How To Build Teamwork With A Collaborative by Tom Romito, Facilitator

7/23/2019 How To Build Teamwork With A Collaborative by Tom Romito, Facilitator

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BUILDING TEAMWORK WITH A COLLABORATIVE

In 2007, I conducted a workshop on Team-Building for an organization called the

Minority Health Roundtable of Greater Cleveland. What a marvelous experience!

What’s a collaborative?

About 50 people from 20 minority health agencies attended this workshop. We met

at The Gathering Place in Beachwood, Ohio.

Although the organization called itself a roundtable, it was actually a collaborative.

By definition, a collaborative is two or more entities working together to achieve

something.

These agencies differed in their goals, or reasons for being. Their only

commonality was that they promoted health in some way.

They told me that their single goal as a collaborative was to become a team.

How do you make a collaborative a team?

I had been a facilitator since 1991, but this was the first time I was faced with a

challenge like this. I searched my resources and came up with a dandy of a tool to

help them build teamwork.

Building Capacity in Your Organization

© 2015 Tom Romito, Facilitator, Cleveland, OH 44109 USA

Email: [email protected] Web: http://www.tomromito.com

http://www.tomromito.com/


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To this day, I am thanking my lucky stars that I had a copy of Peter Senge’s book

called “The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook.” This book laid out a four-hour exercise

tailor-made for a large group of people who wanted to become a team.

I made maximum use of Peter Senge’s Breakout Group concept. I divided the 50

people into four breakout groups and sent them off into separate corners of the

auditorium we were in.

I gave two groups a question to work on for 30 minutes: In order to make your

organization what you want it to be, what do you need to do that you’re not doing

now? Their task was to come up with three vision items and three change items.

I gave the other two groups a different question to work on for 30 minutes: In order

to make your organization what you want it to be, what do you need to do

differently from what you’re doing now? They had the same task as the other two

groups.

The energy was flowing!

I could have kicked backed and watched them work for 30 minutes. But that’s not

my style! I circulated among the four groups, making sure they understood what Iwanted them to do and ensuring that they stayed on task.

I knew this kind of interaction was exactly what they wanted. They were really into

it. The ideas were flowing around their little circles and one person in each group

was taking notes.

When I reformed the main group, a spokesperson from each breakout group

reported on their top three vision items and change items. The similarities amongthe four groups thrilled the participants.

Then I worked the whole group to gain consensus around their top three priorities

for vision items and change items, a total of six items.









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The final act

The last step of the workshop was to prioritize the organization’s six items and

develop an action plan to implement them.

The beauty of this step was that different people in the organization offered to

champion each action item and commit to a timetable for doing it.

For me, the payoff occurred five years later when I met up with someone who had

been a participant in the Team-Building workshop. This person remembered me

and said they were so excited about that experience that they were still talking

about it!

They had become a team!







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How To Build Teamwork With A Collaborative by Tom Romito, Facilitator