How it works.

Cultural Change made easy.

After a Teaming Status Test (6 questions, 120 sec.) Groof challenges the team and the individual team members through the 3 Gates and 125 Levels of teambuilding into a new togetherness, team-flow, and fulfilling work lives. On the way Groof helps them to stay on that track with supportive tools.

Teaming

Status Test

... lets the

journey begin.

-> current level

Groof Challenges

... guide the path into team-flow & fulfilling work lives.

-> guide the change

Groof
Tools

... perpetuate the flow while life is happening.

-> support the change

3 Gates & 125 Levels
of Teambuilding

The team and team members have to unlock and pass the gates that will open up the possibility of team spirit and fulfilling work lives.

Each gate has 5 interdepending levels of opening. The more you open a gate the more the flow is growing.

Team Level: Without a shared ambition you don't have a team, just a group of people looking at each other, maybe silos of goals.
Team Member Level: Belonging is one of the greatest human feelings. The individual gate is about wanting to belong to these others. Significance plays a major role here: can I achieve what I want here or not. And then there might be a fear of not belonging that may cause unproductive strategies of protecting.
Team Level: The team has to find a way of smooth colaboration, agreements on how they decide in which situations and how they want to collaborate.
Team Member Level: Individually this means, what is my space, how can I have influence in the team. It touches the fields of how competent I see my self and how much I can master what I am doing.
Team Level: If the team has established rules of collaboration it needs openness to not fall into the rigidity trap of hiding in the structures. It needs the openness to differ. It needs positive and negative feedback, bystanding views of selfreflection in order to adjust.
Team Member Level: On the individual level openness means to be who I am without, participating, liking myself without fear of rejection. This is the moment, where the teamgenius is unleashed.

Each gate has 5 Levels. The gates are simultanously building and depending on each other. If inclusion is rising, autonomy my go down or if autonomy is rising people tend to be more open. So the whole interdependable field gets represented by 5 x 5 x 5 = 125 teambuilding levels. Team memebers and the team as a whole are working simultanously on the three gates, the whole system of system evolves.

The Challenges & Support Tools

Depending on the level and the challenge history the Groof intelligence is challenging the team and the individual team members towards the next step of their developement.

Individual Challenges

The goal is to lead the individual team members through the three gates into a feeling of significance (purpose), competence (mastery), and self-like (self-esteem).

A challenge could be a self-observation, a self-clearing, to start certain conversations, or a behavioral experiment, or many other things.

The challenge is always playfull, self paced and without any pressure.
If the challenge is not right, Groof is offering a new one.

Individual Tools

Individual tools can be a gate oriented diary, a conversation preparation template, a tool to set up experiments, or a buddy system that helps to rach the self set goals.

Team Challenges

The goal is to lead the whole team through the three gates into togetherness. When it is reached the team becomes a container for personal growth, perfomance soars, and so does happiness.

A challenge could be a to find and follow up on agreements, install new conversations and styles, aclearing conversation, and many more.

The challenge is always playfull, self paced and without any pressure.
If the challenge is not right, Groof is offering a new one.

Team Tools

Team tools can be a team journal, self reflections, workshop templates to clear situations, card games, simulation games, a team experiment set up tool.

The groof support tools make it easy to overcome the challenges.

They get activated and offered to the user in the moment a challenge requires their help, and switched of after the challenge is done.

Your turn!

Do the Teaming Status Test now and find out what your first Groof Challenge would look like!

6 Questions, 120 seconds to get your first status.

Teaming Status Test

Click to do the test (120 seconds) and find out your teaming level and how you first challenge would look like asa a team member and for your team.

FAQ

Question: Scrum and Groof how do they match?
Perfectly. If you want to see Transparency, Inspect & Adapt at the core of Scrum you will find that Scrum works perfectly only after the third gate. Before inclusion (e.g. more than one sprint goal) why should you do inspect & adapt together. After inclusion and before clearing autonomy, you will have political inspect & adapts. Once you found a system but are not open with each other it is a fake inspect & adapt, because people hide back. Only after openness is reach scrum can do full of its magic.

Question: do you still need Scrum Masters, Team Leads or Agile Coaches?
Yes, they are the main users of Groof and drive the Groof process.

Question: Is Groof made for Scrum Masters only?
No, every team lead, teamcoach, rte, ste or head-of can use it. If you don't use scrum you just have to install regular retroospectives (jour fixes in which you look back on the team's collaboration every 4 weeks).

Question: How do you scale Groof?
Groof scales through integration. That is the higher level of two or more teams is considered a team too. So I am part of my team (for instance a scrum team) and I am part of the higher level team (maybe a project team or an agile release train in the SAFe framework) and I am also a team member of my department and the whole organization. On levels Groof will guide me and my time through the 3 gates into team spirit. That is a new way of integrating organizations.

Question: How does Leadership look like in Groof?
The team members will be much more empowered. Through a different integration leaders on higher ranks will need to be much more of a teamplayer. The management will experience much more teamplay in peers and throughout the organization.

Question: What are the implications for HR?
HR can solve some of its most pressing problems with Groof. The employee experience will completely change, this will engage and turn them into ambassadors for the company and stay rather than leaving on the next occasion. Company performance soars, agility is automatically installed through the Groof mindset. The thing is each organization is forming their people, the question is what kind of people you want to have: hiders or teamplayers, loudspeakers or teamplayers. Groof is the tool for People & Culture.

Question: Who will get to know what in Groof?
Groof needs and uses a strong confidentiality regime. The individual team member will find out a lot about their happiness in the team and how to work on it. It is the same for the team, that is looking at its own culture. Every individual insight stays with the individual user and every team information stays with the team. There is no need for management or HR to know aboout it.

Question: can you reach psychological safety with Groof?
Yes, psychological safety is at the core of Groof. The three gates address the three interpersonal fears and turn them into strengths. The fear of not belonging, the fear of humiliation, and the fear of rejection are worked on through the challenges.

Question: how does Groof support teams to gain Teamflow?
Teams, once they are psychologically safe get into flow when they are challenged. Then they grow beyond themselves. That is what Groof does.

Question: Does psychological safety and inclusion mean that everyone should stay in the team?
It means that everyone has the chance to find the significancethey want. Team members who don't want to play in the team will probably leave. That will be good for the team. At the end the team is much better of. As you can see in the Google Aristotle project, strong teams don't need divas.

Question: What are the tools that you mentioned that will keep the team on track?
These are tools that help the individual team member and the team to find out about, work on themselves and overcome obstacles or even immunities to change. The tool builds them up with the challenges so that every tool offered will really be useful.

Question: How does a typical Groof challenge look like?
Find out by using the Team Status Questionnaire here.

Question: What is the status of the development?
Groof is still in beta. We are testing it with selected teams in 3 months blocks. If you are a team lead, scrum master or similar and want to use Groof, you can apply for a free membership in the Groof Pioneers Group. Get more information and learn how to apply here.

Still open questions? Get in touch here!