Into Right Relationship

Team Work

Teams get stuck. And when they do? An external perspective and facilitation that surfaces core issues can break through old patterns to build collaboratively toward a new way of doing things. This looks and feels differently for each team. It can mean transforming paradigms, mending and tending team dynamics, building toward an employee-centered culture, or taking a next step together.

As team dynamics are unique, Into Right Relationship doesn’t use a standardized approach. Instead, we begin and end with employee experiences. Harnessing the insights of all team members, our facilitators co-create models and cultures honoring everyone.

Our Human Approach to Team Work

Sarah Brown of Into Right Relationship facilitates a Senior Leadership team to improve collaboration in Asheville, NC.

Teams are complex organisms – on one hand, they are a unit working together. On the other hand, they are a collection of individuals with their own distinct characteristics. By working in a parallel process that supports individuals and teams at the same time, we create the kind of change that sticks around long after the facilitators have left the room.

Naming The Thing And Staying With It
Those things we pretend are invisible? Oftentimes, they are bright yellow; neon even. At Into Right Relationship, we don’t walk away from the issues we can’t name. Instead, we go toward them to gain a shared understanding of what is in the room.

Equalizing Power In The Room
If you are in the room, then you are at the table with valuable insights to inform understanding and collaboration. We engage everyone as equals regardless of role or pay grade.

Listening Fully And Communicating Directly
We’ll practice this (again and again and again) so that you can build skills individually and as a team. Effective communication allows you to get up close to the issues at hand with compassion for one another and an openness to move forward together.

Designing Solutions With (Not For) Teams
You are the experts in your business. After naming, equalizing, and listening together, we build scaffolding to facilitate change driven by you and your team.

While each Team Work collaboration is unique, we often incorporate the following elements into our design, offering both in-person and virtual options.

Individual coaching
We start at the individual-level, exploring root issues and supporting each team member in clearly naming their experience and needs. We help individuals consider how they can contribute meaningfully to change.

Full team coaching sessions
While folks are working individually, we facilitate full team coaching sessions. Our facilitators draw on insights gleaned from individual sessions to bring issues and concerns to the forefront of team work. With challenges named and heard, we facilitate the co-creation of agreements that map out individual and collective ways of doing things differently.

Ongoing accountability
Collectively, your team will design an accountability structure to ensure follow-up and follow-through.

In session
Your team will practice different ways of communicating that yield new results. As needed, we’ll adapt and adjust in real time.
 
In between sessions
Your team will decide on specific activities that members will practice on their own. We will review and workshop these in upcoming coaching sessions.

The types of team work we facilitate include:

    • Providing coaching to businesses or teams in transition willing to seize the right moment for a culture change/shift;
    • Bridging disconnects or dismantling upstairs/downstairs dynamics to transform the way management and staff relate;
    • Designing feedback loops to ensure that managers have a strategy for gleaning insights from their team;
    • Tending to broken team cultures and creating a dynamic that equalizes everyone’s voice; and
    • Creating a management review process rooted in staff-informed assessment and feedback.
“Your work with our team was transformational for me - personally and professionally. You are extremely skilled in your work and it is clear that you bring total authenticity of who you are as a woman and as a human to the work you do. Working together was more than just a joyful and educational experience; you have inspired me to continue to challenge myself, to grow, to question, and to be confident in bringing what I have to offer to the table. Thank you.”
Kate Singogo
LifeWorks
“Open, authentic presence and conversation is a lived-value of Sarah’s which has a powerful impact on an agency’s culture and relationships. Sarah has the ability to meet the needs of individuals while simultaneously calculating the impact to a team. Her work has revolutionized our agency and strengthened our programs and services . . . innovative, proactive, creative, solution-focused facilitation is constant with Sarah.”
Celeste Collins
OnTrack Executive Director
“Change is always slower than one hopes, but seeing how excited the team is about making program shifts in this direction is worth it. Your enthusiasm to train and partner with us is mostly to blame. Thank you so, so much.”
LeElaine Comer
formerly at Community Action Opportunities