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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 […]

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

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

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

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

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

We’ve all been on teams and observed teams. There is an easy assumption to make that we know what a team is in terms of team development. The reality is, especially in the workplace, the mental model most followed as a team paradigm is way out of date or simply inadequate for the requirements placed on teams today. Team Development Redefined Here is a way to illustrate that situation. Imagine you have a scrapbook of

A successful team coaching project starts with a clear understanding of the need, the fit an agreement on intended outcomes. Both the team coach and the team sponsor know: “where we are; where we’re headed; and how we’ll get there”. We use the placeholder, “team sponsor” for the organization’s role because that initiative may have come from many places. It may have originated with HR Business Partners, OD or Learning & Development professionals. So for