Tag Archive - TEAM

Inspire Your Team to Innovate

July 8, 2010 in Business, Leadership with 7 Comments

Inspired Innovation 300x198 Inspire Your Team to InnovateHighly motivated people are the reason that any organization can develop a successful product or service. But what motivates them to begin? Is it the compensation, or do they have tons of pride in what they do? Harvard Business School professor Bill George believes that the pride felt by inventing something valuable cannot be matched. When he said “competitors will eventually copy an innovative idea for a product or service, but an organization of highly motivated people is very hard to duplicate,” he is clearly stating that an environment of innovation is much more motivating than an environment of copycatting. Creating a better mousetrap is a big step down from designing the original invention.

Let your team use it’s unique attributes, not just it’s traditionally trained skills

Let your team feel pride in their work by allowing them to be unique. Don’t always send them off to repeat someone else’s success. They should be able to experiment, innovate, and create success of their own.

Breeding this kind of atmosphere entices the best people to come to work. Most creative thinkers don’t want to do the same-old, same-old their entire career. They didn’t spend four or more years in college, accumulating tens of thousands of dollars to be a mimic. Almost everyone dreams of putting his or her unique stamp on the world, and this alone creates the motivation for success. So give your highly motivated industrious team the time they need to come up with something great.

How are you inspiring your team to innovate?

Encourage Your Team with Passion

July 7, 2010 in Business, Leadership with 5 Comments

employee committment 300x222 Encourage Your Team with Passion The word “commitment” has recently turned into business jargon, a buzzword whose meaning has been lost through overuse and dilution. You want your team to be committed, to “buy in”, so that their passion will drive up the energy level of the organization and produce stellar results. But most employees are rarely committed to the degree you’d hope. It’s not that they lack the essential passion to feel committed (or that they aren’t compensated and rewarded enough). Rather, Australian business mogul, Richard Pratt believed that most of the time they simply don’t understand the goal or strategy to which they should be committed. After a little bit of research, I found that a staggering 95 percent of all employees are largely in the dark about strategy, according to research from Harvard Business School.

Encourage Your Team with Passion and Sincerity.

While encouraging employees to be committed is important, the encouragement will fail it it’s simply “rah-rah” blather. Experienced employees see through this rhetoric in seconds. Instead, encouragement must also include a crystal-clear explanation of the company’s adopted strategy, as well as answers to all the employee questions. And this approach is even more important if the work on the table is a one-off project, the kind of job that is successfully done when the people involved are fully aware of the goals and how to achieve them. If you offer them substantive and valuable encouragement, commitment is sure to follow.

    How do you encourage your team to be fully engaged?

Stacking the Team

June 8, 2010 in Business, Finance, Leadership with 4 Comments

stacking the team 300x273 Stacking the TeamAll of us can look back and think of times when we appreciated the one person on the team who just got the job done. When the company car broke down, he was the one who took control. When the projected numbers weren’t making sense, the go-to guy picked up the phone and got the clarification from the finance department.

Find these people and stack your team with them. Then when you ask them to go the extra mile, you won’t have to worry about the task getting complete. Better yet, you won’t have to do it yourself because you’ll know it will be take care of.

When you are fortunate enough to have the get-it-done people on your team, let them do what they do best. Don’t request that they work on a report about a certain thing is used, and then right before they finish, tell them what the found. People with a track record of making things happen despise doing double work. They want to find out the answers for themselves.

Let these team players act as role models for other people who insist on jumping through hoops before they take on a task. Sooner or later, they will eventually learn: it’s best just to dive right in!

Infuse Your Team With Independence

May 26, 2010 in Leadership with 14 Comments

teamwork 300x300 Infuse Your Team With Independence While taking some time to refresh myself on ‘going back to basics’, I revisited Stephen R. Covey’s book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for the second or third time. Mr. Covey believes that we need to infuse our organizations with lots of independent team members. One way to achieve this is by being prepared to resolve mistakes that are predicated by poor decisions. As leaders, how we react to a misstep is key in helping those around us learn to work autonomously and ultimately, when appropriate, interdependently.

First, let’s remember that mistakes do happen. That is a reality in any operation. However, we also want our people to feel comfortable approaching us about these occurrences right away. These situations present an opportunity for a leader to help group members in correcting the problem before it grows into a larger complication with possibly unmanageable consequences.

For example: Let’s suppose that you asked one of your team members to assist you in creating and putting together a press kit. He or she took the proper initiative and had the documents they created proof-read. With their proof-readers approval of the draft, your co-worker had several thousand copies printed. The press kits were then stuffed into envelopes before he or she re-read the copy themselves only to discover that a crucial word had been omitted.

Your team member has two choices: Let it go, mail the kits and hope the typo isn’t noticed, or he/she can approach you and report what has happened. If they are comfortable with the way they’ve seen you handle similar scenarios, they will willingly inform you of the mistake having faith that you’ll objectively give direction and delegate an appropriate response. Conversely, if you have intimidated your work group with rash consequences in the past, the results will very likely be less favorable for the overall perceived value of your team and possibly cause irreparable damage to your organization.

When we stay calm and keep our composure, our leadership skills show. These are the qualities that help build a great team of players that will not lay blame or point fingers; Those who appreciate the value of teamwork and most importantly: A team that feels comfortable enough to ask for advice. Hence, when Stephen Covey said “Interdependence is only a choice independent people can make”, he meant it for us: Team Players.

Are You Building Your Community?

January 29, 2010 in Business, Health and Wellness, Leadership, Technology with 11 Comments

communitybuilding1 300x225 Are You Building Your Community?Here is an interesting article about some former Google employees leaving to build social networking sites.   This was found on the Mashable and it offers an insight into the importance of building your brand or products community.  This continues to be the secret success for online companies as well as traditional companies.  As Seth Godin describes in his book Tribes, once you have a loyal “Tribe” following you and your product there is nothing you can’t achieve. But how do you do this?  In my opinion, it starts with being authentic. Second, have to build trust.  Finally, you have to provide a product or service that can go viral.  Are your customers proud to talk about your product and promote it to their friends and family?  If you can answer yes to all three you are well on your way to having a smashing success on your hands.

For an outstanding article summarizing some of greatest Lessons Learned from Seth Godin, just click on the hyperlink.

Need Some Fun in Your Workplace?

October 13, 2009 in Business with 11 Comments

A Day at the Office

When I came across this video I immediately knew that I had to share this with everybody.  I don’t know who this team of workers are but words can’t express how great I feel seeing others work together like this.  I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!