Designed Team Alliance – a tool for teams and families

For a team – and I set team and family alike in this blogpost – it’s very helpful to make explicit how they want to be while working together. As a facilitator I ask: “What’s important to you in your working relationship?”

Words like “respect”, “helpfulness”, “goal oriented”, “committed”, etc are being named often. The question however is what do they mean for the group of people that are writing them down? As a facilitator I help them to be as specific as possible and than we explore the different aspects that are lying within.

To make the DTA complete it is important to answer the question: “How do we want to be if we see we’re not living up to our DTA. The answers belong as well on the DTA.

The DTA should be a living document. Therefore it’s place is not an electronic tool, where it can be easily forgotten. Everyone should be able to see it – all the time. A flip on the wall of the team room or the background of the screen of a team member is a good place.

I created a DTA with my family. The kids are to young to read, but at least one of them could be part of the discussion. So we came up with one overall principle that’s important to us. We want to love, respect and support each other all the time. That means no shouting, no boxing or kicking, no swearing. It means supporting each other on eye level. It is valid for children and parents alike!

What do we want to do when we don’t live up to it? We sometimes watch a tv series for children called “Stillwater”. In this a big panda bear helps three neighbouring children to learn something about their emotions and what living together can mean. He is very sensitive and acts out of a coaching stance. (I actually think it’s a series for parents as well.) In one of the episodes Stillwater gave the option to pause a moment and breath in and out five times very consciously, so that one of the children could calm down and reflect on what’s important in this moment. We all liked this scene very much and made it part of our DTA. Now anyone can shout “stillwater” if he/she observes that someone does something that doesn’t follow our first guideline. The person called out has to breath in and out five times very consciously.

We hope our DTA will help us to be a better family.