“F… the team!“
Does that shock you? About 10 years ago, a trusted advisor said this! Lawrence Polsky, my business partner, and I had just disclosed to her that we were refocusing our leadership and change management practice from individuals to teams. She didn’t think that teams were as critical as individuals to business success. And a lot of leaders think that way.
Why don’t people appreciate teamwork? Well, it makes sense, in a way. We have technology,… Read the full article >
Are you part of a team of teams? – Probably, without even knowing it. Once you are moving up the hierarchy and are in charge of multiple teams, you are creating a team of teams universe.
The term “team of teams” has gained new traction since retired US Army General Stanley McChrystal published his book titled Teams of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World in 2015. General McChrystal was not the… Read the full article >
Google did a multi-year study of the highest-performing teams at their company, hoping to understand what makes them so efficient. The results told them a simple answer: community. The highest-performing teams were ones where individuals felt comfortable being themselves. The more a team feels like a supportive community, the higher its productivity is. Often, the most high-performing teams feel like a family, and that makes an incredible difference in their results.
1. Learn what everyone’s doing.… Read the full article >
Teams of distinction dedicate time for hygiene. Hygiene literally means practices conducive to maintaining health and preventing disease. This applies to teams just as it does to people.
Without regular time set aside for the team to work through issues, the team gets toxic. The issues and problems build up. The team energy turns negative. And the team gets derailed.
Teams must schedule in time regularly to hash out the differences, and plan for success. Here are my recommendation for good team hygiene and staying in top team shape:
Daily: Appreciate. People are great at finding problems but its… Read the full article >
Moving past dysfunction to function is one thing. But to move from a functional team to a team of distinction is another. The Team Diagnostic is a great place to start in either scenario. It gives the leadership of a team key insights into how to raise the team’s results. By looking into the level of collaboration, coordination, and commitment, you can understand what levers to pull to move the team to the next level.
Our clients leverage a Team Diagnostic when:
* Launching a new high-stakes initiative that will require high levels of commitment across the… Read the full article >
The Lumina Team profile shows exactly where you fit in your team and the team profile of traits. It is perfect as its own workshop or as part of a team breakthrough session.
In a snapshot you can see the distribution of personality preferences. You can see at a glance the strong traits and characteristics within a group as well as potential blind spots. Patterns start to emerge, revealing both potential strengths and development opportunities within the team. At an individual level, you can then see where and how you fit in the team.
Lumina is the next step… Read the full article >
Rowing made its modern Olympic debut in 1900. It wasn’t until 1976 at the Summer Olympics in Montreal that women’s events were introduced, but men’s and women’s events have enjoyed recognition and respect ever since.
A rowing crew in perfect harmony is a thing of beauty and power.
At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, fourteen different rowing events are being offered, including Men’s, Women’s, and weight-restricted Men’s and Women’s events. If you have ever watched a rowing event, you were probably struck… Read the full article >
You can group co-workers together without much forethought, but don’t expect that group to magically turn into a team. Strong teams are built on a foundation of trust. In baseball, clear communication between pitcher and catcher is indispensable to dealing effectively with batters. Hand signals given by the catcher indicate whether the pitcher should deliver a fastball, curveball, slider, or changeup pitch. A substantial amount of trust must underlie this relationship.
Teams function at their best when communication and trust are strong.
In the workplace, lack of trust among team members… Read the full article >
In a program we ran with top executives of a multi-billion dollar company, the CEO asked us – “Why don’t we have this much fun at work?” So we asked back “What are you doing at work that is destroying teamwork?” This is what he and his team said:
1.Create unreasonable time constraints. Be sure to overwhelm team members with impossible deadlines so the reality of their already heavy, burdensome workloads doesn’t allow them to be creative and passionate on anything… Read the full article >
Sometimes a team forms and then goes off track. Why does this happen, and what can you do about it? How can purpose and goals be reconstructed? And how can each team member understand their role in contributing to team success? Here are some thoughts.
Why Do Teams Go Off Course?
Perhaps the main reason that teams drift off of the path to success is insufficient trust. Trust may have existed at one time, but was destroyed by some event. Or maybe… Read the full article >
