Everyone loves high performers — hot shots who deliver exceptional work on a regular basis are unique. However, there’s a problem I frequently observe when facilitating team offsites and workshops. Our obsession with top performers can backfire. Managers’ quest for…
Teambuilding
Encourage the Quiet to Give Voice to the Sounds of Silence
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? That’s a tricky question. I have a hard time answering it myself. That’s the problem of binary questions — you are forced to choose one or the other. Being quiet is a choice…
Hire For a Mission, Not a Job
“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in the event of success.” Legend has it that Sir Ernest Shackleton used the copy above in an ad to recruit his…
The 21st Century Way to Getting Your People to Do Great Work
Leading is like parenting — everybody thinks they do a much better job than they actually do. There’s a definite gap between how most executives assess themselves and how their direct reports do. Leaders and their teams seem to be watching two…
The Not So Obvious Reasons Your Teams Are Underperforming
Imagine you are sitting in an airport waiting for your flight. The airport is busy and you are at that low ebb in the day where you are looking for any external stimulus to get you through the boredom. You…
Leadership Lessons from the Golden State Warriors Locker Room
On June 8th, the Golden State Warriors basketball team won its second consecutive National Basketball Association championship. Observers agree that the Warriors are packed with talent, no doubt the principal reason for their success. But on the way to winning…
HR’s Job Should Be to Encourage Conflict
For years we’ve been hearing the drumbeat about making the workplace fun. So, as Amanda Ono tells it, we drank the Kool-Aid, installing ping-pong tables, organizing parties and offering a host of perks. “But what happens when we wake up…
Why Not Let People Form Their Own Teams?
“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” — Michael Jordan Hiring the right talent is not enough to build a high-performing team. Team dynamics affect overall performance; they are like undercurrents that can carry a boat in a different direction than…
Why Teams Need to Be More Like a Jazz Band Than a Symphony
The ability to deal with uncertainty can make or break a team. Famous jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald made her biggest career mistake on a German stage back in the 60’s. That performance earned her two Grammy Awards though. Ella started singing…
Can Culture Be as Simple as Just 19 Words?
It’s well understood that culture can make or break a workplace. Understanding what “culture” means, however, is a whole other matter. As a working concept, culture can’t be easily defined or measured. Merriam-Webster offers six different definitions (and even named…
Your Teams Need ‘Boxing Rings’ and ‘Campfires’
Senior leaders were asked to estimate how much “wasted time” had cost their companies. Their average answer was nearly $15.5 million! It seems that our abundance of unproductive meetings, dysfunctional workplace dynamics, bungled opportunities and mishandled people problems are cumulatively…
Beware the Myth of the Super Leader
“We will all learn together. I want to learn from you as well as you learn from me.” This, from a new CHRO who sits on the executive committee for a global organization. She is at the table with a…
3 Conversations to Help Your Team Get Through a Reorg
A while ago, I was counseling a senior executive of a government bureau who was two years into shaping his agency to be more customer and results-centered. He rebuilt his 200-person group, propelled key actions, coached his staff on changing…
6 Ways Real Leaders Turn Insincerity Into Inspiration
The biggest barrier between leaders and followers is distrust. And the window dressing for distrust is insincerity. People put up with a lot of quirks in their leaders and coworkers just to keep the peace, but insincerity particularly grates on…
Decision-Making Doesn’t Always Require Collaboration
Collaboration is in vogue today. It’s a favorite theme for how to be a great leader and in how to solve most business problems. I’ve always tried to be collaborative and inclusive – even in situations when it probably wasn’t…
Don’t Break Down Silos, Bend Them
Conventional wisdom tells us that the best way to deal with organizational silos is simply to break them. Whether it’s the inward focus of HR departments or the “tower vision” that blinds leaders to surrounding issues and events, silos must…
Four Ways to Create a Growth Mindset Team
In my experience leading and working with teams — whether they’re startups, groups of engineers, or global leadership — there are a few things that have really stood out to drive success. First, leaders and team members have to be willing to “stand up”…
Is Team Building the Secret to Improving Engagement?
There are myriad factors that influence the productivity of any given organization. Employee engagement is one of the most crucial, thanks to its direct relationship to productivity. Organizational strategies and tactics implemented by progressive, productivity-minded HR executives can have a…
7 Reasons Why Your Team Can’t Work as a Team
Everyone worships teams. But, the way most companies operate, is not helping. That’s why teamwork is sometimes an illusion. What happened to the US men’s basketball team in the 2004 Olympics took everyone by surprise. The “Dream Team” was humiliated by the…
What Cisco Is Doing to Develop Better Leaders and Better Teams
The “Future of Work” is definitely a popular buzz word at the moment. What does it really mean? Across industries, we know that work is changing faster than people and organizations. The transition to digital is changing everything, from how…