Help Build High-Performing Teams as a Five Behaviors® Certif

The Five Behaviors takes the form of a pyramid, with each behavior serving as a foundation for the next. Simple, sound, and straightforward— this model challenges teams to rethink their approach when working together. 

In a 5B program, teams learn the advantage of:

• Trusting one another  
• Engaging in Conflict around ideas  
• Committing to decisions  
• Holding each other Accountable  
• Focusing on achieving collective Results  

Building teams in today’s work environment is more complex than ever. Yet it’s teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage. As a Five Behaviors Certified Practitioner, you’ll have the power to create a culture of teamwork, with high performing teams that elevate the entire organization and drive results. 

A cohesive team becomes a high functioning team that:

• Makes better, faster decisions 
• Taps into the skills and opinions of all members 
• Avoids wasting time and energy on politics, confusion and destructive conflict 
• Avoids wasting time talking about the wrong issues and revisiting the same topics over and over again because of a lack of buy-in 
• Creates a competitive advantage 
• Is more fun to be on! 

The Five Behaviors Certification is a 2-week intensive with live, virtual, instructor-led sessions + self-guided online learning. The program is designed for professionals seeking the tools and expertise to deliver impactful experiences that help create a culture of teamwork and high-performing teams that drive results.

Gain ongoing access to Wiley's Online Training Center, which includes course content and the ability to connect with fellow practitioners and Wiley's education specialists, where you will learn:

• A deep understanding of The Five Behaviors model and key principles.
• In-depth discovery of The Five Behaviors solution portfolio: Team Development and Personal Development.
• How to customize and deliver impactful Five Behaviors learning experiences to address your unique training needs.
• Facilitation techniques while receiving feedback from your peers in a supportive environment.

• Access to Wiley’s Online Training Center (with ongoing access after certification as a resource)
• 4 live, instructor-led virtual sessions (attendance is required for all four 2-hour sessions) 
• 5 asynchronous/self-paced learning modules (2-3 hours per module)  
• The opportunity to practice by developing a sample application plan
• Certification Exam to measure understanding of key concepts
• The Five Behaviors Facilitation Kit which includes facilitation guides, customizable materials, session planning resources, presentations, and more
• Education credits, if desired, from SHRM, ATD, HRCI, and ICF.

You can issue two different reports within The Five Behaviors solutions suite, helping you activate your team’s ability to drive results through cohesive teamwork:

1. Personal Development solution helps individuals learn the skills they need to “team” effectively
2. Team Development solution helps intact teams gain the know-how to work better together

Both solutions use the framework of Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and Results, combined with personalized insights to create powerful, customized, and authentic team development solutions that empowers both teams and individuals to make lasting change. 

Use the free follow-up Progress Report to measure development over time and Comparison Reports to strengthen individual relationships.

Explore the structure of the two-week Five Behaviors Certification course in the graph below, a schedule that offers a blend of live sessions and self-guided online learning. Expect a total commitment of 20 hours (10 hours/week).

The first and most important behavior is to build trust. Trust is all about vulnerability. Team members who trust one another can be comfortable being open to and with one another regarding their failures, weaknesses, and fears. Vulnerability-based trust is predicated on the simple and practical idea that people who are willing to admit the truth about themselves are not going to engage in the kind of political behavior that wastes everyone’s time and energy and, more important, makes it difficult to achieve real results.

Only team members who trust one another are going to feel comfortable engaging in unfiltered, passionate debate around issues and decisions. Otherwise, they are likely to hold back their opinions. Mastering productive, ideological conflict means engaging in passionate, unfiltered debate around issues of importance to the team.

Even among the best teams, conflict is always at least a little uncomfortable. No matter how clear everyone is that a conflict is focused on issues, not personalities, it is inevitable that at

some point someone will feel personally attacked. It’s unrealistic for a team member to say, “I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with your approach to the project” and not expect the other person to feel

some degree of personal rejection. But if team members are not making one another uncomfortable at times, if they never push one another outside of their emotional comfort zones during discussions, it is extremely likely that they’re not making the best decisions for the organization.

Teams that commit to decisions and standards do so because they know how to embrace two separate but related concepts: buy-in and clarity.

Buy-in is the achievement of honest emotional support for a decision. Too often, consensus is not real. False consensus arises when, instead of discussing the conflict, team members just nod their agreement and move on. Commitment is about a group of individuals buying in to a decision precisely when they don’t naturally agree. In other words, it’s the ability to defy a lack of consensus. 

When people know that their colleagues have no reservations about disagreeing with one another and that every available opinion and perspective has been aired, they will have the confidence to embrace a decision.

The fourth behavior of cohesive teams is embracing accountability. Members of effective teams

hold one another accountable, and they don’t rely on the leader to do so. That’s because asking

the leader to be the primary source of accountability is inefficient, and it breeds politics. It is far

more effective when team members go directly to one another and give frank, honest feedback.

When it comes to teamwork, accountability means the willingness of team members to remind

one another when they are not living up to agreed-on performance standards. Direct, peer-to-peer

accountability is based on the notion that peer pressure and the distaste for letting down a

colleague will motivate a team player more than any fear of authoritative punishment or rebuke.

Truly cohesive teams focus obsessively on the collective results of the entire organization. What might makes focusing on collective results difficult? A strong and natural tendency to look out for ourselves can erode the roots of teamwork until eventually even trust has been destroyed. Results-oriented teams establish their own measurements for success, committing early and publicly to what the team will achieve and continually review progress against those expected achievements.