Nikki Davey, Head of Medicines Management Team at Mid Hampshire Primary Care Trust, recognised this. Members of her team work in different surgeries across the area and do not often have the chance meet up. The ten pharmacists in the team cover eleven GP surgeries, which serve over 100,000 patients across half of the Primary Care Trust area. Working one or two days per week in any one surgery these pharmacists provide support to GPs in relation to prescription drugs. However, the part-time relationship with the GP surgery, combined with the dispersed nature of the team, meant that it was difficult for them to build effective networks and relationships within their work.
Nikki put team building very high on her priority list when she took up her post in early 2004. Having worked to create effective teams within other areas of the NHS, she was convinced of the benefits of investing in personal and team development.
“I’d worked with winning teams before, so I knew what was possible. My experience is that team development activities lead to much higher levels of confidence, more effective networking and information sharing which together lead to more effective performance from individuals and the team,” Nikki commented.
She set about planning a three-day team-building event that would kick-start an ongoing development project. As an initial activity Nikki wanted to profile the members of the team and turned to SHL for the tools to do this. In the course of investigating possible products SHL’s Team Impact Reports, based on the Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ32), caught her eye. These easy-to-use reports are great for using with both individuals and teams.
“Most of my team had not had any personality profiling done before, so I was keen to introduce them to it as a way of providing a framework for the work that I was planning during the three days.”
The OPQ can be taken online, which was perfect for the distributed team, all of whom were able to log-in and complete the assessment before the beginning of the three days. Individual and team profile reports were produced and Emma Engel, an HR professional and trained OPQ user, was asked to attend and provide feedback during the first part of this event.
Emma facilitated this first stage and focussed on getting the group to think about teams in general, covering some theory about how teams function. A practical ice-breaker was included to warm the team up: ‘Slow Marble’ challenged two teams to build a marble run using just paper and paper clips as well as giving Emma and Nikki the chance to observe the team in action.
Emma introduced The Team Impact Report with a discussion about the personality questionnaire and how the team had found completing it but then faced a choice:
“I had thought hard about how to structure this session. Should I give the individual reports out or discuss the group results first? In the end, I gave out the individual reports first, people were very keen to see these. This helped them to concentrate on the group results!”
On the whole, individuals could easily identify with the information presented in the reports and found it to be useful.
“People found the individual reports really easy to understand. The spider web diagrams and development tips were especially useful,” says Emma.
Once people had a chance to absorb the information in their individual reports, Emma introduced the group report and facilitated a discussion around it. This included looking at the team’s Tasks versus People focus and the team’s overall strengths and development needs.
A team member led the next part of the session, encouraging people to share information about their individual team strengths and weaknesses. This was a significant step for a team that had previously had little interaction of this nature.
“One of the key benefits of the Team Impact Reports, was that they provided objective data that removed the emotions from often difficult conversations about individual strengths and weaknesses,” Nikki commented. “Many of the team members were not used to receiving personal feedback and so it was good to see them discussing these issues so honestly and openly.” Although no individual was obliged to share their own report, all the team members did so willingly. This in itself indicated progress on one of the areas identified as a weakness in the team – sharing information.
Other areas where the report helped identify development needs included exploring possibilities and networking. While the team were creative and detail conscious within their usual terms of reference, they did not often go outside of these in search of solutions. Networking is a related issue. Many did not have close professional relationships with anyone in the surgery and felt that they must spend all of their time ‘on task’ and could not spend time talking to others in the surgery. Realising that this was an essential part of becoming effective team players – and hearing that they were positively encouraged to chat over coffee with other staff, was an important outcome of the assessment.
The team then used all the insights gained from the reports to inform the other activities undertaken in the remaining days of the course. They have since requested that the next regular meeting be used to revisit some of the findings and themes from the Team Impact reports.
“I would like to find out a little more about the theory behind the Team Impact Reports and I would certainly use them again as they really added value to the session.” says Emma. “The information in the reports was great for stimulating discussion with the team. It also highlighted key areas for the team to focus on. Best of all, it gave people specific, structured action points to take away from the session.”
“Not only were the reports a very efficient way of gaining a snapshot of the individuals and the team as a whole, but they provided an important framework that I could use in the team development. The reports provided a level of data that removed the emotional element that can be very threatening in these situations. As such it has provided me with a stepping stone to further activities and a catalyst for change within the team,” concluded Nikki Davey.