Shaping Cultural Change – How a Staff Becomes a Team

A staff is not automatically a team. In this unit, you will learn how, as a leader or as a team member, you can actively contribute to building a cooperative and trusting team culture. With a focus on structures, values, communication, and diversity, you will develop strategies for shaping constructive collaboration—beyond obligatory meetings and the distribution of tasks.

Warm up

What distinguishes a staff from a real team?

  • Write down 3 characteristics of a functioning team.

Finished? Exchange ideas with your buddy:

Where does your staff currently stand on this scale?

Learn

Team culture needs structure – and relationship

Team processes do not occur by chance – they can be developed.

The foundation is the model of team development phases by Bruce Tuckman:

  • Forming: orientation, cautious contact

  • Storming: confrontations, power struggles

  • Norming: shared rules, roles, trust

  • Performing: productive, self-responsible work

Team culture emerges when the following factors come together:

  • shared goals

  • regular reflection

  • clearly defined roles

  • open communication

  • space for emotions & diversity

 

FIND OUT MORE

 

Together with your buddy:

Place your staff within the Tuckman model:

  • Where do you stand?

  • What impulses does your leadership team need in order to move forward?

  • What can each individual contribute to this?

  •  

 

Dive in 1

“Leadership does not mean: knowing everything. It means: setting the framework, listening, fostering, and showing attitude.”
– IQSH

Successful team leadership requires conscious attitude and action competence:

  • modeling trust, willingness for dialogue, and transparency

  • clarity in expectations, structures, and processes

  • actively addressing conflicts

  • involvement and recognition of all perspectives

Read more about this:

Leadership as a Team Developer

 

Alone or together with your buddy:

  • Choose a real topic where team processes are stagnating (e.g., communication style, informal power, double workload).

  • Analyze which leadership messages you are consciously or unconsciously sending out.

  • Develop an idea for change:

    • What would you like to communicate or structure differently in the future?

Transfer 1

Mission Statement Check for Leadership and Staff

  • Print out the mission statement of your institution (if available).

  • Highlight: Where are concrete statements about teamwork included?

  • Compare with everyday practice:

    • Do self-image and reality match?

    • Where are contradictions or blind spots?

  • Formulate 3 realistic action steps to strengthen team processes – from your specific role.

Exchange ideas in your buddy team: Which resources and which obstacles are there?

Transfer 2

Exercise: Visualizing and Moderating Team Balance

  • Draw a pie chart with typical team roles (e.g., idea generator, preserver of structure, critic, encourager, implementer, moderator).

  • Enter which roles are strongly represented in your staff – and which tend to be overlooked.

  • Ask anonymously in the next team meeting: Who takes on which role? Which roles are missing?

  • Use the results for a moderated reflection:

    • Which role distribution is good for us?

    • Which positions need to be strengthened or better recognized?

Which hidden conflicts are reflected in role patterns?

Reflect

Reflect

What do I do concretely so that my staff experiences itself as a team?

 

Which routines or rituals foster cooperation – which ones hinder it?

 

How do I deal with resistance – empathetically or in a controlling way?

Move to another unit