573-3

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-024-00573-3

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