more than the sum of its parts

Team Soundings

When a team needs to be more than the sum of its parts. Working with a team as a whole, from a focused day or two to development over several months.

Overview:

• For: a team that could be more than the sum of its parts
• Two formats: an intensive offsite (1 or 2 days), or development over several months 
• The focus: trust and psychological safety as the foundation everything else is built on
• Where: with your team, online or in person
• Investment: day rate €3,500 plus VAT; a fitted proposal for longer work

Who It's For

When the team could be more than it is

You lead a team and sense more is possible. Perhaps it's just come together and has yet to grow into one. Perhaps each person does good work alone, but as a team the parts don't mesh the way they should. Perhaps it doesn't take the responsibility you'd like, and everything ends up back with you. Or it runs well enough, and you want to make the next move before pressure forces it.

The Approach

What working with the team can do

Whether a team truly plays together is rarely decided by the task. It's decided by whether the people trust one another. Whether someone can admit they don't know. Whether you can disagree without it costing you. Whether a mistake lands on the table or disappears under it. This psychological safety is one of the best-researched foundations of teams that work, and it's what everything else is built on: open conversation, real ownership, the nerve to name things before they grow.

This is exactly where I come in. As an organisational psychologist with more than 20 years among teams in corporates and mid-sized companies, I bring an outside eye, a psychologically trained one, and a space in which things can be said that otherwise stay unsaid. We look together at how solid the trust in the team really is, where there's safety and where there isn't, and what it takes for people to work more openly and more accountably with one another. Not with off-the-shelf methods, but by finding out what this particular team needs right now.

How it Works

Two formats

An intensive offsite, one or two days.

For a specific question: a strategic fork in the road, a conflict that's blocking the team, a fresh start after growth or upheaval. We take the time to go deep in one stretch, and come out with clarity and concrete next steps.

Development over time.

For when it isn't a single question but a process. Over several months we work in turn with the whole team and in individual conversations: we agree at the outset what we're working on, follow the threads in regular meetings, and I support individual team members, or you as their leader, where things snag in between. With a clear beginning and end. For teams that want, or need, to develop more fundamentally.

Which format fits, we work out together beforehand.

Nothing Hidden

What it costs

Day rate €3,500 plus VAT where applicable.

For longer pieces of work I'll put together a proposal that fits.

Next Step

How it begins

The first step is a preliminary conversation, where we get clear on what's going on in your team and whether I'm the right person for it. Team Soundings can be a path of its own. Often, though, it grows out of the one-to-one work, when a leader I'm already working with wants to take what they've seen for themselves to their team as well.