Get the insights and skills needed to lead complex team efforts to success under the most challenging of circumstances.

Downloads

Datasheet

It is no easy task to lead a team whose members span organizational lines, geographical boundaries, cultures, and even languages...whose backgrounds, skill sets, and personalities differ radically...and whose priorities and levels of commitment vary greatly. The challenges are compounded when the team must work asynchronously across time zones and continually address changing contingencies and concerns. Leading Effective Teams gives managers of such initiatives an opportunity to step back and acquire the strategic perspective they need. Drawing on research on high-performance teams whose leaders attained success, the course demonstrates how to avoid breakdowns—and how to achieve breakthroughs. Participants acquire the ability to unleash a team’s potential by applying proven approaches to communication, coordination, collaboration, and conflict management.

Leading Effective Teams is expressly designed to develop effectiveness in leading complex project and program initiatives. It is not intended, however, to provide a comprehensive foundation in project or program management techniques. This course is an elective in the Stanford APM curriculum.

Benefits to the Organization

As a result of Leading Effective Teams, your organization will benefit from:

• Enhanced ability of teams to align their projects with organizational objectives
• Improved communication, coordination, and productivity of diverse team members
• Team leaders' ability to select and apply the most appropriate tools, techniques, and technologies for leading complex projects that span organizational and geographical lines

Learning Objectives

After completing Leading Effective Teams, you will be able to:

• Assess your team’s effectiveness and identify opportunities for performance improvement
• Cultivate a team culture that encourages collaboration and innovation
• Understand and effectively manage the dynamics of team interactions, including conflict
• Overcome distance challenges by optimizing established best practices for distributed teams
• Maximize the contributions of temporary and externally based team members

Target Audience

Course Topics

Course Introduction

• Class exercise
• Course expectations
• Module timeline
• Course map

Highly Effective Teams

• Characteristics of high-performing teams
• The Group Effectiveness model
• Assessing group effectiveness
• Technical professionals: unique challenges
• Leading technical professionals

Leading Through Context and Culture

• Definitions of “context” and “culture”
• Code Rush, a video case study
• Analyzing context and culture in your organization

Team Design and Development

• Team development models
• Team learning
• Managing interruptions
• Boundary spanning
• Measuring effectiveness

Interpreting Team Dynamics

• Observing team communication
• Nominal group technique

Fuzzy Membership

• Categories of fuzzy members
• Managing contractors
• Understanding fuzzy members

Conflict and Conflict Management

• Definition of “conflict”
• Types of conflicts
• Causes of conflict
• Conflict management styles
• Effective techniques for managing conflict

Fostering a Collaborative Team

• Environment
• What defines “collaborative” environments?
• Characteristics of collaboration
• When collaboration is essential
• Planning for collaboration

Best Practices in Distributed Teams

• Distributed teams’ characteristics and trends
• Research findings
• Sharing effective approaches