By creating a team, she notes, you pull together talents from across an organization to quickly get the project done. For example, on a product launch, a cross-functional team forms with professionals from marketing, sales, customer service, and finance. She notes that it is always important to designate a team leader. Leaders maintain responsibility for facilitation, seeing the project through, and making penultimate decisions. While training teams, Shoning coaches participants to work together by learning to communicate effectively and build trust.
Teams can enact an effective decision process and demonstrate power sharing within the group.
Gardner, on the other hand, uses creative simulations to build a team's awareness of relationships and interpersonal communications. One of her standard exercises requires group participants to build a castle from found objects. While completing this task, she asks for comments on how well the team is working together. Through this exercise, she hopes to forge the group into a working partnership, a quality that can later be applied to actual projects. Several weeks following the training, Gardner returns to the company to determine how well the group is functioning with its new tools and techniques.