Team Building and High-Performance Teams Training Course

Duration 5 days 10 modules · 33 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Team Leaders, Operational Managers and others
Fee from USD 1,100 KSh 95,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-LD-227

Before you join: Participants should have experience working in, managing or supporting a team with shared deliverables, meetings and stakeholder commitments.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Teams that carry complex services, change programmes and regulated operations often lose time through unclear ownership, slow decisions, hidden conflict and poorly managed dependencies. The cost appears as missed delivery dates, rework, weak risk control and managers drawn into problems the team should resolve. Team building is therefore not a morale event; it is a disciplined management practice for setting direction, coordinating work, challenging assumptions and holding commitments.

This course examines the conditions that distinguish reliable, high-performing teams from groups that depend on constant managerial intervention. Participants learn to diagnose team conditions with GRPI, define a shared charter, and match leadership action to a team's development stage. They build working agreements that make roles, decision rights, meeting rhythm and escalation routes explicit. The course develops communication habits for candour and inclusion, decision methods that record rationale, and conflict skills that address interests rather than personalities. Participants also connect team performance to workflow design, visible commitments, scorecards, after-action reviews and stakeholder feedback.

Teaching combines short faculty briefings with cases drawn from project delivery, banking operations, public services and multi-function corporate teams. Small-group analysis, role simulations and facilitated feedback allow participants to test conversations, decision protocols and recovery actions under realistic pressure. Each participant leaves with a completed team performance improvement pack: a GRPI diagnosis, team charter, RACI matrix, working-agreement checklist, conflict response plan and 30-day leadership action plan. The course is suited to managers and team leaders responsible for established teams, cross-functional initiatives or newly formed units.

What you will be able to do

  • Diagnose team performance using GRPI, workflow evidence and stakeholder feedback
  • Create a team charter defining purpose, roles, decision rights and operating norms
  • Establish psychological safety through leader framing, inquiry and constructive feedback
  • Design meeting, communication and decision protocols for cross-functional work
  • Apply RAPID, RACI and decision logs to improve decision quality and speed
  • Conduct conflict conversations using interest-based negotiation and de-escalation techniques
  • Build visible accountability through scorecards, commitments and after-action reviews
  • Produce a 30-day team performance improvement plan with measurable actions

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Diagnose recurring team problems before they become delivery failures
  • Lead difficult accountability and conflict conversations with greater control
  • Run meetings that produce decisions, owners and dated commitments
  • Clarify authority boundaries when managing cross-functional contributors
  • Apply a practical 30-day plan to an active team challenge

For your organisation

  • Fewer delays caused by unclear ownership and unmanaged dependencies
  • Faster, better-documented decisions on operational and project priorities
  • Earlier reporting of errors, risks and capacity constraints
  • Reduced rework through clearer handoffs and shared working agreements
  • More consistent manager intervention in underperformance and team conflict

Course modules

10 modules over 5 days

Participants can identify the structural and behavioural causes of team performance gaps.

  • Team performance diagnosed through GRPI: goals, roles, processes and relationships
  • Tuckman's forming-to-performing stages linked to leadership interventions at each stage
  • Distinguishing task interdependence, workflow dependencies and coordination requirements
  • Team purpose statements translated into measurable customer, risk and delivery outcomes
  • Membership boundaries clarified for core teams, sponsors and external contributors
  • Diagnostic interviews surface recurring friction, handoff failures and decision delays

Participants can establish a team charter that clarifies expectations and authority.

  • Team charters specify purpose, outcomes, membership, decision rights and cadence
  • SMART team objectives linked to departmental measures and service commitments
  • RACI matrices assign accountable owners for recurring cross-functional decisions
  • Working agreements set response times, meeting norms and escalation routes
  • Role ambiguity identified through responsibility mapping and stakeholder expectations
  • Charter review points align team priorities with changing business demands

Participants can create conditions for candour, learning and respectful challenge.

  • Psychological safety distinguished from comfort, consensus and absence of accountability
  • Edmondson's framing methods invite questions, concerns and early error reporting
  • Trust equation factors address credibility, reliability, intimacy and self-orientation
  • SBI feedback structures observations, behavioural impact and future requests
  • Active listening uses paraphrasing, inquiry and testing of assumptions
  • Team norms protect dissent, candour and respectful challenge

Participants can design communication routines that improve alignment and participation.

  • Communication channels matched to urgency, ambiguity, confidentiality and audience needs
  • Structured check-ins surface priorities, blockers, dependencies and support requests
  • Meeting design separates information sharing, problem solving and decision making
  • Six Thinking Hats broadens perspectives during complex team discussions
  • Closed-loop communication confirms ownership, deadlines and shared interpretation
  • Virtual meeting protocols reduce exclusion, side conversations and attention loss

Participants can select decision methods and escalation routes appropriate to risk and authority.

  • Decision types classified by reversibility, risk exposure and required consultation
  • RAPID decision roles clarify recommenders, deciders, input providers and performers
  • Consent and consultative methods compared against leader-decides approaches
  • Decision logs record rationale, assumptions, owners and review triggers
  • Pre-mortems expose failure modes before committing resources or public promises
  • Escalation thresholds distinguish team authority from sponsor intervention

Participants can address disagreements early and restore productive working relationships.

  • Task, process and relationship conflict diagnosed before selecting interventions
  • Thomas-Kilmann modes matched to stakes, relationships and time constraints
  • Interest-based negotiation separates positions from underlying needs and criteria
  • Conflict conversations use neutral facts, impact statements and specific requests
  • De-escalation techniques manage defensiveness, attribution errors and emotional flooding
  • Repair agreements define changed behaviours, follow-up dates and accountability

Participants can improve handoffs, dependency management and learning across team boundaries.

  • Workflow mapping exposes bottlenecks, rework loops and unmanaged handoffs
  • Kanban visualisation limits work in progress and clarifies flow
  • Dependency registers identify upstream inputs, downstream commitments and contingency owners
  • Cross-functional service levels establish response standards and exception handling
  • After-action reviews examine intent, results, causes and corrective actions
  • Knowledge-sharing routines retain lessons from projects, incidents and customer feedback

Participants can establish visible commitments and address performance problems constructively.

  • Performance scorecards balance output, quality, timeliness, risk and stakeholder measures
  • Leading indicators signal capacity strain before missed commitments occur
  • Weekly commitments convert priorities into visible owner-date deliverables
  • Peer accountability conversations address missed agreements without blame or avoidance
  • Recognition practices reinforce collaboration, learning behaviours and reliable delivery
  • Performance reviews distinguish individual contribution from collective team results

Participants can adapt their leadership approach to team readiness and behavioural issues.

  • Situational Leadership adapts direction and support to team readiness
  • Delegation contracts define outcomes, authority limits, resources and check-in points
  • Coaching questions develop judgement rather than leader dependency
  • Manager interventions address underperformance, withdrawal and disruptive conduct early
  • Inclusive leadership counters status effects, groupthink and unequal participation
  • Distributed leadership assigns facilitation, quality and stakeholder responsibilities

Participants can monitor team health and implement a structured improvement plan.

  • Team health reviews combine pulse data, delivery metrics and qualitative evidence
  • Retrospectives prioritise experiments using effort-impact and controllability criteria
  • Action plans specify behaviour changes, owners, milestones and evidence
  • Stakeholder feedback validates whether improved teamwork changes service outcomes
  • Quarterly charter refreshes address membership, priorities and operating constraints
  • Personal leadership commitments establish 30-day implementation and review actions

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. GRPI team performance diagnostic
  2. Team charter template
  3. RACI decision-rights matrix
  4. Working-agreement checklist
  5. Conflict response plan
  6. 30-day team improvement action plan

Who should attend

  • Team Leaders — need practical methods for improving delivery, trust and accountability
  • Operational Managers — coordinate teams with service, quality and risk responsibilities
  • Project Managers — lead cross-functional contributors without direct reporting authority
  • Department Heads — establish consistent team standards across multiple work groups
  • Newly Appointed Managers — need structure for forming and leading established teams
  • HR and Learning Managers — support managers addressing persistent team performance issues

Skills and tools covered

Team performance diagnosisTeam charter designConstructive conflict managementDecision rights clarityPeer accountabilityLeadership intervention

Tools and standards

GRPI Model, Tuckman's Team Development Model, RACI Matrix, Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings to introduce frameworks, followed by sector-based case work, group exercises, simulations and facilitated feedback. Participants analyse team charters, decision bottlenecks, workflow failures and conflict scenarios drawn from operational, project and service settings. Simulations focus on feedback, challenge, escalation and recovery conversations. Application planning connects each method to a current team, allowing participants to produce practical documents and actions for use after the course.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have experience working in, managing or supporting a team with shared deliverables, meetings and stakeholder commitments. Familiarity with basic management responsibilities, such as setting priorities and giving feedback, is helpful. The course assumes participants can discuss a current or recent team situation and reflect on their own leadership approach. No formal leadership qualification, psychometric certification, organisational development background or prior study of team-development theory is required.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

You should have experience working in or supporting a team with shared deliverables and stakeholder expectations. Prior leadership training is not required, but a current or recent team situation will help you apply the methods.

Bring details of a current team challenge, such as missed handoffs, unclear roles, difficult meetings or unresolved conflict. Do not bring confidential personal, customer or commercially sensitive information.

The course is designed for team leaders, managers, project managers and department heads responsible for collective performance. It is also useful for HR and learning professionals who advise managers on team effectiveness.

General leadership courses address individual leadership responsibilities across a broad range of situations. This course concentrates on team systems: roles, operating agreements, communication, decision rights, conflict, workflow and peer accountability.

You will leave with a diagnosis and practical documents for a real team, including a charter, RACI matrix and improvement plan. These can be used in team meetings, planning sessions, performance reviews and sponsor discussions.

The course runs for five training days, normally 08:30 to 16:30, with about 6.5 contact hours each day. Time is distributed across ten connected modules, with briefings, cases, simulations, feedback and application planning throughout.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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