In her iconic 1952 gospel single “The Ball Game,” Sister Wynona Carr tells us, “Life is a ballgame, but you’ve got to play it fair.” Fair play includes things like building your strengths, overcoming your weaknesses, and developing the chemistry that allows your team to work together as something greater than the sum of its parts.
The ballpark is the source of many great lessons for teams of every type.
The Great American Pastime has been compared to all sorts of life situations, and the analogy is usually apt, because baseball,… Read the full article >
Traditional thinking is that collaboration is driven from the top down. The fatal assumption is this: that the leader sets a vision for teamwork and then people will eventually come along. In theory this makes sense, and some element of this is true. Yet it misses something essential: employees hold the keys.
The fact is that much of collaborative process comes from the bottom up. Yes the leader must have a business need driving the need for collaboration such as innovation to beat the competition, quicker responsiveness to customers’ requests to close deals, better quality products. And they must… Read the full article >
Leaders’ first reaction to their team not performing how they want is to take charge. Of course you would say, that is their job: to set direction and lead. However in many cases I have seen first-hand, this is actually the completely wrong approach. Sometimes the strongest and smartest approach is to sit back, stay silent and do nothing.
Metaphorically, the Euro Zone could be considered a ‘team’. But rather than functioning as an elite, high performing Team of Distinction, it displays the truth of the old saying that a team is as strong as its weakest link. Today’s Europe is comprised of many underperforming, uninspired silos swiftly on their way to becoming a Team of Extinction. Here’s why:
Mission Critical Thinking
The European “Team” consists of 28 states with 24 languages (of which 19 are… Read the full article >
Conventional wisdom holds that weak teams are the ideal candidates for team building exercises and programs. But paradoxically, it is actually exceptional teams that benefit the most from this. How can that be?
Think of two groups of golfers. One is composed of beginners and the other of experts. They each get a training session. The former will learn some of the basics but the latter have the real opportunity to achieve a real breakthrough. They don’t have to dwell on the basics. The best players are focused on small… Read the full article >
