Team Development

Build the trust, cohesion, shared vision and commitment necessary to take on new leadership thresholds together.

I develop tailored sessions, sequences, and retreats to help your newly formed or existing team grow stronger together as you take on your biggest and most challenging pursuits.  Emerge from each team experience feeling more deeply seen and valued by one another and more equipped and fired up for the work at hand. I work with leadership teams, functional teams, and cross-functional project teams.

  • Strengthen awareness, trust, and relationships as you get to know one another and establish how to work & learn together effectively. You’ll gain greater appreciation of the range of experiences, styles, and strengths you each have and leave with a shared vision and plan for how you want to work together to channel your collective talents, time, and energy towards your goals with impact.

  • Through storytelling, you will illuminate and crystalize your commitment to one another and the shared vision or values guiding the success of your collective work.

  • Feeling knowledgeable about your context, but unsure where to focus?

    Sharpen your team’s strategic clarity through a tailored sequence of interactive systems thinking activities. Your team will deepen understanding of the key elements and interdependencies in your ecosystem and uncover key insights about where to focus your efforts. You’ll leave with the shared clarity and commitment to cut through the complexity and noise so you can be focused and successful.

  • Through an interactive energy and time audit, guided reflection, and discussion, illuminate individual and collective ways to spend your most precious resource (your time and energy!) in ways that nurture and sustain team engagement, enjoyment, and energy through the ebbs & flows of work and life.

  • Learn and apply practical frames and tools for navigating the changes you are experiencing and taking on together. You’ll gain self-awareness and interpersonal awareness about how common characteristics of change are showing up and impacting your work and leave with shared language, tools, and deepened trust to lead more effectively through change together.

  • Over multiple meetings, build trust, shared responsibility, and commitment as you work to understand and crystallize or renew your team’s unique purpose, vision for shared leadership, and the agreed expectations and systems for how you’ll lead together with flow, enjoyment, and impact.

  • You will get access to the Intercultural Development Inventory ®, receive customized debriefs of your results, and co-create a tailored development plan.

  • Transform conflict avoidance and disempowerment into movement and possibility. Through team building and skill building, grow self-awareness of how you and colleagues relate to conflict and build your confidence, comfort, and tools for engaging in everyday conflict that actually strengthens your relationships and work together. With this learning, your team can find new paths forward you didn’t previously believe were possible.

  • Coaching has a marked positive impact on performance and workplace culture. Yet, it is often the least often used mode of interaction. With this track of learning your team will learn, implement, and sharpen impactful coaching techniques they can use in their work to ensure they are not just directing tasks and work, but also developing their direct reports’ and colleagues’ lasting confidence, initiative, judgment, and capabilities

Team Development Workshops

Here’s a sampling of topics, sessions, or packages I can customize for your goals and needs:

Direct Support for Team Leaders

Benefit from advising and skill-based coaching for leaders who strive to craft and facilitate sessions like these themselves.  This support is a great fit for first-time team leaders or managers, leaders navigating intense transitions or periods of change, and experienced leaders in need of a lift from a trusted expert.

Possible products and outcomes:

  • Developing a vision for your dream team

  • Crafting a set of intentional structures and rituals to bring that vision to life

  • Deepening understanding and appreciation of power and team dynamics at play

  • Expanding your library and knowledge of engagement protocols, activities, and tools

  • Gaining greater confidence and skill in designing and facilitating your own team meetings and experiences

What Clients are Saying

"We needed a skilled facilitator to lead a session for our leadership team. While we were initially worried it would be challenging to find a facilitator who would fit well into our dynamics and bring a positive/unbiased approach, Stephanie turned out to be exactly what we needed.

She was warm, organized, and thoughtful. She brought expertise that helped us structure the day to maximize the time, effectively brought out the most of each participant, helped us stretch our creativity beyond our initial ideas, and synthesized our ideas and decisions each step of the way... We ended the time feeling cohesive, energized, and aligned together.”

— Sarah Brunner, Chief Operating Officer, Chicago Methodist Senior Services

  • Man with glasses and dark hair smiling

    “I've seen and experienced first-hand the positive, measurable, forward impact and progress that resulted from Stephanie’s leadership and coaching.

    Stephanie does a really great job with creating an atmosphere where participants trust in her as the content designer, facilitator, and expert and where we feel comfortable sharing tensions we might feel.

    I cannot recommend her enough for any team's professional development, culture building, and coaching needs!”

    ~ Jonathan Dacula

    HR & DEI Nonprofit Professional

  • a woman with curly red hair wearing glasses and smiling

    “Stephanie’s design and facilitation were excellent. She really took to heart the context we shared about our group and planned accordingly.

    She gave us just the right amount of structure to get started while empowering us. That helped us depend on one another.

    She also navigated the varied needs people had and demonstrated deep care for it being a meaningful space for everyone.”

    ~ Kristen Quinn

    Vice President Chief of Staff, Teach For America Chicago-Northwest Indiana

  • A woman with shoulder-length hair in a dark grey dress smiling

    “Stephanie designed a sequence of team experiences for district leaders. The department head said their cultural shifts were one of the biggest wins of the whole summer. The team is already having more honest and transparent conversations than they ever have before and teammates who have never sought each other out are now choosing to collaborate. Meetings have felt more collaborative, focused, and productive and each team member is feeling more connected, which has allowed them to get more done and dig deeper into priority challenges.”

    ~Katie Friend, Engagement Manager & Leadership Team Member

    Mass Insight Education & Research

"We needed an anchor moment to be real, human, and vulnerable with one another as a team - and to understand how we need to move together to meet this critical organizational moment. Stephanie’s design and facilitation got to all of that.

The gradual reveal of questions kept us present. The post-its first approach avoided groupthink. Her ability to notice body language and probe more specifically helped us cut through to what was really there. She had this keen ability to summarize and move us forward without anyone feeling cut off or offended - she'd name what we'd just explored, affirm we were getting it, then help us widen our perspective further.

The combination of creating psychological safety and deepening strategic nuance gave us breakthroughs we couldn't have reached on our own.”

~ Executive Director, National Anti-Bullying nonprofit

Ready to get started today?

CONNECT