The rarity of passion-driven teams
Dan Bobinski
Most teams in the workplace are nowhere near as effective as they could be. The reasons are many. But one reason overrides all the rest - a lack of passion.
Five simple keys to building solid teams
Dan Bobinski
When I ask teams what they would like from their supervisors, the same simple things keep coming up. You might think they're obvious - but if they are, teams wouldn't continually be mentioning them!
Putting the "we" into your team
Wayne Turmel
One of the hardest things about pulling a team together is getting the disparate pieces to think of themselves as a whole - to think of all of you as 'we'. This is more than soft and mushy sentiment, however - there's real science involved.
Five must-haves for team members
Mark Miller
One of the most important decisions leaders make is, 'Who's on our team? Because if you have the wrong people around the table, your ultimate success will always be in jeopardy.
Leaders, teammates, and teams
Wayne Turmel
The trend for remote work was rising for years before the COVID tsunami hit. But now we've passed that first big wave of change, what will teamwork look like going forward?
Does it matter if you like the people you work with?
Amanda Nimon-Peters
Most of us need a sense of belonging with the people we spend time with. So working with people we like is good for us as well as the organisations that employ us.
How to build trust on a diverse team
David Livermore
Diverse teams have a harder time trusting each other than homogeneous teams do. Here are three evidence-based ways to go about building that trust.
Is there a place for gossip in the new normal?
Bob Selden
Social chit-chat is a vital part of being human. But how does that fit in with the the new normal of hybrid or home working where our physical contact with others is limited?
Proper vacations are all about teamwork
Wayne Turmel
Far too many of us (especially Americans), don't use all our vacation time. But taking time off to recharge our batteries helps the whole team, so making sure that happens is a team effort, too.
Onboarding on hybrid teams
Wayne Turmel
Bringing people onto a hybrid team presents all the challenges associated with an office-based team, as well as many of the challenges that come with a fully remote team.
Do you trust your new team member?
Wayne Turmel
Think about the way you interact with new members of your team. You might not actively distrust them, but do you act like you trust them?
The invisible killer of remote teams
Wayne Turmel
There is one factor that can be lethal for remote teams that usually isn't a problem when everyone is in the same place. That invisible killer is exclusion.
The culturally intelligent team
David Livermore
It's harder to get things done on a diverse team. But with moderate to high levels of cultural intelligence, diverse teams can outperform homogeneous teams in a number of important ways.
Building trust remotely
Wayne Turmel
Trusting the people you work with (and for) has never been easy. But when you work remotely it's even tougher.
Staying on track isn't easy
Wayne Turmel
It's surprising how often teams lose sight of their goals. There are plenty of reasons, and maybe understanding some of the most common will help you and your team reassess where you are headed.
Snip those email threads!
Wayne Turmel
if there’s one complaint everyone has about communicating with their teammates it's long email threads - you know, the ones that start as a simple request for information and grow like a virus.
Boost morale with a virtual event
Craig Bulow
Even if summer away-days and team-building events are off the agenda for the moment, there are still ways you can boost your team’s wellbeing and morale with in-person events that you can do remotely.
Shut up first, talk later
Wayne Turmel
Sometimes it it can seem almost impossible to get people to contribute or share information effectively in a video conference. Here’s how you can change that.
Don't use technology as an excuse for bad management
Wayne Turmel
When it comes to managing a remote team, technology is not a communication problem. So stop blaming the tools if you chose the wrong one for the wrong reason.
Open questions, open communication
Wayne Turmel
Working remotely, we miss the non-verbal signals we see when working face-to-face. That's why asking open questions is one of the most critical skills the manager of a remote team can possess.
Do you run meetings or lead them?
Wayne Turmel
Why do some online meetings get the job done, while others don't? The difference is that successful meetings need to be led - and there is a huge difference between running a meeting and leading one.
Five reasons remote teams fail
Wayne Turmel
Many managers are now discovering that leading a remote team isn’t that different to leading a co-located one. But they do have to re-think how they do certain things. Here are five ways you can get that wrong.
Key skills for virtual leaders
Wayne Turmel
Suddenly finding yourself sitting at home leading a virtual team is a tough call, particularly with everything else that's going on in the world. So here are seven key behaviors that will make the task of virtual working much easier.
How different is leading remotely?
Wayne Turmel
If you've never led a remote team and you're worried about how you might cope if the Coronavirus puts you in that position, fear not. For a competent team leader, the differences aren't as great as you might think.
Mapping the power in your organization
Wayne Turmel
Forget job titles, do you know who has the real power in your organization and who has real influence where it matters most?
Opening the Johari Window
James M. Kerr
The Johari Window is a technique that can be used to expose an individual’s blind spots and increase self-discovery. It’s also a useful way to improve team performance and encourage breakthrough thinking.
The 'golden suggestion' for managers
Wayne Turmel
The old saying “do unto others as you’d like them to do unto you” Is fine advice. But when it comes to management, it's not so simple. Let me explain why it doesn’t stack up.
Faith, trust and teamwork
Wayne Turmel
Having faith is a wonderful thing. But today's project and functional teams need to run on trust. Why? Because unlike faith, trust is evidence-based, built on measurable results and can be restored through hard work.
Teambuilding on a budget
Dan Bobinski
Want your people to act more like a team? Don’t want to drop a lot of money on the effort? the good news is that much of what is needed to build teams can be done in-house with minimal budget impact.
Is communication the problem, or teamwork?
James M. Kerr
Sometimes we can get fooled into thinking that poor communication is a problem when it’s really a symptom of something much more profound: poor organizational design that undermines the ability of people to work in teams.
Principles before personalities
James M. Kerr
During large-scale reorganizations, discussions can often become heated and turn personal. That's why it's important to keep in mind some techniques to ensure that your teams stay focused on the 'why' and the 'what' rather than getting bogged down with the 'who'.
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Great advice from a sketchy source
Wayne Turmel
Ian Fleming’s James Bond books don’t normally spring to mind as sources of useful management advice. But there’s a line in ‘Goldfinger’ that is actually quite brilliant if you run a remote team.
Are your teammates competent?
Wayne Turmel
One of the biggest factors in building trust is believing in the competence of the people you work with. If you work in the same place, that isn’t so hard to do. But if you work remotely, gathering evidence of competence takes more effort.
The cost of bad meetings
Wayne Turmel
Bad meetings cost companies billions of dollars every year. But this waste is easily avoidable if only we'd all ask ourselves a couple of basic questions and think a little more about how and why we have meetings.
Are you hiding behind technology?
Wayne Turmel
We all get tired, rushed and overworked. And when we do, it's tempting to use technology as an excuse to take the easy way out by avoiding confrontation or uncomfortable conversations.
Take your team from 'me' to 'we'
Doug Upchurch
Understanding why other people operate the way they do is fundamental to any effective team. That's why one of the keys for teams wanting to unlock their success and come together in pursuit of a shared goal is individual self-awareness.
Are you managing your boss?
Myra White
Your relationship with your boss requires careful management. You need to building a cooperative working relationship and understand their needs and working style if you're going to make it work.
Your team members aren’t pawns in a chess game
Wayne Turmel
Project management and team leadership are often viewed as chess games. But there’s one important difference. Those pieces on the chess board aren’t human. Your team members are - and they need to be treated accordingly.
The bad influence of aggressive bosses
Manfred Kets De Vries
Identifying with an aggressor is a basic strategy for human survival. But in the workplace, such behaviour is destructive and needs to be called out.
Employing outsiders: a survival guide
Robert Kelsey
Outsiders can be a manager's worst nightmare. But misfits don't have to be disruptive workplace mavericks. Most are creative, crafty and brave. So rather than try to get rid of them, here’s how to understand what makes them tick and harness their talents.
Why empathy makes for stronger organisations
Manfred Kets De Vries
The ability of executives to see themselves from the outside and others from the inside, plays an important role in effective team formation.
Why empathy makes for stronger organisations
Manfred Kets De Vries
The ability of executives to see themselves from the outside and others from the inside, plays an important role in effective team formation.
Quantum physics and quarky behavior
Kieran Hearty
If you want to understand some of the less acceptable aspects of human nature the answer may lie in quantum physics. And the same ‘quarkiness’ that explains bad behavior can also be used to energize and motivate those around us.
So you're a manager. Now what?
Dan Bobinski
As managers, we can either choose to value and develop our team members or we can look for ways to elevate our own stature. Do you know which category you fall into?
Workplace excellence can be contagious
Serguei Netessine
Team performance can often be more, or less, than the sum of the parts. So it’s significant that research has demonstrated that collective outcomes soar when top performers mingle with less adept colleagues.
Emotional capital and remote teams
Wayne Turmel
Why do some teams seem to form great working relationships and use technology seamlessly to make work a pleasure and create great relationships? The secret is something called “emotional capital.”
The price of poor listening
Dan Bobinski
Hearing and understanding someone else's point of view is a learned skill that requires effort. But it's one we all need to make. Because poor listening leads to misunderstandings, errors, bad decisions, loss of team cohesion and costly mistakes.
Techniques for working with ADD team members
Wayne Turmel
Working with people with Attention Deficit Disorder can sometimes be tricky. But there are specific steps you can take to make meetings less painful and the day-to-day job of supervising less of a chore.
Managing the pyramids project
Wayne Turmel
Peter Drucker once said, “The greatest management job of all time was building the pyramids.” But then, the Egyptians didn't have to deal with conference calls, a barrage of email or managing remote teams.
When you're not 'their boss'
Wayne Turmel
Many of us today are tasked with getting work done when we don't have direct reporting responsibility over the people on the team. This can lead to confusion, frustration and miscommunication. But it doesn’t have to.
Reducing tensions in partly-virtual teams
Wayne Turmel
Hybrid teams - some people working in the office, some at home or elsewhere - are increasingly common. But they pose unique challenges, so a wise leader needs to be aware of the dynamics that can make them work.
A field guide to underappreciated workplace geniuses
Wayne Turmel
There are some employees out there who are downright geniuses in a strange kind of way - and whose extraordinary abilities are mirrored only by complete inability to work and play with others. Here's a quick field study of some of these types.
Examining your assumptions
Wayne Turmel
Assumptions aren’t bad things. They are the model under which we do our work, particularly in remote teams. But assumptions need testing now and again, because without some kind of feedback along the way, things can go can go very wrong.
Zen and the art of remote teams
Wayne Turmel
Without visual cues and context, it’s all too easy to make assumptions about your team's effectiveness. But being mindful of your behavior and communication style can yield both short- and long-term dividends and help you to see what’s really going on.
Five ways you're hurting your remote working relationships
Wayne Turmel
Very few people intentionally try to undermine their working relationships with other team members. But most of us manage to do things inadvertently that can have a disproportionately negative impact on teamwork and productivity.
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Five ways you're hurting your remote working relationships
Wayne Turmel
Very few people intentionally try to undermine their working relationships with other team members. But most of us manage to do things inadvertently that can have a disproportionately negative impact on teamwork and productivity.
Focusing despite technology
Wayne Turmel
In a remote team, technology is the way you communicate. So it should be a conduit to better information flow, not a bottleneck that constricts it. And that means limiting the distractions technology can create.
The power of constructive disagreement
Tim Lambert
Disagreement and challenge are healthy activities. But we have become so used to adversarial conversations through our political and legal systems that we have forgotten how to have real dialogue. What we need is a better way to disagree.
Do you know what's in your technology toolkit?
Wayne Turmel
Does your team have the collaboration technology it needs to communicate effectively? If your answer is 'no', you might want to take a step back and reconsider. The chances are that you actually have everything you need at your disposal, but don't even know it.
Fixing the boat in the water
Wayne Turmel
There’s no shortage of advice out there on how to put together an effective remote team. But what about fixing one that has gone off the rails? How do you improve the performance or relationships on an existing team that’s already in trouble?
Avoiding the back-to-work blues
Wayne Turmel
For most of us, the first Monday in January after New Year’s Day is the first “real” day back at work. So it’s worth taking a moment to consider what to say to your team as you all re-enter the ‘workosphere’ and to take stock of the dynamics you’ll encounter this week.
Five end-of-year questions for remote managers
Wayne Turmel
At some point in the year we all need to stop, reflect on what’s happened and what looms ahead. And given that another year is looming, in that spirit of reflection, here are five questions all team leaders should ask themselves
Building social capital in remote teams
Wayne Turmel
Social capital is vital to every team. But in remote teams, the incidental and tacit communication that helps form social bonds just isn’t there. So you have to go about building it on purpose rather than expecting it to grow organically.
Trust, risk and remote teams
Wayne Turmel
Working in remote teams isn’t intrinsically more difficult than working together, but it is different. And one of those differences is the role risk plays in building or damaging team trust when working in isolation from others.
Real rules need to be explicit
Wayne Turmel
Like baseball, every workplace has “unwritten rules” about how things work. That’s great, until something goes wrong. Since teamwork is a fragile dynamic at the best of times, it’s a good idea to determine the behaviors you expect from each other and make them explicit.
The prisoner's dilemma
James M. Kerr
Why do people working within the same organization - even the same unit - often seem to be operating in conflict with one another? Understanding the prisoner's dilemma can give us some clues.
Nobody's paying attention: don't panic
Wayne Turmel
If you feel that no one is paying attention on your conference calls, don’t worry about it. You’re not alone. Calls need to be managed to maintain focus and involvement. So plan them , don’t expect them to just magically happen.
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