Team Building

Clarity of Purpose

What is your team's purpose?

What is your team supposed to do that no other team does?

These are important questions for all teams - whether you belong to a management team, a functional team, a project team, or other.

The challenge in most organizations is that teams don't have clarity about their purpose. They brush it off as something too fluffy to consider. Or, for other teams, their purpose ends up on a pretty poster in a conference room and does nothing but take up wall space.

3 Ways to Derail Team Formation: Part 1

Below is an excerpt from our latest article 3 Ways to Derail Team Formation.

Most teams struggle to reach their highest levels of effectiveness because of their inability to cultivate the right team of people from the beginning. As a result, communication breakdowns, unnecessary conflict, and poor decision making leads to a loss of key opportunities.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

What Will You Stop Doing? (Part 2)

In a recent blog post I stated that the number 1 reason why senior leadership teams aren't more strategically focused is....

"There isn't enough time."

And, you'll know your team isn't strategically focused if you spend the majority of your time doing what I call the "Round Robin" - where you go around the conference room table and everyone gives an update about their area that almost no one else cares about.

One Opinion You Don't Need

As heard in one of my team coaching sessions last week from a participant...

"If two people agree, you don't need one of the opinions."

What Will You Stop Doing?

The number one reason why senior leadership teams don't focus on more strategic things is.....

"There isn't enough time."

This came up this week, and that came up last week. Yada yada yada.

No wonder why senior leadership teams struggle so much to do little more than information sharing.

No Agenda? Seriously?

Are you tired of showing up at meetings and not knowing why you are there to begin with?

That seems to be the norm in most organizations.

The problem is that when there isn't a clear purpose and agenda for a meeting, people waste time and energy endlessly talking around each other - never closing on decisions and moving actions forward.

Do you know what the Number 1 excuse is for not having an agenda?

"We don't have enough time."

People are too busy, overwhelmed, and overloaded.

Overcoming Challenges on Remote Teams: Part 4

The last three posts have been focused on overcoming challenges encountered on remote teams. Part 1 was focused on getting your virtual team aligned, Part 2 on building cohesion, and Part 3 on creating disciplined team processes.

Today's post is focused on remote team leadership.

Overcoming Challenges on Remote Teams: Part 3

In my last two posts, we tackled a few challenges that remote teams face. Part 1 was focused on getting your remote team aligned. Part 2 on building cohesion.

In this post we'll focus on process.

For remote teams to maximize their effectiveness, they need to have disciplined processes in place. Here are some ideas you might consider:

Overcoming Challenges on Remote Teams: Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed some of the challenges of working on remote teams and ideas for getting your remote team aligned. But, to truly be effective, your remote team has to find a way to build cohesion. After all, only when people are working together on the right things can we gain efficiencies.

Here are a few ideas:

Overcoming Challenges on Remote Teams: Part 1

Working on teams where some or all team members are remote is becoming the norm rather than the exception. And frankly, having remote team members adds complexity that often times accelerates and amplifies communication breakdowns.

For example,