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Category Archive: Teamwork

Management Today

Posted by on August 22, 2018

There is a lot of confusion and even tension between the disciplines of management and leadership. Both are extremely important but distinctly different. Management is where execution lives and therefore must be incredibly effective for any strategy to be successful. This Forbes post is an informative read:

The idea of management comes from the military because that was the first time in human history a diverse group of people who did not know each other were organized to work together towards a common goal. That structure gave us a few principles:

Hierarchy
Command and control
Incentives for achieving the goals
Division of responsibility based on function
Centralized decision making

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Seven Secrets To Inspiring Your Team

Posted by on July 16, 2018

In my leadership work I am shocked by how many teams for the most part participate in meetings that are basically a waste of time. We value collaboration but we just do not possess the competency to stop dumbing down the content so that everyone can be involved. A significant investment should be made in assessing the effectiveness of all your teams and this Forbes post is a great place to start:

“Today’s world demands more from teams than just cranking out the work. We need people who are creative, who think for themselves and build on each other’s ideas, who exceed expectations and deliver outrageous results. The question is how do you go beyond productivity, efficiency and execution to something bigger and ultimately more important?”

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The Most Productive Meetings Have Fewer Than 8 People

Posted by on June 27, 2018

My soap box these days is that there is an over value given to collaboration. I see too many people spending time in long meetings for the expectation that everyone being involved will produce the best results. In my experience that is almost never the case. This HBR post drives home one critical aspect of why this is true:

“There are many problems with the way most meetings are run. One of the most political is the invite list. Deciding who to include can be tough but too many managers default to including everyone. In an effort to not make anyone feel left out, they unknowingly decrease the quality of the meeting. Robert Sutton, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, looked at the research on group size and concluded that the most productive meetings contain only five to eight people. Why? There is a tipping point beyond which the quality of the conversation begins to erode.”

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5 Common Complaints About Meetings And What To Do About Them

Posted by on June 8, 2018

Meetings can be the most expensive waste of time within your organization. On the other hand, they can be the most effective strategic platform for collaboration and sustaining your competitive advantage in your market. So with those two extremes representing either potential failure or incredible potential for innovation, pay attention to Paul Axtell’s great post:

There are specific complaints that can be tackled, however. When I ask people in the workshops I lead what they most want help with, five issues consistently come up:

One or two people dominate the conversation and no one does anything about it.
My boss doesn’t lead meetings effectively.
Most of our meetings are just passing along information that could easily be sent in an email. We don’t talk about real issues.
No one is paying attention because they’re on their phones or laptops.
We keep having the same conversations because nothing gets done between meetings.

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The Nine Surprising Secrets Of Elite Teams

Posted by on May 21, 2018

In my role of executive coaching I get to work with a lot of leadership teams. In my experience about 20% of the teams I see are excellent. The other 80% are average at best and many on the other extreme of being consistently marginal. I will acknowledge that some of the team members I have observed need to be terminated but the consistent factor in the top 20% is the team leader. This Forbes post is spot on:

“As a retired Navy SEAL and founder of six multimillion-dollar businesses, I view the current business landscape like a “VUCA” war zone in Syria and Afghanistan — it’s Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous — but fortunately for you, there are no incoming enemy rounds!”

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The Two Traits Of The Best Problem Solving Teams

Posted by on April 4, 2018

Team collaboration is one of the most misunderstood concepts within many organizations. The old axiom of the sum is greater than the contribution of the individual parts it not working. Too much feedback from the wrong people and not enough from others creates predictable patterns of frustration. Teams need real leadership or they cannot be successful. This HBR post will help:

“Imagine you are a fly on the wall in a corporate training center where a management team of 12 is participating in a session on executing strategy. The team is midway through attempting to solve a new, uncertain, and complex problem. The facilitators look on as at first the exercise follows its usual path.”

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How To Build Great Teams

Posted by on January 26, 2018

I have learned more from Patrick Lencioni than anyone else on all of the dynamics involved in teamwork. My advice, read everything he has written at least three times. Great teams don’t just happen but the good news is they can be built with the right process and people. This post by Women’s Media is spot on:

“Building a great team isn’t a matter of luck. The highest performing teams don’t depend on simply hiring smart people, great chemistry, or even good timing. The most productive teams are not some happy accident.”

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Make Civility The Norm On Your Team

Posted by on January 8, 2018

Almost everyone that works through teams believes there needs to be a healthy dose of conflict from time to time that will produce the greatest results. However, when team members are passive aggressive or unload and say something very critical towards another person, all trust can be lost. So the team leader’s responsibility is to establish the core values that will support civility. This post by Christine Portal is helpful:

“We all want to come to work and be treated with kindness and respect. Unfortunately, my research shows that there is rampant incivility in most organizations. I found that 98% of the workers I surveyed over the past 20 years have experienced rude behavior and 99% have witnessed it.”

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The Common Traits Of All Great Teams

Posted by on October 18, 2017

In today’s business environment working through teams in not a novelty anymore but a necessity. The use of teams can be abused and become nothing more than group think without execution. However, when teams are working well they can significantly improve productivity. This Forbes post provides great insight:

“I’ve watched a lot of the very best teams on the planet and had the chance to serve and help build many of them. As I reflect on what makes them work well together, it’s their commitment to being together and leveraging each other’s strengths. Here are three common denominators I’ve noticed about great teams.”

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6 Questions Great Leaders Ask Their Teams

Posted by on October 6, 2017

Effective leaders are no longer the person who sits at the head of the table and answers all of the important questions. Today the best leaders have developed the ability to ask great questions that empower other people to be fully engaged. Collaboration by its very nature requires a conversation and this Forbes post is spot on:

“It’s humbling to ask questions. After all, the moment that you ask a question is the moment you reveal what you don’t know. To some, asking questions is a death-blow to their ego, while to others, it’s a stepping stone to clarity. In fact, during research for their book The Innovator’s DNA, the authors discovered that the strongest leaders (and the people destined for the C-suite) asked questions because they were humble enough to acknowledge they didn’t know everything and confident enough to admit it.”

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