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Great Teams Program Enriches Groups That Work Together

By Cynthia Bell, Directorate of Prevention, Resilience and ReadinessJune 26, 2024

Teams that work together regularly can benefit from the Great Teams Workshop to help them develop, enhance or solidify their team culture. The discussion-based workshop engages Soldiers and leaders in a collaborative review that examines the group’s shared philosophy, vision, values and standards. The result is a more cohesive and well-led team with a focused plan of action for working together.

The Great Teams Workshop is part of the R2 program, which aligns with the Army’s strategy for strengthening individual and unit personal readiness and fostering a culture of trust. Great Teams examines concrete experiences of fellow team members so they can build connections, understand their teammates better and develop trusting relationships.

“The Great Teams workshop,” says Katie Strokis, master resilience trainer-performance expert at Magellan Federal, R2 Performance Center, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, “is a unique opportunity for teams to come together and take ownership over designing the culture that they want for their organization,”

Using the Great Teams Workshop Facilitator Guide, a performance expert from an R2 Performance Center leads discussions about participants’ past experiences and guides the teams through exercises to help them agree upon key characteristics, define their values and determine how the team will operate.

Strokis explains that many teams understand the importance of trust and respect for their success. In the Great Teams Workshop, members discuss the meaning of these qualities and learn how to be accountable for upholding them within their team. And upon completing the workshop, participants will have a better understanding of team dynamics and a clear expectation of team function. As a result, higher levels of accountability to team standards and values are achieved post-workshop.

Great Teams is especially important to military teams, which are constantly gaining and losing members, so the culture of a team can change along with the personnel. According to Strokis, through the Great Teams workshop, members have an active role in designing their culture and laying the groundwork for members to connect over shared values. As a result, teams are more connected and satisfied with their work.

The Great Teams workshops are offered exclusively through the R2 Performance Centers and participants have access to all available resources. Although R2 performance experts have had conversations and conducted similar exercises for many years, the Great Teams program has operated in its current form since early 2021.

Workshops can last from four to eight hours, depending on the depth of the team’s conversations. In the full-day workshop, team-building exercises allow participants to share and test their values to see how well they operate as a team. “There is even an optional final exercise where team members can decide on a team motto or creed that exemplifies and encompasses all that they decided as a group,” Strokis shares.

Teams can return for follow-up sessions after the initial workshop. R2 performance experts also follow up with teams to help with implementing their action plans and suggest future opportunities for training through R2 Performance Centers.

By helping groups to identify and define shared values with teammates, the Great Teams program enables participants to optimize their work performance.

For more information, visit https://www.jbsa.mil/Portals/102/Great%20Teams%20Fact%20Sheet_26MAY2021.pdf