Customized Teamwork and Leadership Workshops

[ Team Effectiveness Development ] [ Experienced Practitioners ]

Agency projects demand effective leadership and teamwork. The Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership addresses NASA’s need for effective leadership and teamwork development with services including onsite workshops designed to build the management competencies of project practitioners.

Overview

Management guru Peter Drucker has written, "There may be ‘born leaders’ but there are surely too few to depend on them. Leadership must be learned, and can be learned." APPEL works to help NASA’s leaders and team members develop the attitudes and behaviors they need to meet the demands of today’s projects and to prepare themselves for tomorrow’s challenges.

At the heart of APPEL’s mission is the goal to deliver service to project leaders when they need it, how they need it and where they need it. Working with Dr. Charles Pellerin, former NASA Director of Astrophysics, APPEL offers customized, onsite workshops designed to assess and enhance attitudes and behaviors of team leaders and members.

In each of its workshops, APPEL consultants introduce a system developed by Dr. Pellerin and based on four key leadership functions: valuing, visioning, relating, and directing. Projects may choose to conduct team, interface and selected leadership e-assessments to provide measurements with which to customize a workshop to meet immediate project needs.

Workshop activities enable participants to identify and address areas where they can improve their team and leader effectiveness.. APPEL works with the workshop sponsor to determine the timing, duration, and customized focus of the event.

NASA Centers and APPEL provide funding for the workshops. The only administrative requirement of project managers requesting services is a post-workshop evaluation submitted to APPEL to assess program effectiveness.

Representative Outcomes Including Learning To:

• Organize experiences and thinking to incorporate the full context of a situation in order to choose effective actions
• Communicate decisions in a way that fosters willing reception
• Understand behaviors that affect team leadership, teamwork, and organizational interfaces
• Select effective action to improve personal behaviors and increase effectiveness and efficiency of teams
• Choose strategies and staff that serve the values of customers and the tasks of a project