NYC Strategic Team Performance Programs to Resolve Conflict, Save Money, and Talent
Disengaged teams with high tension and suffering performance need more than the average team training.
We fix patterns driving all team conflict- not just the presenting one.
This is our deepest engagement — built for teams whose dysfunction is already too entrenched for a multi-week training program to move. If that's where your team is, this is where you start
Signs Your Team Has Moved Past Friction Into Entrenched Dysfunction
Most teams show some version of normal friction. These are different — signs the pattern has calcified past what a workshop series can move:
• Different conflicts and complaints consistently arise, calling for frequent training or mediation
• Senior leaders directly involved in the tension, not just managing it from outside
• Team members who've simply disengaged, but stopped raising issues because nothing has changed when they have
• Silos that have hardened into separate, uncooperative sub-groups within the same team
• A pattern where one person absorbs blame for what's actually a shared, systemic dynamic
If two or more of these are present, strategic team performance programming is likely a better starting point than our team performance series
The Cost of Letting It Continue
Financial Implications
“SHRM's "The High Cost of a Toxic Workplace Culture" report found that turnover driven by toxic workplace culture cost U.S. employers $223 billion over a five-year period.
Engagement & Retention
SHRM's 2022 Global Culture Report: 90% of workers who rate their organizational culture as poor have thought about quitting, compared to just 32% among workers who rate their culture as good.
A Systemic Approach to Enhancing Team Performance
Expected Outcomes:
Teams Learn in Training:
Build & Practice Self-Awareness and awareness of others’ behaviors and the driving factors
Hard to see moments of Escalation & De-escalation
Understanding of job roles
Understanding roles in team dynamics
Practice in the high stakes-moment based on Learning:
Maintain Composure Under Pressure
Maintain Effective Communication
Practice Conflict Resolution
Recognize moments of Escalation & De-escalation that were previously hard-to-see
Practice Effective Collaboration and Compromise
Strategic Team Performance Program (the deep engagement — 6–12 months)
For teams where the dysfunction is entrenched — where conflict has outlasted a training series, involves senior leaders directly, or carries real cost in attrition and trust.
We partner for one continuous engagement, working over 6 to 12 months, depending on how the team progresses.
How It Works: Our S.A.T.H. Method
Phase One
Before any session happens, we get real context — your organization's data, what's already been tried, what your HR/L&D team is actually seeing day to day. This shapes everything that follows; it isn't a generic intake.
Phase Two
We don't just run structured sessions in isolation — we're present in the actual rhythm of your team's work, in real meetings and real interactions, where the pattern shows up unscripted. That's where the diagnosis sharpens past what any survey or interview alone would surface.
Phase Three
Through conversation, reflection, experiential exercises, and peer-to-peer practice, your team builds new capability session by session — each one built on what the last revealed, adjusted in real time as new patterns surface in the room.
Phase Four
Regular check-ins with your HR/L&D sponsors track what's actually shifting. We evaluate progress against your original goals and adjust the path forward together — continuing until the change holds.
3 pillars, applied depending on what your team needs:
1. Leadership Development Programs — equipping leaders with the capability to lead differently under pressure
2. Team Performance Programming — building the team's capacity to function differently, together
3. Executive Coaching — individual work for leaders navigating high-stakes dynamics
Meet the Facilitator
Licensed Therapist & Principle Facilitator
Quinelle Hickman founded The Performance Pivot LLC after more than a decade as a Licensed Therapist, diagnosing and shifting the relational patterns that keep teams and leaders locked in the same conflicts. A graduate of Goldman Sachs' One Million Women in Business Program, she's built The Performance Pivot into a firm trusted by corporate, government, and mission-driven organizations for leadership and team performance work.
For engagements where previous interventions haven't held, Quinelle brings the same clinical diagnostic training she's applied for 11 years with professionals navigating communication and behavior change — pointed directly at the dynamics keeping a team's dysfunction in place.
Previously Presented to Leaders at:
Nike
BuzzFeed
NYS Assembly
Congressional Black Caucus Foundation
National Association for Multi-Ethnicities in Communication (NAMIC)
Strategic Team Performance FAQs
-
Our standard Team Performance Programming is a defined-length workshop series —6-12 multi-week series — built for teams with friction that hasn't yet hardened into entrenched conflict. It can be applied at onboarding or beyond as a preventative way of allowing conflict to harden. It may also give your HR and L&D some relief from having to implement another intervention themselves. Strategic Team Performance combines that same programming into one sustained, 6–12-month engagement for teams where the dysfunction has calcified, senior leaders are directly involved, or previous interventions haven't held.
-
In-person delivery is highly recommended for many of the workshops. There are hybrid and virtual options.
-
No — and any consultant who guarantees resolution isn't being straight with you. What we can guarantee is a structured, evidence-based program designed around what's actually maintaining the conflict rather than its surface symptoms. Sustainable change requires participation and commitment from the people in the room. Our job is to build the conditions where that change becomes possible and to develop the capability to sustain it — not to manufacture an outcome we can't fully control.
-
Resistance to participation is itself data — and it's one of the things we're observing from the first session. Reluctance usually signals something about how safe people feel, what previous interventions produced, or what the team has learned about what happens when conflict surfaces. We design sessions that don't require full buy-in on day one. Engagement typically builds as participants experience that the program is addressing what's actually happening rather than delivering generic content.
-
Behavioral change is measurable. We recommend tracking: reduction in HR escalations, improvement in 360 feedback scores, direct report engagement data, observed communication patterns in team settings, and decision-making speed during high-stakes periods. We build 60-90 day outcome markers into program design so you have concrete indicators of what's shifting — not just satisfaction scores from the day of the session.
-
Yes. Although delivery is highly recommended for in-person, the program is available in virtual, in-person, or hybrid formats. Virtual sessions are fully interactive and experiential — not passive webinars. The observational precision that makes our in-person delivery effective translates to virtual settings through structured facilitation, real-time scenario practice, and deliberate session design that accounts for the dynamics specific to distributed teams.
-
Quinelle Hickman, LMFT our founder and principal facilitator
-
A 50% deposit secures your engagement start date for the first phase. The remaining 50% can be paid in 1-2 installment on agreed-upon dates. Engagements require a 6-month minimum commitment, reflecting the time real behavior change takes to hold. No refunds will be considered before 6 months of service. After 6 months, an installment payment schedule will continue until the duration of the program, which typically extends to 12 months. After 12 months, if your organization would like to continue working on retainer, the engagement moves to quarterly payments.
Ready to Reverse What’s Kept Your Conflict Steady and Hurt Team Performance?
Request a free consultation. We'll discuss your leadership challenges and assess whether our approach can solve what traditional team consulting couldn't.