CIPD launch new tool to encourage flexible and responsive team work to enhance organisations competitiveness

August 2007

Team working has evolved. Teams need to develop quickly in response to the demands of the work they have to do. People are required to be more flexible, mobile and work more quickly and effectively with a new group of colleagues. It is no longer about sustaining and developing team identity over a number of years, according to Charlotte Ellis co-author of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) new Exercises for Team Development toolkit.

The CIPD's new toolkit allows teams to learn as they address real issues, and provides structured exercises both for developing a team's general capability to work together and for developing a repertoire of specific team working tools and techniques.

Alison Hardingham co-author of the toolkit says: "Now that coaching for individual executives is so established and known to deliver such value, organisations want to provide coaching for teams which will deliver a similarly effective result. The exercises that we have designed for the toolkit meet this need."

This toolkit uses exercises such as Team Purpose and Objective Setting, Understanding Each Other, Fishbowl, Peer Feedback, Customer Role Play and Team Coaching to tackle a number of challenges real teams wrestle with. These include;