Embracing diversity inside teams and achieving more together: WOL for Teams at Telekom
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Embracing diversity inside teams and achieving more together: WOL for Teams at Telekom Connecting and developing teams in an increasingly complex work environment is an important component of becoming a learning organization. TEAM DEVELOPMENT and improving “how we work as a team” often gets lost amid the busy focus on day-to-day tasks. But tra- ditional in-person team-building sessions are expensive and time-consuming, if they’re even possible.
WOL for Teams offers Telekom an alternative approach, one that cultivates psychological safety while improving team performance.
Sebastian Arens works in HR People Development at Telekom Germany as a Business Partner. In that role, he pursues one goal in particular: bringing employees together across departmental and disciplinary boundaries and supporting them in their personal and professional development. Astrid Kluge manages a team at Telekom and knows the challenges of developing people within a team. Although her team knows each other well and works well together, she’s interested in learning new ways to further improve collaboration. Together, Sebastian and Astrid decided to pilot WOL for Teams within Telekom to see how their teams might increase psychologi- cal safety and team performance.
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5 Facts About Sebastian Arens
Challenges and inner growth In WOL for Teams, each team meets once a week for eight weeks, with each meeting lasting one and a half hours. In each meeting, the group addresses important individual needs: What kind of recognition do they each expect? How do they want to share their work and give or receive feed- back? How much autonomy does each person need? For Astrid, this proved very valuable, espe- cially because of the different ages and working requirements within her group: “Going deeper into that with WOL for Teams, getting into how open we really are when we talk to each other, whether we listen to understand and not just to respond, that really appealed to me. And it was really a lot of fun to participate in it.” The method includes a self-assessment form that asks you to rate where you are on nine differ - ent “I” and “We” attributes, including psychologi- cal safety, purpose, autonomy, and connection. In the first meeting, each participant rates where they would like to be on each of those attributes. This allows everyone to clarify how they would like to improve work on both the individual and team level. Team members repeat the self-as- sessment in week four and again in week eight, allowing them to track progress and make adjust- ments along the way. Telekom’s teams showed significant improvement in eight of the nine dimensions. This was possi- ble because the team had the opportunity, week after week, to practice and discuss dealing with different kinds of challenges. That allowed them to develop as individuals and also as a team.
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1. I am—loosely based on Belbin’s team roles—a pathfinder, inventor, and enabler.
2. I am a father of two wonderful sons.
3. I am a Telekom ambassador through and through. That means I bring customers into the best network, I‘m a “troubleshooter” if something does go wrong, and I’m happy when I can get people excited about a career in a DAX company. 4. I’m also involved in volunteer work— after all, as a company we also have a social responsibility. For example, I founded a virtual dialog café to help older people through the pandemic, and I was involved in the “Isolde erzählt” virtual reading tour. 5. I like to use unconventional ways to inspire people.
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Astrid is part of a leadership team and went through the eight weeks with that group instead of with the people she managed. This brought up different challenges and insights. For example, they discovered that, while they each felt they had good relationships with the teams they managed, they still had a lot to learn in dealing with each other as a leadership team. “What we found difficult: providing support to each other as leaders. We really had a lot of discussions on that. Overall, it was very posi- tive because we worked on our appreciative communication. We discussed things like how we want to react to e-mails and phone calls and how we want to deal with each other. There was a lot of openness, and it was exci- ting to experience how different we are in our reactions. We learned a lot from each other and that helped a lot.” Sebastian’s experience was that the most difficult challenges posed by WOL for Teams contributed the most to the improvements documented in his team’s self-assessment: “The tasks perceived as painful often turned out to be especially valuable, because they revealed where we need to look more closely in order to maintain good communication at eye level. These are often sticking points in a team that we otherwise don’t talk about.” For this reason, psychological safety is an essen- tial component in the program. WOL for Teams is explicitly not about finger-pointing or bringing up old situations from the past or driving people into justification. Therefore, the materials convey the agreement that everyone focuses on them- selves, articulating their own needs, and together
they talk through how each of their needs can be practically accommodated in the team.
Astrid describes how the experience had an ongoing impact on her team even after the eight- week program had ended. “It continues to have an effect today,” she says, adding that her team now talks openly about things that “leaders don’t normally talk about with each other,” like gener- osity and appreciation. “We are more careful with each other and more sensitive to each other, too. If someone says, ‘I need help and can’t get any further,’ the willingness to help each other has become much greater,” she says. In WOL for Teams, there is no designated mod- erator or facilitator. But, Astrid says, “someone has always felt called to lead through this topic on their own. As a result, we have learned to deal with each other in a very mindful way, so that everyone really gets a chance to speak.” “There’s a leader in every chair” Teams naturally develop their own unique dynamics. Against this background, WOL for Teams is a learning journey: it’s about being able to rely on each other, communicating clearly and appreciatively, and bringing structure and clarity to the tasks of each individual and the overall team. How did that work for the teams at Telekom? Sebastian says: “There is a useful basic assumption: ‘There’s a leader in every chair.’ Every person leads themselves. We encourage associates to be ‘leaders’ in this sense and to take responsibi- lity. WOL for Teams takes this into account, as evidenced by the feedback from the six teams
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5 Facts About Astrid Kluge
that participated in our pilot. I am also very pleased to see that even seasoned teams were able to improve significantly.”
Astrid adds that she has seen a significant effect on two particular fronts:
“The first realization for us was that this is for teams that want to get to know themsel- ves more intensively and better once again. Secondly, self-organization: We practiced this really well because we all had to learn to disci- pline ourselves and get involved. This made facets of the people visible that are otherwise not perceived.” Beyond “just performance” Astrid notes how the need for team development is never-ending, as teams are changing all the time: someone new joins, teams are reorganized or get a new manager, or teams stay the same but want to change how they work. This suits her company’s fast-paced, fluid business environ - ment, she says: “That’s exactly what it’s all about, especially in the midst of the change that we as a company are experiencing.” Sebastian focuses on the impact on culture. “There is so much more to WOL for Teams than just making the team more performant,” he says. “Connecting and developing teams in an increas- ingly complex work environment is an important building block on the way to becoming a learning organization.”
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1. I am a sales manager for the Hanover area.
2. I see myself as a modernizer.
3. I like to initiate and accompany change.
4. I like to develop employees, to find talents, develop them, and create new concepts for personnel development for our region. 5. As a salesperson, it is important to me to establish relationships and closeness between people in order to achieve the best possible result.
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“In companies,” he adds, “we always like to talk about self-organization and responsibility. This also looks great on PowerPoint slides. We need tools like WOL for Teams and a corresponding basic attitude if we are serious about it.” “WOL creates a safe space for the development of potential and awareness, for trust in each other and in the organization. This is how I under - stand WOL. It’s about networking, and becoming visible. WOL for Teams is about getting to know each other beyond professional roles and about experiencing the versatility of a team, celebrat- ing empathy and appreciation—not just as a nice phrase, but in everyday practice.”
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