A common buzzword now is “disruption”. The idea that if we are to grow, we have to innovate, and the pace of change is so fast that innovation cannot be incremental. We need people who will “disrupt”. Diversity is a competitive advantage. We know this, too. If everyone on our team were the same, many … Read more
Patrick Lencioni has done it again. His latest book, The Ideal Team Player, is brief and brilliant. In this fable, followed by a model outline, Lencioni shares a hiring secret of his own company, The Table Group, and shows us that we can apply this to any team. They look for three virtues that they’ve … Read more
A colleague recently shared a success story with me. She said, “We’ve finally addressed the problem we had with people being ‘violently polite’. Once we put this label on the passive-aggressive talk, and the avoidance of speaking up, we started to get more engagement.” How cool! I immediately fell in love with this term. Asking people … Read more
In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, the need for vulnerability-based trust is considered foundational for any team to be successful. When this trust is developed, we can have healthy conflict. Once healthy conflict occurs, even when there’s disagreement, team members are more likely to show commitment to group decisions. Then, because … Read more
In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, the need for vulnerability-based trust is considered foundational for any team to be successful. When this trust is developed, we can have healthy conflict. Once healthy conflict occurs, even when there’s disagreement, team members are more likely to show commitment to group decisions. Then, because … Read more
Are individual team members slow to execute tasks which they may not be in agreement with? Does the team lack passion for their goals? If so, there may be an issue with commitment. In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, the need for vulnerability-based trust is considered foundational for any team to … Read more
When you hear “conflict,” do you a) think of healthy and open conversations around ideas, issues, and concepts? or b) recall disputes between and about people? Do you have a) interesting meetings where big tactical and strategic issues get disagreed about, but resolved? or b) meetings loaded with artificial harmony, followed by “meetings after the meeting”? If … Read more
Do you have “meetings after the meetings?” Can you see people holding back their true thoughts the first time around? Would you face resistance if you asked people to be open and vulnerable with one another? In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, the need for vulnerability-based trust is considered foundational for any team … Read more
If you’re short on time, and need to check a team response to an idea, action item, or new direction, but you detect that a simple “show of hands” won’t tell the whole story, try this – Ask for their response on this 1-to-5 scale: 5 = Totally agree. No reservations. 4 = Basically agree. Minor reservations, … Read more
I was visiting with a seed scientist once, and I opened the conversation with a simple “So, how was your week?” “Oh, Alan,” Dr. Kim said. “I worked on the Acme project this week. And I learned a lot. There were a lot of mistakes, so we learned a lot. It was a week of research … Read more