Trainers Notes: Building Teams
Key Teaching Points:
• To explain why leadership teams are important to our success
• To understand the differences between good and bad team
experiences
• To develop an understanding of the Five Foundational Blocks of a
Successful Team
• To begin practicing the skills needed for a successful leadership team:
Section
Introduction
Welcome- Trainer tells story
of self
Structure is everywhere
Review 3 types of leadership
Organizing Team Structure
History of successful
leadership teams
What do bad teams do?
What do bad teams do?
What do bad teams do?
What do bad teams do?
What do bad teams do?
What do good teams do?
So How do we build this
good team?
5 Foundational Blocks
Explain Learning Teams
session
Teamwork
 Review agenda
 Develop Shared Purpose
 Decide Collaborative
Norms
 Review Team Roles
 Create Team Chant
Debrief
Time (125 Materials/Notes
min)
30 minutes
6 minutes Slide 1- Building Relationships
Slide 2- Structure is everywhere
Slide 3- I’m the leader; We’re all leaders;
Snowflake
Slide 4- Organizing team structure
Slide 5- Twelve disciples, MLK, Obama cabinet
Slide 6- What do bad teams do?
Slide 7- They don’t get anything done
Slide 8- They don’t coordinate or communicate
with each other.
Slide 9- Team is less than the sum of their parts
Slide 10-Individuals are not learning and
growing over time
Slide 11- Meet goals, build capacity, individual
learning, team coordination
Slide 12- Five foundational blocks
Slide 13- 18- Diverse people, Common purpose,
Clear Boundaries, Clear Roles, Explicit Norms
Slide 19-23- Explain the various parts of their
breakout sessions. Agenda Below
70 minutes Binders
 5min All Materials are in the participant guide
 35min
 10min
 15min
 5 min
25 minutes Have teams share their team purpose and team
chant in front of big group.
developing a shared purpose, clarifying team roles and responsibilities,
and creating norms.
Annotated Timeline:

* This section is intended to be used as a guide. The best trainers will take
this material and make it their own, working in their story of self throughout
the presentation and pulling on actual examples from their lives and their
organizination or campaign.

Trainer Story of Self

Tell your 2 min Story of Self. You should integrate examples of you time on a
successful or unsuccessful team and what you learned from it. Use the Story
of Self Worksheet in the participant guide and the Barack Obama video to
help develop your example story.

Structure is everywhere

Structure is something that we experience everyday.

Audience Engagement: What kind of structure do you see at church? Family?

Work?

Structure is a good thing. It is often put in place to help things run smoothly
and help get more work done.
Review 3 types of Leadership

Remember when we talked about this structure during _______ presentation

on the Principles of leadership. We talked about why the ‘I’m the leader’ and
‘we’re all leaders’ approach doesn’t always work. We are going to teaching
you based on the snowflake structure and how this structure can be used to
help you form neighborhood teams to work most effectively to meet your
goals.

Organizing Team Structure

• Leadership teams offer a structural model for working together that

fosters interdependent leadership, where individuals can work toward
goals together.

• Leadership teams provide a foundation from which an organization can

expand its reach.

History of Successful Leadership Teams

• The most effective leaders have always created teams to work with
them and to lead with them.

• Take for example Moses, Aaron and Miriam in the story of Exodus, or
Jesus and the Twelve Disciples in the New Testament.
 • Even Barack Obama has a leadership team working with- Secretary of
Education, Commerce, Labor, Interior, Homeland Security, Defense,
Health and Human Services etc.

 Trainer Tip: Feel free to choose other groups that will resonate with your
audience
What do bad teams do?

We have all been on teams at some point in our lives. Work team, organizing
team, sports team, etc. If you have had a bad team experience you might be
hesitant to work in teams.

1. The team doesn’t get anything done. They talk a lot but nobody ever
takes on a the responsibility for getting things done.

2. The team doesn’t coordinate: everyone ends up stepping on each

other’s feet, they don’t communicate well and team members end up
frustrated.

3. Team is less than the sum of their parts. The team members can in
fact get more done than if they work together.

4. Individuals on the team don’t have opportunities to develop their skills

and learn over time. Working on this team is not personally fulfilling.

What do good teams do?

Audience engagement: Who has been on a good team before? (Listen

to 2-3 examples and chart key words)

A good team:

1. Can meet their goals

2. They get better as a team overtime.

3. Individuals are learning and acquiring new skills

4. Team is coordinating. Individuals talk to one another.

5 Foundational blocks to building a good team

It has been studied. There are foundational blocks to building an effective

team, and when used correctly you can increase your capacity and enable
your team to make a larger impact.

Audience Engagement: Who are these guys? (Referring to the Dream Team)

1992 Olympic Basketball Dream Team who many consider the greatest team
ever assembled, in any sport. It dominated the Olympic competition, beating
its eight opponents by an average of 44 points and exploding the popularity
of basketball across the world. But why were they so great?
  DIVERSE PEOPLE: from different backgrounds and different
skills/talents

 COMMON PUPOSE: Everyone on the team had a common purpose…

to win!

 CLEAR BOUNDARIES: Everyone knew they were on the team. It’s not
a different, random group of people every time. People were on the
team long enough that the team learns to work together better and
better.

 CLEAR ROLES: Each team member held a position on the team

(roles--big, tall center David Robinson focused on rebounds where as
not so big, point guard John Stockton passed the ball) They were
responsible for giving 100% to that position, and if each person did
their job and stayed in their own lane, together they were responsible
for the shared goal of winning.

 EXPLICIT NORMS: There are explicit rules about how you will work
together as a team. When you will show up to practice, when you will
work out, how you will communicate with your team and your coach.

Most importantly there is a norm corrector.

Audience Engagement: What happens if you show up to practice late?

Norm corrector= run, pushups etc.

Leadership Definition

Audience Engagement: Do you remember what our definition of Leadership

is? How does building structure around these foundational blocks allow us to
lead in this way?

Leadership: Enabling others to find purpose in the face of uncertainty.

Learning Team Session Overview

• Overview of the Breakout session – what the learning teams will do for
the next 70 minutes.
• Develop Shared Purpose – this should be very specific to
your team – this is the what, where, who, how, when;
include specific and measurable goals.

• Decide Collaborative Norms

• Just as we did as a group at the start of this training

yesterday, what norms will you establish as a group to
function after you leave here today?
 • Review Team Roles

• Think about your strengths and experiences and pick the

role that best suits you.

• Create Team Chant

o Make sure to create that team chant
because you will come back to the large
group and share it with us.
Any Questions?
Teams Debrief

Debrief

• Cover any points missed in the training section.

• Ask for 2 groups to share their shared purpose. Coach them through
how to make it more effective.

• Round robin of team chants. If you don’t have time to showcase all the
chants, use them as ice-breakers later in the training.