Collaboration and Team Dynamics Lab

The Collaboration and Team Dynamics Lab has been developed for professionals who operate in environments where success depends on how well people work together. Engineering teams, project groups and cross functional stakeholders often share the same challenge, progress slows not because of ability or intent, but because collaboration becomes strained, misaligned or overloaded.

This two day lab has been created to reset the way teams think about working together. It offers a space to examine what strengthens collaboration, what derails it and how teams can build habits that make collective performance stronger, faster and more resilient.

Why the Lab Takes Place Away From the Workplace

Just as with all TEGacademy programmes, this lab is intentionally delivered outside the work environment, most commonly at Westlakes. The reason is simple. Collaboration is shaped by patterns, expectations and unspoken roles that develop within the workplace. When participants remain inside that environment, those patterns stay firmly in place.

By stepping away, even for two days, people loosen those habits. They gain space to see their team differently, challenge long standing dynamics and experiment without the pressure of being watched by colleagues or managers. Westlakes provides the calm, neutral ground needed for honest exploration and confident innovation.

What the Two Days Explore

Groups are kept between five and twelve participants to ensure the experience feels energising, hands on and personal. The aim is not to lecture but to help teams notice themselves, understand one another and re engineer the way they collaborate.

The Lab centres on three interconnected themes.

The first theme focuses on team identity. How the team sees itself, what it values and where it unintentionally creates friction. Participants explore trust, psychological safety and the subtle behaviours that influence how openly people share ideas or challenge decisions.

The second theme examines roles and expectations. Every team, even without meaning to, falls into predictable patterns. Some voices dominate, others withdraw, conflict is avoided or overdone, and responsibilities blur. Through structured activities and facilitated discussions, the Lab helps teams surface these patterns and reshape them intentionally.

The third theme is collective problem solving. Teams work through practical challenges that require shared thinking, negotiation and joint decision making. They test new approaches, uncover hidden strengths and learn how to work through disagreement constructively rather than defensively.

Throughout the Lab, participants use live examples from their own projects, ensuring that the insights translate directly into their real world challenges.

The Collaboration Simulation

At the heart of the Lab is a two day simulation designed to reveal the team’s natural dynamics.

Participants take on interdependent roles within a project scenario that evolves over time. Information is distributed unevenly, deadlines shift, and unexpected complexities arise. Teams must coordinate, prioritise and solve problems while navigating ambiguity, pressure and competing viewpoints.

As the scenario unfolds, patterns become visible. Decision making slows or accelerates, communication becomes either clearer or more chaotic, alliances form, assumptions surface and the group learns how they truly operate when the stakes rise.

Facilitators guide structured reflections between phases of the simulation. These conversations help the team understand what is driving their behaviours and how those behaviours shape their results. The goal is not to critique individuals, it is to understand the system the team creates together.

What Teams Leave With

By the end of the two days, teams walk away with a refreshed understanding of how they function, how they can work together more effectively and what practical behaviours will strengthen performance back in the workplace.

They leave with:

• clearer shared expectations
• strategies for navigating conflict and disagreement
• a stronger collective identity
• practical collaboration tools they can use immediately
• and a renewed sense of trust and momentum

Most importantly, they leave with a deeper appreciation of one another’s strengths and perspectives, which is often exactly what complex project environments need.

TEGacademy

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Innovation Centre, Westlakes Science Park, Moor Row,
Cumbria CA24 3TP

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