Thanks to everyone who attended Overcoming Team Toxins at Agile Mile High 2013 in Denver, Colorado yesterday! Co-presenting with Erin Beierwaltes from Skipstone Consulting was a blast!
For those of you who could not attend, our team toxin presentation is based on work by John Gottman Phd. He refers to the toxins as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because of their ability to wreak havoc on relationships (teams, groups, pairs)! The Center for Right Relationships built on these ideas with a focus on a team based exercise to physically and visually interact with the toxins.
The four team toxins are:
- Blaming
- Defensiveness
- Stonewalling
- Contempt
Here is a workshop overview:
Often despite our best intentions and continuous coaching a team still doesn’t seem to come together, stalls out, or never excels. There may be an underlying uneasiness where people begrudgingly agree to follow a plan or one persons lead. They also may simply outright disagree and argue on direction. Join us to explore a model to identify and coach your team (or yourself!) through common toxic behaviors your team may experience and guide them to be the collaborative team you knew they could be.
Toxins tend to be expressed by the individual, however they affect the team. Technically, an entire team could all be defensive (toxin) – but we focus on individuals, since they are the source. Toxins can build up quite easily. So a team member who exhibits blaming, may trigger another team member to begin blaming as well – perhaps blaming the same thing as the first person. Someone on the team may also exhibit another toxin, perhaps defensiveness, if they were being blamed or feel like they need to defend who or what was being blamed. Attendees will have an opportunity to explore their default toxin (i.e. blaming, contempt, stonewalling, and defensiveness), consider what they can learn from the toxin, and understand toxin antidotes.
This is one of the tools we use to help help teams, groups, and leadership breakthrough challenges, improve their relationships, and improve their communication abilities – to set them up for continued success.
Let me know if you have questions or comments.
