While we regularly focus on feedback as an individual performance tool, it's also a critical communication tool for driving improvement across groups and for processes and initiatives. Yet, this important, honest communication is in short supply in too many organizations.
Teaming and collaboration experiences happen in all walks of our professional and personal lives. Some experiences working with others are draining, others passable, and just a few are energizing and even fun and successful. You can hope these fun, productive experiences emerge by chance. Or you can be deliberate about creating the conditions that improve the possibility of a great collaboration experience. I opt for improving our odds of bringing one of these productive, fun experiences to life. Here are four ideas to help:
This is the single best discussion I've ever had on pursuing high-performance as an individual! I can't say enough good about my interview with Marc Effron and the science-backed content in his new book, 8 Steps to High Performance: Focus on What You Can Change (Ignore the Rest).
It's not hard to identify the ingredients essential for success on a team or in an organization. Yet, manifesting a group wildly motivated to succeed is the real issue. To do this, there must be a cause that serves as the catalyst and driver. Your numbers, goals, quarterly targets, and emotional or logical pleas aren't enough. The right cause brings teams to life.
Imagine there was a tool at your disposal that would help reinforce in real-time the behaviors of group members that moved the performance numbers in the right direction. Or, a tool that would get people motivated to learn, grow, and leave behind less-than-ideal behaviors in favor of new approaches and continuous improvement. Wouldn’t this be helpful? Well, there is. It’s called performance feedback. And sadly, it’s often missing-in-action, misapplied, or, applied inconsistently, and that’s just leaving money and morale on the table.
Unfortunately, do-overs in leadership are rare. Instead, work on rebuilding your leadership foundation mid-flight by using these three big ideas with your team.
Gary Morton, author of Commanding Excellence: Inspiring Purpose, Passion, and Ingenuity through Leadership that Matters, shares his wisdom and experiences in this wide-ranging interview with Management Excellence and Leadership Caffeine author, Art Petty.
The book, "Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win," is one of the latest additions to the growing number of books from the ranks of the warrior heroes known as Navy SEALs. This one is a keeper, with powerful lessons drawn from life or death experiences. While our workplace challenges are mild by comparison, the leadership lessons are a perfect fit for anyone accountable for the results of others.
Too few managers and management teams talk about what it means to promote a culture of business performance excellence in and across their organizations. Even fewer work on it.
Mediocre is on display daily in too many areas of our society and in too many of our businesses. From the boss who just doesn’t care to our government seemingly barely functioning to the miserable help-lines of too many firms to the slow gait…the shuffle of retail workers at organizations that definitely don’t care, ordinary and average are epidemic. Here are 8 ideas to help you kick mediocrity to the curb in pursuit of extraordinary on your team:
