What is TeamUp
TeamUp is a Software-as-a-Service for corporate behavioral skills improvement. The behavioral skills consist of communication skills, emotional intelligence and the ability to understand office dynamics and respond in effective way.
The Focus
COVID19 has changed a lot about office interaction and work habits. Even after office restarts, many of the habits will stay. The corporate skills were very important before and now they are even more critical.
There is no system that comprehensively addresses the needs of technical members. Most management programs are focused towards improving the managers.
Ever since agile methodologies became a norm, the expectation on team members has increased a lot. The team members are expected to deal with each other with minimal supervision. They are also expected to take decisions, escalate when needed instead of waiting for managers to seek status. But the skills to meet these expectations do not exist. Due to this, agile remains just a process methodology instead of ‘agile culture’ which is the original intent.
Matrix organization structure is very common now. But the skill of dealing with multiple bosses is not common enough.
Global teams. Earlier, there were many two-location teams. Now the mix of ethnicities, locations, spoken accents, writing styles, technical domains and other kinds of diversity is enormous.
Being effective in these complexities is hard. There are some management courses which teach few of the leadership concepts.
But there is no focus to solve these in comprehensive way.. until now. Until MidManager TeamUP got released.
TeamUp Main Features
It is a package of three things.
First, compact set of eLearning content that covers most important management and psychology models for corporate life. The models are explained with application into day to day life. It is also made compact so that you spend least amount of time with theory and can do more case study role plays.
Second, it is online practice of critical case studies. This is most important feature of TeamUP. Any course online or offline can only help you to get introduced to the topic. Skill development happens only by applying it and practicing. Most important day to day situations are designed as case studies. You could also customize the same in order to make it personal for you. It will help to get more involved while doing the practice. You can practice any number of times.
Third, automated analytics. It gives you personalized feedback on how well you did during casestudy roleplay. There are many reports that comes from TeamUP behavior analytics engine. It uses many advanced techniques like Machine Learning.
Further, there is skill gap indication based on analysis and the courses are suggested based on this.
To make the learning structured, there is a competency framework and certification. The courses contain the proven management models used across the world in top organizations. The course completion requires online role play practice. Hence it is not just course where you watch videos. There is practical learning even without anyone having to be physically present.
There is Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning behind the analytics. The analytics will continue to improve and more insights keep coming to you.
Using TeamUp
As soon as you login, you will find the role play case study details. One of the most common situations at work is project update. This looks simple, but in reality, lot of stakeholders judge you in this meeting. You are expected to be ‘concise’, ‘accurate’ , ‘solution-oriented-instead-of-complaining’. At the same time, you need to bring confidence, team work, empathy and many more. Hence a standard case study is presented when you login.
As you can see, the process steps for learning cycle is introduced in the picture. First, study the role play case study for project update. In the second step, turn ON camera and microphone and the recording. Ensure that the AV streaming is not blocked by firewall, if you are using office device. Whatever you speak while recording is ON, it considered as ‘project update given in the virtual project review’. Hence read the casestudy and the status provided in the details. The same updates to be spoken for our “SW robot manager” to listen and judge.
After studying the casestudy details, move to Role Play session part. It has three steps – First, Get Ready. In this, turn ON camera and audio. Second, start the recording. Once it starts, text ‘RECORDING’ will appear. Also a timer starts count up. Once this happens, start talking. Third, once you are done press stop the session.
After this the analysis is to be initiated. Analysis has multiple steps that run on cloud. Once analysis is initiated, an animation comes that indicates the background analysis. It requires you to stay waiting for few seconds to minutes.
Once analysis is done, you can view the analysis reports. It presents many details such as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), recorded video and sentiment details. These, against the specific situation, are analyzed and report is presented.
Some of the report pages look as below.
Further to reports, there is skill guidance provided. The details could be easily understood inside the service. There is also competency framework which gives you clear path on what to learn.
Thereafter, the eLearning interface and the practice roleplay options could be used as per the intuitively designed flow.