From the first meeting with Talisa, it was clear her contributions would be a key ingredient in our success. She’s developed an excellent rapport with our leadership team. She’s created an up-beat environment in our meetings. The openness and effectiveness of our communications have grown tremendously through Talisa’s facilitation. With her help, we not only define and resolve issues quickly and achieve more than we ever expected, we find that we also continue to build our overall effectiveness in our day-to-day affairs. We’re clearly a more capable operation today.

Now that we have a successful track record with Talisa, we’ve expanded her role within our division dramatically. Additionally, she has taken on the facilitation of our broader management meetings and is working with several of our departments. She continues to help us improve our overall success.
— Les Rose, President, NSS, L-3 Communications

No matter what issue your team needs to address, Ernstmann Consulting can design customized team building sessions to help you assess strengths and weaknesses, create visions and team charters, celebrate successes and manage conflict. 

  • Team Assessment - Many teams know they are not performing up to their potential, but they don't know how to get where they need to be. Our standard approach is to interview team members prior to any team building session in order to clearly define issues that are limiting effectiveness. In addition, we offer several assessments to help teams understand their strengths and weaknesses. Once results are in, we work with the team to define what strengths they can leverage and what actions they can take to mitigate weaknesses. 

  • Team Chartering and Visioning - When teams are forming, it is helpful for them to establish a charter with clear roles, responsibilities and ground rules. They should also create a team mission and vision so they collectively understand what they are trying to achieve. We encourage teams to think about what kind of organization they want to be in the future, assess where they are now and make plans to close the gaps. Our techniques and exercises to do this require the whole team's participation and are positive and inspiring. We then work with the team to brainstorm successful skills and actions that will enable them to collectively reach their vision. 

  • Team Celebration - For any team going through a transition period, we first help them acknowledge and embrace the past in order to move toward the future. We do this via several kinds of team celebration activities and closing ceremonies that validate past team accomplishments. We also celebrate what is currently working for the team and what the team has the potential to become in the future. 

  • Conflict Resolution - Often teams experience conflict, strife or difficulties getting along. Through exercises and assessments, we get a clear understanding of what the issues are. We work to define what behaviors are enabling and which ones are destructive to the team and how team members can get their individual needs met while also doing what is best for the team. 

  • Team Action Planning - No matter what the intervention, we get teams to focus on results. We encourage teams to create concrete, operational plans with accountabilities, milestones and evaluation steps. We make sure all team members have the requisite skills to be successful and provide individual coaching where they do not. We work with the team and individual members to set goals, and we stress the need for milestone meetings to measure change and evaluate progress.