Posts for tag: Working Together

Pros and Cons of One-on-Ones

Feedback is essential in flourishing teams. Yet the drain on our time and emotional reserves as managers can cause us to neglect our duty to regularly check in with individual team members.
…

Escape Rooms

Escape rooms are now found in cities across the world. They make a great activity for a small group of friends but their size and location limits the appeal for many corporate groups.
…

Why trusting your team drives results

For the ultimate exercise in developing trust, take your team out on the blindfolded 4×4 challenge for an experience that will never be forgotten.

Trust is something that is usually earned rather than gifted and without trust within the workings of a business, communication can become flawed, direction can be lost and ultimately the company can suffer as a result. Our blindfolded 4×4 challenge develops trust amongst colleagues. And it’s a real laugh too!…

What can we learn from sports teams?

Regardless of the team’s level – youth, high school, college, or the pros – players need to be consistently motivated to be successful, even winning teams.

Teams that are not motivated are flat and, unless they can totally overpower their opponent, unlikely to succeed. Motivation is giving players a reason to perform to the best of their ability to achieve team goals. This responsibility falls on the coach and the players. It takes a team effort to be mentally and physically prepared to play and to maintain a level of interest that puts your team in a position to win.

Try these four ways to motivate your players:…

Fresh or Foolish? – A motivated workforce the Ricardo Semler way

The idea that staff set their own pay, come and go from the office as they please, all within a business that has no written strategy sounds like a recipe for disaster. Not the story of a company that’s gone from $4m to $160m.

Semco is no ordinary workplace, despite the fact that it operates in an industry as ordinary as engineering….

Learning a lesson from TV land

If I think back to when I’ve seen people most stressed in my working life, the majority of instances were immediately before and during conferences.

Very often it’s not the speakers who’s nerves are showing or the AV technicians that are flustered, its the conference organiser.  These people know they are in the firing line if the lights go out or the timmings go aray.  They can often be heard to say “My job is on the line if this isn’t a success”.  Leaving unfair dismissal to one side the truth is there is little benefit in allowing the strain to show.

Earlier this week I was part of a live TV show in which the decision was made to rebuild the set 45 minutes before going on air, while rehearsals were still underway and the lighting and camera angles were far from set up.  Additionally the script was being adapted requiring changes to the autocue and the need to re-brief the presenter and guests….

Ten reasons why meetings fail

Meetings can take up a large portion of anyone’s working day and for many of us, demands on time in the office are already high. So in an ideal world every meeting should count, with specific objectives and results making the time invested worthwhile. 

All too often though, meetings – even during and afterwards – are perceived as a waste of time by those invited. This can usually be attributed to a lack of understanding about what the meeting was for. To avoid the sense that it was all worthless, here is a list of ten reasons why meetings can fail for you to use as a checklist when planning your next meeting:

1.      No agenda = no purpose
2.      No advance communication = surprising behaviours/responses
3.      Not encouraging participation = no interaction
4.      No time management = cost to organisation – time is money
5.      Allowing conflict to get out of control = chaos
6.      Not reaching consensus = waste of time and company resources
7.      Allowing sub meetings = no focus or direction
8.      Not controlling difficult behaviour = everyone becoming difficult
9.      Not summarising actions = misunderstanding of next steps
10.  Not motivational = attendees leave feeling flat and despondent

This list is based on an article written by Nuggets of Learning and Development.