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Management team sessions that built trust before targets
Building strong teams takes concentrated, conscious effort. Mads Brinks, Managing Director of Cloetta Denmark, and Camiel Gielkens, CEO of Relevance, worked closely together on the sessions Relevance designed for Cloetta's management team. In an open conversation they reflect on what made it work.
Capable individuals are not yet a team
A management team is made up of capable individuals with different backgrounds and personality types. Before it can run the company at full speed it needs a shared identity, the trust to say 'this is not good enough, what do we do?' without anyone getting defensive, and a plan everyone owns.
Mads Brinks: 'Having difficult conversations one-to-one before you start is important, to ensure everyone is on board. Then you move on to building the team.'
Trust first, then values, then the strategy plan
Camiel Gielkens and Relevance designed a series of sessions for the Cloetta Denmark management team and guided the team through them. The sessions opened up the difficult aspects of individual and team goals, which asked for an element of vulnerability from everyone.
The approach was multi-layered: individual learning, then team learning, and then working together on something very specific, the strategy plan, with realistic, achievable and concrete goals. Team values were made explicit: never stop challenging each other, dare to be bold, never sugarcoat when something gets difficult.
One-to-one conversations first
Difficult conversations before the team work, so everyone is on board.
Team values
Explicit values that create identity, belonging and the permission to challenge each other.
Individual and team learning
Every member's passion, key strength and 'North Star', then the team as a unit.
The strategy plan
The learning applied to something real: a plan with realistic, achievable and concrete goals.
'We realized we'd got each other's backs'
Mads Brinks: 'Then, all of a sudden, we realized we'd got each other's backs. Not only because we are a management team which has to run the company, but also because we have built a level of emotional confidence with each other to go for it.'
Camiel Gielkens saw the dynamic shift during the sessions: in the beginning everyone looked at Mads to take the lead; later there was an enthusiasm and a heat in the room that led to an explosion of ideas, constructive conflict and a dynamic way of working together that makes the best use of everyone's strengths.
Then, all of a sudden, we realized we'd got each other's backs. Not only because we are a management team which has to run the company, but also because we have built a level of emotional confidence with each other to go for it.
Mads BrinksManaging Director, Cloetta Denmark
The biggest takeaways
- 1
Trust is built before the team work starts, in one-to-one conversations, and confirmed in the room.
- 2
Explicit team values make challenging each other safe: every question is right when it follows the values.
- 3
Apply the learning to something real, the strategy plan, and the enthusiasm follows.
A one-page PDF with the key items, the numbers and the biggest takeaways. Handy for a meeting, or to forward.
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