If our strategy is to hire only stars, it will be expensive and we will have a tough time finding people. We will also have a tough time when the stars stumble in the face of new things. Often stars stick rigidly to what made them stars. And there are always lots of new things. […]
Question: Which matters more: strong business results or a good team? Answer: Yes. You see, we can build the team and culture we want while we deliver great results. In your corner, Mike Today’s photo credit: vandinglewop A Fork In The Road via photopin (license)
Tell, tell, tell, yell. (To which we all respond with hide, fight, complain, and deflect.) Easy but not so effective, is it? What does work? Build relationship and trust constantly. Agree to argue the points not the personalities. Agree on the why and outcomes before the how, when, and who details. Make sure everyone is […]
Sure, when we learn a helpful tool or idea, we want to share it. But we as leaders can’t mandate it. Forcing others to use a tool (a task organization method, say, or a way of remaining calm under fire) that we find personally helpful causes them to focus on pleasing us instead of learning and leveraging. […]
When people are down, they can’t be productive and they pull others down with them. Sometimes all they need is some wind in their sails. They need just to be told they are good, doing good work, and that everything is turning out just fine. You are good. You are doing good work. And everything is […]
The fundamental challenge for any team of two or more people is trust. When there is lack of trust, issues about who does what, who has the ideas, who sets the agenda, and who gets credit bloom into conflict, politics, and poor results. To build trust in a team, we start with ourselves. We choose to […]
Many of our interactions at work are fraught with tension, resistance, and defensiveness. We can tell because of the tightness or numbness we feel in our guts, chest, neck etc. before and during these interactions. This defensiveness, so often unacknowledged, saps our happiness and throttles our organizations’ results. Defense at work looks like being nice but […]
What we blame on an organization’s inability to execute is often a problem with the management team. Show me an organization that continues to struggle, and I will show you a management team that is somehow unable to make the decisions that it alone must make. Perhaps it’s a lack of cohesion and trust. Maybe […]
Sometimes, the level of dysfunction in a group situation is so high that logic, best practice, and pretty much all other well-meaning interventions are utterly useless. Nothing you do will make a difference, it seems. Common examples: organizations in crisis, some volunteer boards, some families, and some councils, congresses, and parliaments. That’s because the buzz […]
Sure, conflict arises between team members. In many cases, resolution is quick. Sometimes, though, the conflict gets personal. The affected team members complain vocally about or quietly sabotage each other. They form alliances. Work grinds to a crawl; what should be simple becomes a “federal case.” Fun evaporates. Everyone suffers. People then look to us, […]