Leading Effective Teams (LET)
Get the insights and skills needed to lead complex team efforts to success under the most challenging of circumstances
Leading Effective Teams, from the Stanford Advanced Project Management Program, gives managers an opportunity to step back and acquire the strategic perspective they need to conquer the vast initiatives of their organization.
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.
Drawing on research on high-performance teams whose leaders attained success, Leading Effective Teams 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.
Leading Effective Teams can be taken on campus at Stanford University, onsite at your organization, through synchronous live virtual advanced project management courses, or via streaming video in our online Stanford Advanced Project Management program.
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
Leading Effective Teams is designed for anyone, at any level in the organization, who is charged with achieving results by providing effective leadership to a complex team effort in a challenging operational environment. It will especially benefit leaders of geographically distributed teams and teams whose composition fluctuates or extends beyond the organization’s boundaries.
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
Read more about how to get started with the Stanford Advanced Project Management program for an individual, or bring Leading Effective Teams, as well as any of our corporate learning solutions, to your organization. Please contact us today to learn more.
