Picture in your mind’s eye: you are sitting in a team meeting. One of your team members is not hitting the mark. As the leader, you need to tell him … but you waffle. You don’t want to hurt his feelings, so you use circumlocutions. You don’t want tempers to rise, so you water down… Continue reading A Lack of Clarity Gets a Lack of Results
Company offices can readily turn into interpersonal battlegrounds. Verbal grenades explode one after the other – undercutting, demeaning, belittling, attacking, insulting, and destroying team members. In consequence, work does not get done and forward progress stalls, damaging the business. How does this happen? Particularly when the people involved are capable, competent individuals? An antagonistic culture… Continue reading Toxicity Is Not Okay
In our “top ten” list of characteristics that define high-performing teams, providing appreciative and constructive feedback is always a tough one to actualize. When it comes to appreciative feedback that recognizes a job well done and seeks to encourage repeat behavior, many people dismissively figure that “it goes without saying” or “no news is good… Continue reading Feedback: The “Secret Sauce” of High-performing Teams
In our first blog in this series, we shared our “top ten” list of characteristics that define high-performing teams. Now, it’s time to get down to business and talk about each of those characteristics in greater depth so you can take action to improve your team’s performance. We start with the foundation that all the… Continue reading Trust: The Foundation of High-performing Teams
Years ago, I (Rip) was at a conference where Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, was asked what he wished he had done differently in his career. He said, essentially, “I always moved too slowly on the tough people problems. People problems are not like fine wine. They don’t get better with age.” I… Continue reading If There Are No Consequences, There Will Be No Change
Recently, I (Rip) was meeting with a company leader who had been preparing for some time to have a tough talk with a member of his team. The team member was a high producer, but her abrasive interactions were hurting the overall effectiveness of the team. These conversations are never easy and to encourage the… Continue reading The Unexpected Career Gift
