Team Development

High performing teams are the foundation of successful organisations; using empathy, humility and vulnerability to create trust and focus

Team development introduction

Too often the term “high performing team” comes with an expectation of chest-beating and bravado. However when working with diverse and hierarchical teams on complex projects, it’s important for everyone to understand and support each other as individuals. Often this gets forgotten when under pressure. It’s at this point though when humility and vulnerability are powerful leadership traits in team development for high performing teams.

I can’t tell you the story of how I represented my country in an elite sport, or my experiences when I climbed Mount Everest. And I’ve certainly never done a skydive. But what I can tell you is how I’ve led teams through being empathetic, human and showing vulnerability.

Leadership Strategy Workshops

To deliver your strategy you need good engagement, communication and commitment to the purpose. This is more than just about the bottom line. It’s about where you need to get to and how your best people are going to get you there.

Working with your leadership or senior management teams, I run interactive and engaging workshops to improve performance and build trust. Depending on your scale of change, these are typically run as half or full-day workshops and may evolve quarterly.

These strategic workshops pull together a team and bring out the right reasons for coming to work in the morning. This is particularly valuable when scaling up, after a change in structure or management and around investment.

Popular topics covered are:

  • Strategy development, planning and encouraging innovation
  • Organisation vision, values and purpose
  • Culture integration, inclusion and leadership development
  • Improved ways of working: communication, delegation, accountability and trust

Training & Team Development for High Performing Teams

Once you’re all set with your strategy, everyone needs to be on board. So how you cascade your goals, plans and vision to all staff is really important. Employees need to know that they make a meaningful contribution to your organisation and their impact is felt.

It can be hard to see how individual roles contribute to a strategy if it feels intangible and all you have are lofty goals. This is where you need to focus on how teams are brought in, empowered, trained and communicated with.

High performing and dysfunctional teams

Every business wants high performing teams and the thought of dysfunction can be quite alarming. By working on building trust, commitment, accountability and fostering a positive culture of challenge, you can build a team to achieve results. I often lean on Lencioni’s team model when coaching teams through growth and change.

By understanding how we work, we can work more effectively and develop the right skills to support this. This is where training and team development for high performing teams comes into its own.

Recent topics covered for teams are:

  • Prioritising and working more strategically
  • Building an inclusive culture
  • Neurodiversity inclusion and communication skills
  • Conflict management skills
  • Productivity and boundaries with remote working
  • Communication and management skills
  • Bids, pursuits and proposal management training

When you consider remote working and hybrid teams; it’s time to learn how to work more effectively.

Team workshop for KPMG Norway, Emma Mills-Sheffield

What clients say

If you’d like to discuss leadership strategy and team development for high performing teams please do get in touch.

“Emma has been working with our senior management team as we scale up and face the challenges that rapid growth entails. She has built good relationships with our leadership and understands the complexities of working with an entrepreneurial business and developing high performing teams to support this. With consultancy, one-to-one coaching and leadership workshops she has offered great support to the team on creating a high performance culture, resilience and being an empathetic leader. Thank you Emma and I look forward to continuing our leadership journey and growth as a team.”

Alex Preece, CEO & Co-Founder Tillo

“We asked Emma to coach two of our staff members who we felt had huge potential but also completely opposing skill sets, to see what they could learn from each other. The results from a relatively small number of sessions really exceeded our expectations!

We have seen tangible change. They are leaning into their strengths whilst appreciating what each brings to the table, working together to form a formidable pairing. Not only is this good for business, but most importantly it is has given them skills and confidence that they can carry forward in their lives.”

Chris Mason, Director of Operations The Letting Partnership

“I recently engaged Emma to undertake a series of workshops with our senior leadership team. Prior to the session I experienced her to be meticulous in understanding our needs, I felt she invested time in learning about the team she would be working with which positively impacted outcomes for everyone. Her questioning was excellent in terms of challenging me to reflect on what we were really trying to achieve. Emma’s preparation was superb in terms of creating agendas and setting the flow of the session. At the workshop we started some new conversations and agreed a positive set of actions to create new ways of working. I would certainly recommend Emma in supporting leadership teams establishing a common understanding of their current reality and what needs to change.”

Tom Willis, CEO Shoreham Port

“Very informative and inspiring talk, great speaker and loved the interactive workshop.”

“Great workshop!  Great trainer and exercises to learn and discover more about myself.”

“Interesting take on leadership with a focus on resilience and self-care.”

Brighton & Hove City Council, training workshop attendees

“Once again, thank you so much for the thought-provoking and energising training session. The session you did at the Summit was fantastic, but this one was even better as we had more time to think through some of the issues.  I have spoken to a few of those who were there and all are saying how good it was and how brilliant you were! I do so agree with them.”

Andy Winter, CEO Brighton Housing Trust

“The Unlocking Language team had the most fantastic workshop courtesy of Emma, the founder of Mindsetup who works with teams and leaders on productivity and motivation. As we have all been experiencing, recent times have been challenging, so it was fantastic to take this time to get the team together for such a brilliant workshop that re-aligned our priorities, made us check in on our productivity levels and gave us vital insight and tips on how to get the work/life balance right. A huge thank you to Emma for such a brilliant session!”

Shermeena Rabbi, Director of Unlocking Language

Business Consultancy

Helping you get clear on your strategy, make a plan and scale up from strong foundations. Enabling you to go through change and grow more successfully

Executive Coaching & Development

Leadership development, personal resilience and career development benefit from an outside perspective to help overcome challenges

Events & Workshops

Facilitated workshops, events, training days, panel discussions and seminars. Face-to-face and online to enable business growth