ROBERT J.R. GRAHAM: Team leader

Showing posts with label Team leader. Show all posts

Friday, 19 September 2014

Pathways and Pitfalls to Leading Teams

“Skilled team leaders transform a group from what they are into what they could be.”

• The following Outstanding Teams Checklist outlines the key elements of top performing teams (and organizations). Use this to assess yourself and your team. Even better, get your team to do this assessment:

__ A high performance balance (analytical skills and disciplined management processes, technical skills and strong capabilities to use the latest technologies, and people leadership skills)

__ Strong self-determination with no tolerance for the Victimitis Virus or Pessimism Plague (one team agreed “you can visit Pity City, but you aren’t allow to move there”)

__ Passion and high energy for rapid and continuous learning, developing, and improving

__ A clear and compelling picture of the team’s preferred future

__ A clearly articulated set of shared principles outlining how the team will work together

__ A strong sense of purpose and unity around why the team exists

__ Solid agreement on whom the team is serving within the customer-partner chain and across horizontal organization processes

__ Identification of, and an aggressive plan for improving, the team’s customer-partner performance gaps

__ (If appropriate to the team’s role) relentless exploring, searching, and creating new customers and markets

__ A process for innovation and team learning

__ A handful of performance goals and priorities directly linked to the organization’s strategic imperatives

__ A concrete process and discipline for continuous team improvement linked to the organization’s improvement effort

__ Process management skills, roles, and responsibilities

__ High levels of team leadership and team effectiveness skills

__ Powerful feedback loops and measurements

__ A culture of thanks, recognition, and celebration

• If meetings are a chore, or have become a meeting of the bored, you may have a skill or application problem. Meetings should re-energize and refocus. With the proliferation of practical resource materials, seminars, and training now available there’s little reason for poorly run meetings. Meetings are a prime example of how a modest investment in learning and skill development can pay incredible dividends in saved time and frustration. If your meetings were just ten percent better (25 – 40 percent improvements aren’t uncommon after good meeting leadership training) how long would it take to repay learning and skill building time?

• Effective teams meet frequently. At the senior management level, we’ve found a correlation between how frequently (and effectively) a team meets and the amount of vertical management — departmentalism, territoriality, turfdom, etc. — in that team.

The senior management group of a company we worked with hadn’t met since their last retreat two years ago. As we reviewed an internal survey they had just conducted, not surprisingly, one of their biggest organizational problems was poor communications. If senior management doesn’t frequently get together and talk to each other, how can they expect the rest of the organization do anything but follow their lead?

• Team learning and development is dependent upon team reflection (and ideally feedback from others who work with and for that team) on how effectively the team works together. This can get too introspective with everyone lying on conference room couches gazing at their navels. The reflection needs to be within the context of the work the team is doing.

• If you’re trying to move your team toward self-management, you need to lead as if you are driving a car on an icy road. Guide and intervene with a light touch. Sudden, jerky changes will send the team into a skid.

• Build a series of small wins. That doesn’t mean pumping up your team with a lot of hot air (you’ll quickly send their phony meters over the red line). But look for ways to point out and celebrate the real performance progress the team is making.

Most high performing organizations use a wide variety of teams. But many managers underestimate what it takes to build a team-based organization.

About The Author

Jim Clemmer is a bestselling author and internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and management team developer on leadership, change, customer focus, culture, teams, and personal growth. During the last 25 years he has delivered over two thousand customized keynote presentations, workshops, and retreats. Jim’s five international bestselling books include The VIP Strategy, Firing on All Cylinders, Pathways to Performance, Growing the Distance, and The Leader’s Digest. His web site is http://ift.tt/1o6kZKS

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The post Pathways and Pitfalls to Leading Teams appeared first on Robert JR Graham.

Sunday, 14 September 2014

Efficiency At Work: How Leaders Should Manage Teams

by: David Shoemaker

Working as a team leader can be challenging. There are so many pieces that need to come together in order to create an efficient work environment. Leaders are specially prepared for certain issues in executive leadership training, but there are still many unexpected issues that arise in the workplace. For example, social loafing and group norms are challenges that need to be handled carefully. In order to learn how to effectively deal with these problems, it’s important to first understand what they are.

Group norms are guidelines or operating principles that everyone understands and agrees upon. Groups benefit from having strong norms. However, norms don’t just evolve. Especially when groups are made up of diverse individuals, it’s important that they don’t take norms for granted. Executive leadership training explains that the difference between satisfied and productive group members and group members who are frustrated is often the difference between groups that have well-established norms and those that are floundering.

The next issue that can arise involves something called social loafers. Social loafing is when group members get away with not doing their share of work and when other group members let them get away with it. Sometimes this occurs if a worker is likable, other times it occurs because the other group members just don’t want to speak up about the other’s performance. It’s important to speak up and to be proactive. Right from the beginning, group members need to know what will happen to social loafers. If the group has specific operating principles in place, and everyone understands the consequences, social loafing is much less likely to occur.

Similarly to executive leadership training, in financial management courses future managers are taught the importance of honestly addressing social loafers because they can affect productivity negatively. Financial managers learn how to communicate with different levels of executives as well as communicate strategies, which is important in motivating people to meet goals. It is the financial manager’s job to deliver results, which directly depends on the success and organization of their team.

It’s necessary to have an organized and cohesive team in order to thrive. There are ways to see if you have a cohesive team on your hands. For example, you should first think back about all of the teams that you have belonged to whether it is in the organization you are in now or in previous positions that you may have held. If you think about the best group experience you have ever had, chances are that you are thinking of a highly cohesive team. A cohesive team works together, and you feel valued. You feel your contributions are valued and that people listen but may not necessarily agree. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a cohesive team is that members feel comfortable disagreeing with one another but do so respectfully. Financial management courses discuss how managers should deal with disagreement respectfully in order to be successful.

Overall, leaders can successfully manage their teams by recognizing social loafing before it negatively affects the rest of the group members, harming morale and the team’s performance. Also, managers can be effective by communicating honestly with all team members. Organization, strategy, honesty, and speaking up are keys to establishing strong group norms and ensuring that diversity is a positive influence on the group.

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The post Efficiency At Work: How Leaders Should Manage Teams appeared first on Robert JR Graham.

Tuesday, 9 September 2014

How To Build Better Teams

Building Better Teams

by: Craig Nathanson

Why many teams don’t work well together

Have you ever wondered why the team that you were on didn’t work very well together?

Many teams originally were set up to fail. In sports, you build teams from individuals with best achievements. In business, we hear many times, the sports analogy applied but in most cases it couldn’t be farther from reality. In business, teams are seldom picked and mixed together based on the best individuals and their skills. Typically, people wind up on a team based on a range of factors. They were on this team before and it was part of their job description. They were told they had to be on this team. They were added to the team as a reward or worse as punishment! Usually, the leaders of these teams are only symbolic. They are called team leaders in many cases. They are responsible for the team but without real authority. They also are expected to perform their other full time jobs. These types of teams fail.

Build the right team

It is important to build the right team from the start. Take an inventory of the people in your organization. Compile a database based on interviews and surveys. Ask people, which types of roles they feel challenging but also they have the skills for? Which roles best align their abilities and their interests?

Find out who wants to lead and who wants to be leaded?

Ask people, which roles fit the image of the work they most want to do. Part of this inventory process is to understand from each person in the organization what they want to do more of, less of, and how management can assist. As a result of this process, you have a database which contains real input from people. Then when the time comes to put together teams, you are able to review the database and select people who best fit. This is what the best manager does.

Encourage and support

Once the best manager sets up a team, people spend time helping to set vision and clarify goals. Then, the team is free to self-manage and make progress without micro-management. Teams are comprised of people, and they need support and encouragement but not threats, punishment, and rewards. People just want to feel like they are making a contribution. Successful teams go on to complete many winning projects if the upfront structure and ground rules are established.

Promote collaboration, not competition

The Best Manager treats all team members the same way and rewards them equally. The team knows its goals and desired state. The work itself becomes a reward. If the reward must be given it should be equal to all members as a result of the team progress towards common goals. Making individuals on a team compete with one another is the way to increase conflicts. When, instead, people feel that everyone has the same goals and incentives, collaboration is more effective, productivity is higher, and accomplished results are much better.

Set a clear desired state

This is the most important first step for a team. The best manager spends several hours with the entire team communicating the desired state and taking time to ensure all members clearly understand the vision and the path. Without a clear vision, team members will start distracting one another decreasing productivity, and the desired result will not be achieved.

Have better team meetings

Team meetings should be held in two different formats. There should be a regular operational meeting (process meeting) where people give updates and the leader also communicates status and next steps. This type of meetings should be rigorous and structured. Teams also need a second type of meeting. These are mission meetings where the group is either to solve a problem or to create a solution. These meetings should be of a brainstorming type and run in a creative, collaborative way. Teams can break down when there is confusion about expected outcomes.

Rotate leadership

Rotating team leaders on a regular basis is healthy for the team. It also helps everyone to feel vested in the outcome. Plus, when you lead one day and follow another day, you gain new experience and gain new perspectives. Letting people take on leadership roles for the first time will help to build confidence and also be a valuable development activity at the same time. A well structured team will not let new leaders fail knowing that one day they will be asked to lead.

Learning summary and next steps

The best manager designs teams around people. It is an art of combining of what they want to do and where their abilities and interests fit best. As a result, teams will be more successful and reach their desired states more quickly. As a first step, take an inventory of your team. Then, put together the next team based on the experience and not on what you have always done before. You will see new results!

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