When used appropriately, feedback from 360’s is an outstanding way to grow talent, increase team and company performance, and uncover blind spots. All this can be done without hiring expensive outside consultants – because your colleagues know your company best.
However, the power of 360’s is rarely fully leveraged. Too often, they are hijacked and used for the wrong reasons. That has made people suspicious and even sarcastic about 360’s. To avoid these traps, we recommend three 360 feedback strategies:
… Read the full article >
After teaching, coaching, and consulting to thousands of leaders around the globe, it’s pretty clear what makes a great team meeting. Here’s what you must do in your leadership team meetings to create the best results.
Arrive Early to Connect: Not just via the meeting link. This few minutes of unstructured time may be all you will get with your team this week. Don’t squander it. Take a few minutes for chit chat about other topics and connect with your team.
Spend… Read the full article >
Many leaders operate on the delusion that people acting happy around them means everything is good. Don’t they realize that their employees’ careers ride on being liked by their boss? Most people will go out of their way to avoid conflict in front of their boss.
The same is true of meetings. The point of bringing people together for meetings is to collaborate. Collaborate means to work together to create something. How can you… Read the full article >
Unfortunately, many leaders still use old and outdated meeting-management techniques that fail to create effective meetings. Even with a solid agenda and strong task leadership, one huge problem continues to get in the way: people!
Distractions, groupthink, lack of comfort with conflict, overly quiet or talkative people, and other aspects of human nature get in the way of making team meetings productive.
Here are 5 techniques that tap into people’s best sides. They get team members to be enthusiastic… Read the full article >
Employees in business yearn for transparency. They say that it’s a leadership requirement. Yet being open about what’s really going on is not realistic. Transparency does not and will not ever exist in executive suites around the globe. Here’s why.
There will always be pockets of transparency. For example, a friend of mine runs a successful technology business with 40 employees and has completely open books. He shares all financial information with all employees every two weeks, including… Read the full article >
We spend much of our lives in meetings. That is not bad in itself – we need to collaborate on important matters. Yet, if not run well, these meetings lower morale and reduce productivity. Our recent research of over 300 professionals on happiness and productive teams found that well run meetings are positively correlated to productive teams and happy employees. Here are 3 ways to create it.
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3 Ways to Create Meeting Happiness: If you want to create meeting happiness, which creates happy and productive teams, here is what to do:
1. Name it –… Read the full article >
Unfortunately, many of the basic meeting-management techniques that leaders use fail to result in effective meetings. Even with an agenda, and strong task leadership, there is one huge problem that gets in the way: people! If there were robots in the meeting, well then it might all work smoothly. But people don’t act like leaders want them to in meetings. Distractions, group think, lack of comfort with conflict, overly quiet people, overly talkative people, and other things that are human nature get in the way of having a good meeting.
Here are 5… Read the full article >
This checklist can be used while creating a change message. It is intended to help leaders ensure they create the highest impact message possible.
What kind of change is it?
*New Structure (i.e. Reorganizations, Layoffs, Outsourcing, Merger, New Teams)
*New Project (i.e. ERP/ Software Rollouts, Process Improvement, Innovation)
*New Leader (i.e. Succession, Merger/Acquisition, New Team Members)
*New Strategy (i.e. New Markets, New Positioning, New Products/Services)
What is the nature of the message?
*Announcing Change
*Identify what is changing and what is not
*Get clear on why the change is important to the business/team/customer/employees
… Read the full article >
While there are no magic words that fit every situation, there are some best practices we have discovered over the years.
1. Build trust before change. The time to start building trusting relationships is before you need them! In times of change, the trust between you and your people is critical. If you don’t have trust, it may be too late to have real communication. Employees who trust you will hear the perfect phrases as you intend them. This will create meaningful dialogue. However, if your relationship with them is damaged from past errors, employees may hear any phrase… Read the full article >
Today’s organizational changes involve employees spread around regions, countries, and continents. Virtual tools like GoToWebinar, Skype, blogs, and Facebook offer a terrific amount of added flexibility to communicate with people. Yet, there are also many limitations and challenges when communicating change in this new digital world.
In principal, all the rules of communicating change apply in virtual situations. In fact, they are amplified because when you are not face-to-face, it is more critical to follow all of the guidelines…. Read the full article >
