There's nothing quite as fantastic as being part of a high performing team.   It's energetic, it's alive, there's a sense of passion and purpose, and a deep sense of things flowing almost as if by magic in the right direction.

Often I am called into work with a team when it is time for some sort of renewal.    Newly formed teams often want a psychologist's input, not because something is wrong or not working, but rather to set some very positive ways of working together early on.   Other times, the new leader is struggling to energise a group: there are fractions within a group, rivalry for position in the corporate jungle, or perhaps a sense of a lack of commitment and care for the task at hand.   Sometimes, it is a question of re-aligning the team to support a new business model, ensuring the appropriate resources are ready and available.

I don't believe in off-the shelf team-building solutions. I call these "Tracy the Trainer" interventions. Corporate team-building must be real and alive working on the task at hand not climbing a mountain or doing Lego together.   Instead, I work live with the team, observe how they interact and facilitate a refreshing and open dialogue.   Often my job is to teach new ways of working together, to build confidence that honesty often pays and that conflict and disagreement is all critical to the creative process (if not out of hand of course!).   I will bring in different ways of looking at a problem with fresh eyes and broaden the team's perspective on possibilities and new solutions.

I am particularly fascinated by multi-national groups.   They have such extraordinary potential for higher levels of success, particularly when armed with some cross-cultural understanding of country-level dynamics.   This was what my PhD research was all about, how to build successful cross-cultural teams.

I always encourage individuals in teams to trust their own experience of the group.   If you are sitting there, feeling bored, that you are just going through the motion, chances are others are feeling that too and it often pays to say something.

Individuals with extremely high IQ can collapse into a collectively low IQ team when working with others.   My work seeks to address that and create winning teams.