This is combined with understanding and practicing the fundamentals of teamwork to achieve common and constant purpose, optimize team goals, resolve conflict in positive ways, and have the ability to work in concert. Leadership and teamwork are deployed through a major off-site meeting once a year, reinforced by leadership and team building sessions every six to eight weeks. Topics at these sessions are company-wide issues that require leadership and teamwork to address. Open forums provide the format for these meetings. Elements of the open forum process are also utilized for the team birthing process and team reunions.
Team birthing meetings develop team charters, missions, visions, and goals.
Team reunions are used for checking progress and celebrating achievements. Other deployment tools include team sponsors, leader and facilitator training, and a team self-facilitation checklist. Advanced team building techniques are used by all teams at Kaiser Electronics including process improvement teams, product improvement teams, and integrated product development teams. The leadership and teamwork approach in use at Kaiser Electronics is replacing the traditional micro-management approach to controlling people and things. It challenges the status quo to be more effective through empowerment, trust and trustworthiness, and shared goals and objectives.