How do you unite three global groups into one team and set them up for success?
That question was at the top of Darci Kleindl’s list when she became general manager of sales enablement and sales excellence for the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) organisation in the Dynamics division. This is how The Five Behaviors® gave her team a shared language, clearer accountability and fewer silos.
The challenge
Three weeks into her new role, the Dynamics business went from being Microsoft’s eighth-largest business to being at the core of Microsoft’s strategy. Kleindl led a global team of customer support managers, all working with very different clients, and a team of leaders setting worldwide standards for sales basics and internal and external readiness. She needed a way to understand her team while redefining its purpose and place in the company.
Investing in a lasting solution
Kleindl wanted a lasting solution, not a quick fix. With her trusted advisor Bruce Leamon, President of the Leamon Group and a Five Behaviors® Authorized Partner, she created the Organisational Capital Programme: a multi-year programme focused on leadership, coaching skills, emotional intelligence and a culture of teamwork.
I wanted to give my colleagues an end-to-end picture of who they are, from their own understanding as well as from other people’s perspectives, to understand how your personality can relate to your leadership skills.
Darci Kleindl, Microsoft Business Solutions
Leamon recommended The Five Behaviors® Team Development as the foundation. It is based on Patrick Lencioni’s bestselling book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The assessment and facilitated sessions show an intact team how it scores on trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results, and how to improve.
It was critical for us to adopt a common language and framework that fit within our existing initiatives. The Five Behaviors provides a comprehensive assessment of the team’s current state while providing crisp guidance toward next steps.
Bruce Leamon, Leamon Group
The Five Behaviors® is powered by Everything DiSC®. Before the programme, each participant took a DiSC® assessment to understand their own style (D: Dominance, i: Influence, S: Steadiness, C: Conscientiousness) and how it affects the group. That shared understanding made the harder team conversations possible.
Two days that changed the team
Kleindl brought her teams from the US, EMEA and Asia together for a two-day offsite workshop. Leamon facilitated and started with vulnerability-based trust, the foundation of the model. Using the common language of DiSC, people felt safe enough to share personal experiences, and relationships grew beyond work.
There was suddenly a feeling that you were part of a bigger entity here and you weren’t just an individual. When we started talking about our values, we started connecting at a different level.
Dilip Popet, EMEA Enterprise CSM Director, Microsoft
The team identified conflict and commitment as the areas to work on and agreed concrete next steps. While defining their core values, they practised healthy conflict, and the payoff was clear: all forty participants reached complete agreement.
Kleindl noticed the change in energy: “I would say it went from a little resistance to excitement, to surprise, to really full engagement, and ultimately, at the end, to fun.” In two days, the group built a team spirit that kept them connected back at work.
The results
- Clearer roles. Progress on accountability helped people understand their roles and expectations, individually and company-wide.
- Higher productivity and visibility for the organisation.
- Fewer silos. People worked towards the goals and priorities agreed at the offsite, and daily work and relationships across Microsoft improved.
- A foundation for what came next. The Five Behaviors prepared the team for the emotional intelligence, coaching and leadership parts of the programme.
This program actually gave me something actionable that the team could see, more at a collective level but also at an individual level. I got emails from people saying, ‘No one has ever invested in me in this way. It’s fantastic!’
Darci Kleindl, Microsoft Business Solutions
I truly enjoy what I’m doing. The program enables me to do the best work I can possibly do in the organization. I definitely feel more at home in this team.
Dilip Popet, Microsoft
Want to build this kind of trust and accountability in your team? The Five Behaviors® works with intact teams of any size.
