Coach, Consultant, Trainer: Wearing Multiple Hats On a Team
Here’s the scene. You’re there in a conference room with a team. You just noticed something. The team noticed that you noticed. Now the team is staring at you, waiting for a comment, a question, or a direction to follow. In that moment you have to decide what hat you’re wearing: coach, consultant or in some cases, trainer. The team doesn’t care. All they want are better results. You have that goal in mind of […]
Creating Sustainable High Performing Teams Through Team Coaching
For more than 100 years, Wolters Kluwer, CCH has been a leader in providing resources, information and analysis to tax and accounting professionals. As part of their mission, CCH brings to their clients thought-leading articles and topics from leaders in a wide variety of fields. An article appeared in their “Ultimate HR Manual” series that we knew you would enjoy. Creating Sustainable High Performing Teams Through Team Coaching by Michelle Chambers, M.Ed., CHRP, CTDP, ORSC-t Team coaching […]
Team Coaching in Pairs
My colleague and I were working with a senior management team from a well-known technology company. We were in the afternoon of day one of a two-day session. The team was engaged in important conversation about low team scores for Trust and Accountability — except for two team members who were clearly not taking this seriously. In fact, they were creating a distraction — at least in my mind — a distraction that was undermining […]
Breaking the Code on High Performing Teams
Most people in organizations, if they’ve been around long enough, have been on a great team or maybe two, a number of so-so teams, and a few disappointing teams. It’s easy to conclude that the difference between them is simply the membership. That’s often how team leaders approach poorly performing teams: replace the weak or broken parts. Sometimes, it’s true, the mix needs adjustment to get the skill set, temperament, and experience the team needs […]
Correlation Between Positivity & Business Performance
Interesting and fundamental research on the correlation between positivity and business performance was conducted by Marcial Losada and Emily Heaphy in 2004, when they studied The Role of Positivity and Connectivity in the Performance of Business Teams.* In their study, the interactions of 60 business teams were observed during meetings and thousands of behaviors and characteristics were “coded” in a capture lab in terms of these ratios: Other: Self Inquiry: Advocacy Positivity: Negativity The business […]
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How To Improve Team Communication with Active Listening
In today’s business world the importance of effective team communication is indisputable. What’s also beyond dispute is that the increasing rate of daily business activity presents a challenge to communication on teams. But speed alone is hardly the only aspect of communication that is putting pressure on teams. Add to the equation new forms of communication, greater distance, and virtual dependency. There was a time when the speakerphone in the middle of the conference room […]
Improve Accountability on Teams in 4 Simple Steps
As team coaches, we face many challenges in our work with teams, often at once. Low trust, poor communication and lack of alignment are but a few of them. Where those factors are clear to the team as the discussion begins to take place, others aren’t. Among the more misunderstood factors is achieving accountability as a team. According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of accountability is as follows: An obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or […]
5 Keys to Successful Navigation in a VUCA World
The world we live and work in is increasingly a world that can be easily described as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. As an acronym, a VUCA World. The US military coined that terminology to help train leaders in effective response to modern battlefield conditions. But those four words also aptly describe the environment in which organizations do business every day. A quick internet search of “VUCA” will yield dozens of articles on the topic […]
How To Turn Team Conflict Into Trust, Resilience & Results
Team conflict is normal. Avoiding team conflict is also normal. We see that tendency when we work with teams and, let’s be honest: we often see it in ourselves. We would rather avoid than engage, even when we know that it can ultimately be a valuable contribution to team performance. The simple truth is unattended team conflict, over time, cripples the team’s ability to effectively collaborate. All sorts of bad behavior results, much of it […]
6 Challenges of Coaching Virtual Teams & How to Address Them
With the rapid rate of technological innovation over the past couple of decades, the changes we’ve seen in the workplace have been considerable. With increasing frequency, more teams within more organizations are being created with members who are globally dispersed and connected only by technology. As team coaches, we need to learn how to do our work in an ever growing virtual world which means coaching virtual teams. That’s the reality. From the organization’s point […]
Coaching The Team as a System
A team is a living system—more than a collection of individual parts. A team as a system has rules for belonging and behavior. Those rules are not written down in the employee handbook. New team members learn the rules by observing and by touching the hot wire or being rewarded with a pat on the back. A team has an identity and a personality. A team holds certain beliefs and expresses certain values. A team […]