Like you, we have agonized, grieved, struggled, and wondered how to help cross-cultural teams and their team members thrive and not just barely survive. This big question formed out of providing care for cross-cultural workers for over 20 years, as well as living cross-culturally ourselves. The majority of our time was spent working through crisis situations; such as debriefings of critical incidents, trauma, accumulative stress, transition issues and interpersonal or team conflicts. These either involved individuals or whole teams. Many of the teams we worked with were in crisis, with team members leaving the team or not talking to each other because of misunderstandings. From these often sad, painful experiences, we began to dream how we could turn our 'triage' focus into a 'preventative model of care'. What do teams and communities need to stay healthy and prevent the misunderstandings that lead to a team imploding? After much research, input, adding, subtracting and testing it out through 'pilot' training's in various parts of the world, we created TeamWorks. That was in 2009. We are seeing that providing these tools works! TeamWorks!

TeamWorks helps build community. This is accomplished by team members gaining valuable insights into themselves and each other. 

       As participants become aware of how they each perceive the world differently through their own 'lens' of personality, cultural background, values,

       and  communication style, they will reach out to rebuild their own team culture. This will not be an ‘either/or’,  but a ‘third way’ culture.

      Through mutual change, they will find common ground to deal with misunderstandings and come to see their God-given differences as a way to build community.