implementing an 'inside-out' learning & development journey

Written as a business allegory, Game of Teams:  Discover How to Become a Collaborative Leader, is a story about team collaboration and coaching team leaders. Author, Winsor Jenkins, introduces an innovative, yet practical methodology to support the development of collaborative leaders whose teams produce positive results.  Note, this book is a sequel to his first book, The Collaborator.

In a world demanding innovation to solve complex challenges, the significance of collaboration cannot be underestimated. Defined as a marked departure from customary ways in which management’s work is performed, ‘management innovation’ is described herein as a new leader and team development framework.

Embedded in this framework is an operating platform made up of several team principles and essential competencies.  The team principles come from the game of soccer and mirror a successful soccer team’s behavior on the field. Essential competencies are aligned with these principles; applied they describe a collaborative skill set.

Here, the book leverages the operating platform introduce in The Collaborator, where our global business world is compared to the game of soccer, an environment where people must effectively collaborate to succeed.

As the story unfolds, we follow the learning and development journey of a newly promoted team manager, Jim Hernandez.  He is confronted with the need to develop a nonperforming team.  And he must develop a collaborative mind-set and skill set – all in real time – to effectively lead his team to collaborate and succeed.  With the help of an external coach, Toni Burns, he embarks on a journey that challenges his commitment and confidence to become a collaborative leader. As a trained coach, she helps him progress along his developmental pathway, providing team principles, essential competencies, best practices, along with established and trusted models.  Combined, these provide a framework for her to coach Jim, build his commitment and competence, and develop a collaborative mind-set and skill set to crack the collaboration code and succeed.

On his journey he will need coaching to help him:

·  Develop his self-awareness and emotional intelligence

·  Tackle blind spots that show up in the form of interpersonal competencies

·  Be open to feedback on his performance from others, including his coach

·  Challenge underlying assumptions and values regarding people and teams, if needed

·  Develop new skills beyond his technical and functional skills, such as leadership flexibility

·  Understand why relationship building is important to his success and self-awareness

·  Learn a new operating platform for leading and managing his team

·  Lead with a collaborative mind-set made up of several team principles

·  Apply a collaborative skill set made up of a series of essential competencies

·  Create a collaborative culture for his team

·  Transition to a coaching role as needed to support the team’s needs

His journey is a never-ending challenge requiring his personal commitment to learning and development.  Although it may not take him places where no one has gone before, it will a journey on a road less traveled.  His commitment to coaching is the key to his success.

Part business allegory and part handbook, Game of Teams reveals why team leaders (and teams) often fail to effectively collaborate.  Winsor offers a powerful methodology for overcoming this shortfall to enable team leaders and their teams to succeed.