Team Development Facilitation
Facilitated team development for groups building how they work together, across months rather than in a single day.
We create sessions that are greater than the sum of their parts, guided by award-winning facilitators.
- 110,000+people facilitated globally
- Award-winningfacilitators
- Ongoing, not one-offin person, virtual or hybrid
We design sessions that leave teams with shared clarity, specific commitments, and the momentum to follow through.
Trusted by teams across the public, private and non-profit sectors
Team development
Team development is a cadence. Team building is an event.
Positive Impact facilitates team development for leadership teams, departments and cross-functional groups across Canada and into the US. The work is about how your team decides things, handles disagreement, and holds each other to what it agreed, built deliberately across months rather than assembled in an afternoon.
If what you want is a strong single day, one that brings a group together and leaves them better connected, that’s team building and we run plenty of it. Our team building facilitator page covers that properly, and for a fair number of teams it’s the better answer. This page is about the other thing: development as something a team keeps doing, which is a different engagement with a different shape and, honestly, a different price.
What we facilitate
What team development works on
Most programmes cover three or four of these in sequence. The order matters more than the list does.
Trust and psychological safety
Naming what safety looks like on your team when it’s working, and the specific behaviours that produce it. This comes first in almost every programme, because the rest of the work sits on top of it and collapses without it.
Communication styles and feedback
A shared language for how people each work, plus how feedback actually gets given here rather than how the handbook says it should be. Usually the second session and often the one people quote back a year later.
Learn moreDecision-making and commitment
How this team decides, who decides what, and what commitment looks like once a decision is made. Most teams discover they have never actually agreed this, which is why the same decision keeps getting reopened.
Conflict that stays productive
Moving a group from polite agreement toward disagreement that resolves rather than escalates. Not first in the sequence. It needs the trust work to have landed, which is usually a quarter in.
Accountability between peers
How the team holds each other to commitments without it quietly becoming the manager’s job. The hardest of these and the one that most needs repetition rather than a session.
Alignment on where you’re going
Development work anchored to something real, so the team is practising on the decisions it actually has to make rather than on a case study.
Learn more
Every programme we run is shaped around where your team actually is, which is rarely where the org chart suggests. Tell us what’s happening and we’ll tell you what it needs.
Share what you’re working onHow we facilitate
Built on your team’s own knowledge of itself
There’s no prepared script. We guide the process, your team brings the expertise, and together we build toward ways of working your people shaped themselves and will therefore actually keep.
Nobody in your organization can facilitate this particular work from the inside. The conversations that matter most in team development are about how the group treats each other, and the person who would normally lead them is usually part of the pattern being discussed. Facilitator-guided, participant-led, with no stake in how anyone comes out of it.
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Ways to engage
Three ways teams engage us
Every programme is customizable, but most start in one of these shapes.
One session first
Start with a diagnostic
One session plus anonymous input from the team, which tells you what’s actually going on rather than what the leader thinks is. It also tells you honestly whether a full programme is warranted, and sometimes the answer is no.
Best for: teams that know something is off and can’t name it.
Ask about a diagnosticThree to four sessions
A six-month programme
Three or four sessions across two quarters, each building on commitments from the last, with work happening between them rather than only in the room.
Best for: the most common shape, and the shortest that changes habits.
Talk about a programmeFour sessions
A year, quarterly
Four sessions across the year with the same lead facilitator, designed so a roster change becomes material for the next session rather than an interruption to the plan.
Best for: teams with steady turnover or rapid growth.
Ask about a longer arc
The process
A clear path from first call to lasting change
Every programme follows a similar path, from the first call to the habits that outlast the final session.
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Discovery
A call with whoever leads the team, then anonymous input from everyone else in it.
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Design
A sequence across months, ordered so each session builds on the one before.
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Session one
Usually trust and safety, because the rest of the programme depends on it landing.
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Between sessions
Small commitments the team practises in its own meetings, not homework.
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Later sessions
Feedback, decision-making, conflict and accountability, in the order your team needs.
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Re-anchoring
A session when the roster changes, rather than assuming the agreements carried over.
Why facilitation?
How a team works together shapes everything it creates.
$100 Million
is the yearly cost for big companies for staff being in pointless meetings.
65%
of senior managers say that meetings keep them from completing their own work.
58%
of Americans would rather go to a doctor’s appointment than attend a work meeting.
75%
of decision-makers feel that collaboration needs to be improved in their companies.
Forrester Research, 2021
Outcomes
What changes, and what it looks like
Disagreement that happens in the meeting
Rather than afterwards, in a smaller one, with different people. The clearest single sign that the trust work has landed.
Decisions that stay decided
Because the team agreed how it decides, and what commitment means once something is settled, instead of leaving both implicit.
Feedback given closer to the event
Days rather than at the annual review, because the team built a shared way of doing it and practised it while someone was in the room.
Peers holding each other to things
Accountability that doesn’t route through the manager every time, which is the change leaders notice first and value most.
A shared language that survives
Something concrete the team points at months later, most often the communication styles grid, used without anyone needing to reintroduce it.
New people absorbed faster
Working agreements written down clearly enough that somebody joining in March can read how this team operates rather than inferring it over a year.
Client stories
Real teams, real outcomes
Every team is different and we won’t pretend one case study maps neatly onto yours. These are the kinds of sessions we run and what groups point to afterward.
What our clients say
It was a pleasure to work with Will and Positive Impact. I was both inspired and empowered to co-deliver a meaningful offsite. Their positive incite into leadership performance and emotional resilience gave me clear direction and tactical tools I could apply to my workplace right away. I thoroughly look forward to working with Will again.
– Haley Daniels
Olympian and Motivational Speaker
Thanks for your incredible support, kindness, professionalism, and realness.
It was my sincere pleasure and privilege to work with you on our event.
You are a unique and special human, and I’m grateful that our paths crossed on this project, and look forward to the next time.
– Shauna Grinke, MBA, CPHR
Vice President – People and CultureThe workshop was an incredibly valuable experience for our team — the facilitator created an open, engaging environment that encouraged honest discussion and collaboration. The content was thoughtfully tailored to our team’s specific goals, making the session both relevant and actionable. We’re excited to continue partnering with Positive Impact to build on the great momentum sparked in this session.
– Shannon Charbonneau
Account Director
Treetop Marketing and Promotion Inc.
I’m leaving our session with a sense of optimism that I haven’t had in a while. It was time extremely well spent! I am sure that we all feel much closer and more connected.
– Participant
MDA Geointelligence Engineering Leadership SummitThe environment that was created made me feel comfortable to participate and collaborate with my colleagues. It was very well organized. I liked the outcome of the brainstorm sessions and warmup activities.
– ParticipantThe level of engagement and pace of the training was excellent. Like the fact that this workshop was trainer-guided, but participants lead!
– ParticipantFantastic facilitating most importantly Will understood when to let us talk and when to corral us back on track. Excellent value this afternoon.
– Engagement Workshop Participant
100% Satisfaction Guarantee.
We stand behind the quality of our work with complete confidence. If you’re not fully satisfied with the results, we’ll make it right.
Your trust matters more to us, and our guarantee acknowledges our belief that you deserve to feel confident in every investment you make with us. That’s a standard we hold ourselves to, every time.
Ready to talk about your team?
Get in TouchThe sequence
What the work covers, in what order, over what period
The order is the part people underestimate. Running conflict work before the trust work has landed is the commonest reason a programme stalls in its second session.
| Focus | What the sessions work on | How long it usually takes |
|---|---|---|
| Trust and psychological safety | What safety looks like on this team when it’s working, and the behaviours that produce it | Two or three sessions across a quarter. Almost always first, because everything else sits on it |
| Communication and feedback | Communication styles, how feedback gets given here, and the conversations people have been avoiding | One session to establish the language, then practice built into every session after it |
| Decision-making and commitment | How this team decides, who decides what, and what commitment means once something is settled | One session to agree it, then revisiting it the first time a real decision tests it |
| Productive conflict | Moving from polite agreement to disagreement that resolves rather than escalates or goes quiet | Not first. This needs the trust work to have landed, which is usually a full quarter in |
| Peer accountability | Holding each other to commitments without it becoming a management function by default | Ongoing. The one that most needs a cadence rather than a session, and the slowest to show |
| A changed roster | Rebuilding the working agreements when people join or leave, rather than assuming they transferred | A session per significant change. The rhythm most teams underestimate, for the reason set out below |
A point worth knowing
Familiarity is what makes disagreement safe, and it resets when the roster changes
Research on team familiarity keeps arriving at the same list of benefits from a stable group: better coordination, lower anxiety, and, the one facilitators care about most, a greater willingness to express disagreement. People who have worked together a while argue better. They’ve learned what a colleague’s blunt phrasing actually means and stopped reading it as an attack.
Those benefits don’t transfer to a team that has changed. Tuckman’s stages were never a one-way ladder: a group that is comfortably performing can be pushed back toward forming or storming by a single new member, because the shared understanding of who does what, and of how disagreement gets handled here, has to be rebuilt rather than inherited. Studies across settings as different as software teams and professional sports squads find the same shape, that losing or substituting a member impairs coordination even when the person arriving is individually excellent.
Which is why this work doesn’t finish. A team that had a strong day eighteen months ago, and has since gained two people and lost one, is not that team any more. It has most of the same names on the org chart and a materially different set of working relationships, and the agreements from that day were made by a group that is now partly gone.
So we design development as a cadence rather than an event. Sessions spaced across months, each building on what the last one committed to, with changes to the roster treated as material rather than as an interruption to the plan. When a team gains someone, that’s a session, not a footnote. It’s also the honest reason this costs more than a single day: it is doing something a single day cannot do.
Featured Workshops
Each of these runs in person, virtually, or as a hybrid, and each sits inside a programme rather than standing alone.
COMS Communication Styles
COMS is our own communication styles assessment, grounded in research and facilitated by our team. It gives your people a shared way to talk about how they each work, so different styles become an advantage instead of a source of friction.
In a development programme this usually lands second, once the trust work has made it safe to be described. It’s also the piece with the longest tail: the grid is the thing teams are still pointing at a year later, and the thing a new member can be brought into quickly.
Eight questions, one simple grid, and a reference the whole team can point at months later.
Learn more
Strategic Planning
This is where your team gets a real say in shaping and carrying out the organization’s direction, landing on initiatives that actually move forward.
Inside a development programme it does double duty. The team practises its new ways of deciding on a real decision rather than a hypothetical one, which is the only way any of it transfers into the following Monday.
A strategic plan is a living, breathing document. We stay involved as it plays out over the following months and years.
Learn more
5 Dysfunctions of a Team
This session takes a good team and helps make it excellent. We draw on Patrick Lencioni’s well-known framework, approached through an appreciative inquiry lens that starts with what’s already working.
The framework suits a programme better than a single day, because the five behaviours build on each other in sequence and a team cannot honestly get through all five in one sitting. Trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results, taken in that order across months.
Your people walk away with shared language for how they work together, and a plan for moving forward that they built themselves.
Learn more
Our Core Team
Great content is only made better by great facilitators
Will Chambers
Founder & Facilitator
Award-winning facilitator and Founder of Positive Impact, with sessions delivered to tens of thousands of people. Will focuses on strategy, leadership, team dynamics and communication, turning concepts into clear, committed action.
More about Will
Lindsay Davis
Coach & Strategist
Award-winning coach and entrepreneurial guide, with experience spanning rural entrepreneurs in Africa to multimillion-dollar companies. Helps leaders focus on what matters most and build the resilience to anticipate challenges and move through them.
More about LindsayMichael Lorsch
Facilitator & Learning Consultant
Brings facilitation and learning design from theatre stages to executive boardrooms, including in-house work with lululemon. Blends mindfulness, relationship systems and human-centred design to keep people at the centre of every session.
More about Michael
Jason Maraschiello
Coach & Facilitator
Certified life and corporate coach, mindfulness and meditation teacher. Uses mindfulness and effective communication to help people set manageable goals, find work-life balance and build the support to follow through.
More about Jason
For a development programme we assign one lead facilitator for the whole arc. That continuity is most of the value: by session three they know your team’s patterns, and the group has stopped performing for a stranger. Beyond the core team, we draw on a wider network of facilitators and subject-matter experts, matched to the goals, sector, and people of each engagement.
Before you book
Worth reading first
Six pieces that answer the questions most teams have before starting.
- Team stages Everything you need to know about the Tuckman model Read the guide
- Conflict How facilitators help teams resolve conflict Read the guide
- Frameworks Understanding DISC and how teams work together Read the guide
- The science The neuroscience behind effective facilitation Read the guide
- Measurement How to measure the success of a facilitation session Read the guide
- Afterwards Keeping momentum after the session ends Read the guide
Frequently Asked Questions
Team development facilitation FAQs
What’s the difference between team development and team building?
Team building is an event and team development is a cadence. A team building day brings a group together, builds connection and usually leaves people feeling better about each other, and for a lot of teams that’s exactly the right purchase. Team development is sessions spaced across months that change how a team decides, disagrees and holds each other accountable, with work happening between the sessions. If a strong single day is what you’re after, our team building facilitator page covers it and we’d rather point you there than sell you a programme you don’t need.
How long does a programme run?
Six months with three or four sessions is the most common shape and the shortest that reliably changes habits rather than mood. A year with quarterly sessions suits teams with steady turnover or rapid growth, because it gives the roster changes somewhere to be handled. Shorter than a quarter and you’re really buying a very good day, which is a legitimate thing to buy and worth calling by its right name.
Can we just do one session?
You can, and we’d start there anyway. The first engagement is usually a diagnostic: one session plus anonymous input from the team, which tells you what’s actually going on rather than what the person who called us thinks is going on. Sometimes that session is enough on its own and we’ll say so. It’s a considerably better starting point than committing to six months before anyone has established what the team actually needs.
Our team has changed a lot this year. Should we wait until it settles?
No, and the instinct to wait is worth examining. A team that has gained and lost people isn’t the old team with adjustments, it’s a new team whose working agreements were made by a group that is now partly gone. Waiting for it to settle usually means waiting through the period when the agreements are being set by default rather than on purpose. Change is the argument for starting, not against it.
How do you measure whether it worked?
By behaviour that someone can point at, agreed with your team at the start so we’re not marking our own homework. The usual markers are disagreement surfacing in the meeting rather than in a smaller one afterwards, decisions staying decided, feedback arriving in days rather than at the annual review, and peers holding each other to commitments without routing through the manager. We also run anonymous input at the start and again at the end, which shows movement even where nobody would say it out loud.
What if one person is genuinely the problem?
Then a team programme is the wrong tool and we’ll say so early rather than spend six months working around it. Group facilitation is powerful for patterns the whole team is part of, and poor at addressing one individual’s conduct, which is a management conversation or a coaching one. We offer individual coaching and can suggest that route. What we won’t do is run sessions that everybody in the room understands to be aimed at one person.
Can this run virtually?
Yes, and for distributed teams it usually should, because the sessions then happen in the medium the team actually works in. A programme delivered virtually tends to run as shorter, more frequent sessions than an in-person one would, which suits development anyway. Our virtual facilitation page covers how we design for the screen. Many teams mix the two, with an in-person session to open the programme and virtual sessions carrying the rest.
How far ahead should we book?
Six to eight weeks before the first session. That covers a call with whoever leads the team, anonymous input from everyone else and time to read what comes back, and a sequence designed around what that input surfaces rather than a standard curriculum. After that the later sessions are scheduled with you at the start, which matters: a programme that gets rescheduled twice usually becomes two sessions and a good intention.
Let’s talk about your team
Tell us what’s happening with your team and we’ll tell you honestly whether this needs a programme, a single strong day, or something else entirely.
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