The single best way to grow as a leader is to lead and then get feedback. It is to act and interact with your team and learn what can be improved upon through feedback. Receiving feedback, and applying that feedback, makes leaders better. But there’s a problem with receiving feedback once someone is in a leader role. The nature of feedback changes—teammates minimize unpleasant messages or don’t want to offer any constructive feedback at all. And the response to feedback can change—leaders receiv...
Aug 04, 2021•9 min
What’s The Best Team Building Activity For Remote Teams? It's complicated. Team Building Activities in general aren't actually as effective as those selling them may claim....even more so when conducted over Zoom. But there are activities you can do to build bonds on your remote team. And in this quick episode, we share 3 equally quick activities for remote teams. //DO YOUR BEST WORK EVER If you liked this video and you want to help your team do their best work ever, check out the free resources...
Jul 28, 2021•4 min
David Burkus reacts to reports of a coming "great resignation." What is the great resignation and what can leaders do about it? Should employees quit their job? What can leaders do to prevent employees from quitting? And what happens after they quit as part of the great resignation. //DO YOUR BEST WORK EVER If you liked this video and you want to help your team do their best work ever, check out the free resources we've compiled at https://davidburkus.com/resources //ABOUT DAV...
Jul 27, 2021•9 min
One of the most significant decisions that leaders make is who to hire. No matter how many core values you have and how many posters you hang, company culture is downstream from people. So, the people that join the organization will have a massive effect on the evolution of its culture. And its widespread knowledge that hiring is the most important decision you can make, the knowledge of how to actually hire great people is rare. But there are a few methods—and a few organizations—that stand out...
Jul 21, 2021•11 min
In this episode, we’ll outline four methods that can make giving positive feedback to employees much more effective. Do It Now Be Specific Connect To Purpose Do It Publicly (Maybe) If you add these four methods into the way you give positive feedback, you’ll not only have an easier time finding the right words to speak, but you’ll find those words have a lot more meaning. If you praise right away, be specific, connect it to purpose, and do it as publicly as the person desires, you’ll be giving g...
Jul 06, 2021•8 min
Team building isn’t an activity, it’s a habit. Unless the chosen activity changes a team’s habits, it probably wasn’t worth the effort. Moreover, perhaps it would have been better to focus on team habit building in the first place. So, in this video, we’ll outline three habits leaders can start to build that will better build the team as well. Provide Structure and Clarity Find Unstructured Time Discuss Purpose Often Perhaps the best part of each of these habits, is that they don’t cost much to ...
Jun 22, 2021•11 min
In this video, we’ll cover the three ways to drive employee engagement at work. They happen to be the three elements of job crafting that employees engage in. And provide ways for organizational leaders to leverage those elements and drive employee engagement at work. Job crafting is something around one-third of all employees do in order to drive their own engagement at work. But when you look at the three elements of job crafting, it’s clear that many organizations are still not doing the same...
Jun 08, 2021•14 min
Feedback is vitally important. Feedback is how we improve performance. Feedback is how we engage employees at all levels. Feedback is how we measure progress in difficult to measure situations. Feedback is how we motivate others, and ourselves. So, in this episode, we’ll outline four ways you can get more feedback at work: Work Louder Ask Teammates Measure More Feed Forward All four of these methods for getting more feedback at work put the burden of responsibility on you. And that shouldn’t be ...
May 25, 2021•11 min
Conflict on a team is inevitable. Conflict happens because people are different, they think differently, and they act differently. a lot of personal conflict on a team happens because of misunderstandings and misconceptions that don’t get addressed early enough. And that means a lot of personal conflict on a team can be resolved with a fairly simple, three-step process. 1) The first step in resolving personal conflict on a team is to pull the affected parties aside and begin to label the actual ...
May 11, 2021•13 min
Employee engagement has been a pretty hot topic over the past year. The “great work from home” experiment forced millions of employees to find new ways to get work done. And as working from home moved from a short-term experiment to a long-haul arrangement, it’s worth considering the long-term impact of working remotely on motivation, collaboration, and engagement. In this video, we’ll outline four new strategies to keep remote employees and remote teams engaged. Make Expectations Clear Make Fee...
Apr 27, 2021•12 min
Distractions at work have been a constant for a very, very long time. But suddenly, those of us who were working from home—or living at work—found ourselves fighting off a brand-new set of distractions we’d never prepared for. In this video, we'll outline four ways you can limit distractions when working remotely. Set A Schedule Batch Your Tasks Build Work/Life Boundaries Build People Boundaries You likely can’t eliminate distractions entirely when working remotely. But you can take steps to lim...
Apr 13, 2021•11 min
Psychological safety on high performing teams almost everywhere. From teams large and small and even in Google's infamous Project Aristotle study which sought to figure out what characteristics of teams led to their biggest performances, psychological safety is almost always present. In this episode, we'll outline four ways that you can build psychological safety on a team: Treat Conflict As Collaboration Celebrate Failures Encourage Dissent Build Civility And taken together, that's what a...
Mar 30, 2021•12 min
Having good friends at work predicts a lot about engagement and performance. But in this new, work-from-anywhere, world, building friendships among teammates looks a lot different. You can’t just rely on sharing the same space to be the conversation starter that leads to finding shared interests. Instead, team leaders have to be much more deliberate. In this episode, we’ll offer five ways you can recreate that space—and those conversations—on a remote team: Virtual Watercooler Icebreakers Buffer...
Mar 16, 2021•13 min
Can Motivation Be Increased? | David Burkus Presents | 02.09 In the modern economy, motivation is a tricky thing. But in this episode, we'll outline the findings around motivation that come from the realm of Self-Determination Theory. Self-Determination Theory essentially argued that people are motivated when they can determine for themselves what to work on and how to work on it. In other words, Deci and Ryan and many other pioneers in this field of research, asserted that incentives could actu...
Mar 01, 2021•9 min
How To Get Remote Teams To Work Together | David Burkus Presents | 02.07 In this video , we’ll cover a simple and easy way to get your remote team to work together. It all revolves around three easy questions: • What did I just work on? • What am I working on? • What is blocking my progress These questions help your team work out loud. Working out loud means that the team has developed a system to keep track of what everyone is focused on, what’s getting done, as well as a system for asking for ...
Feb 16, 2021•10 min
How To Create A Remote Team Working Agreement | David Burkus Presents | 02.05 A team working agreement is a living document drafted by a team that outlines the ground rules for communication and collaboration. It outlines how teammates will keep each other updated, how they’ll give each other feedback, and how they’ll communication—both in what medium and with what frequency. Creating a team working agreement—or at least the first draft of a team working agreement—is a simple activity that shoul...
Feb 02, 2021•13 min
How To Run A Virtual Team Meeting | David Burkus Presents | 02.03 In this episode, we'll cover the best practices around running a virtual team meeting. Virtual meetings don’t work” is the most common response I hear when speaking to leaders at all levels about remote teams. But let’s be fair: in-person meetings rarely ever worked, either. So, whether it’s your first virtual meeting with your team, or your forty-seventh weekly meeting, here are the steps to follow to make it the best one ever: 1...
Jan 19, 2021•12 min
In addition to the normal methods we use to screen job candidates, and the tactics we use to judge whether those candidates are a fit for the organization, those same leaders have found that hiring remote workers and setting them up for success, requires candidates are evaluated for more than just their knowledge, skills, abilities, and past experience. In this episode, we’ll review the three biggest questions that leaders need to answer when evaluating potential new hires. Are they collab...
Jan 06, 2021•11 min
In this episode, we'll cover how to do remote team building. Most of what teams (especially remote teams) actually need to build better collaboration and team identity has less to do with a singular event and more to do with ongoing activities, habits, and rituals that the team engages in regularly. Here are five proven activities that, done regularly, will build your team better than ropes courses or trust falls: Office Tours Scavenger Hunts Fika Work Sprints Shared Meals If you just start with...
Dec 22, 2020•12 min
In this episode, we’re going to review the two key elements of team culture that were uncovered in that experiment: shared understanding and shared identity. Plus, as a bonus, we’ll review one thing we know from more and more research that makes for a great team culture in any situation: psychological safety. We've known for over a decade that individual performance is hugely dependent upon the team that individuals are placed on. Top performance by individuals hinges on whether or not their tea...
Dec 10, 2020•13 min
In this episode, we’ll review four stages you should take your team through to make sure that you get more of the brilliance that happens from having multiple brains on the problem. And less of the internal politics, self-censoring, and squelching of ideas that makes for poor team decisions. Find The Real Problem Analyze The Data Generation Possible Solutions Select For Commitment, Not Consensus If you go through this process and if you make sure that everyone feels their ideas are heard a...
Dec 10, 2020•11 min
Remote Work is indeed the new normal. Not because we're headed for a future where everyone is working from home. But because the extended time spent working away from the office has led to many of rearranging the way we work into something better than before. The future of work is working from anywhere. And the future of leading teams, is leading from anywhere. //ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David Burkus’ forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are helping leade...
Dec 10, 2020•10 min
When it comes to teams that work from home of work from anywhere, one of the key aspects that smart leaders pay attention to is making sure that their remote workers feel included. Making sure that the people who are mostly remote feel as valuable and as vital a member of the team as the people who are spending more time at the office is going to be core area of focus…and a key struggle when leading teams. So, in this episode, we’ll review four ways that you can make sure that remote worke...
Dec 10, 2020•10 min
In 2015, Google’s People Analytics team asked an ambitious question: “Why do some teams perform better than others?" They looked at a variety of potential explanations, mostly based on team composition. And found very little that could explain performance. But when the researchers turned their attention from the attributes of the team toward its regular behaviors, traditions, and norms, they found elements that made a difference Dependability Structure and clarity Meaning Impact Psychological sa...
Dec 10, 2020•12 min
Motivation is tricky for all teams, co-located or remote. It's hard for many team managers to find a way that motivates each individual. And it’s even harder to find way to motivate the team as a whole. But, co-located teams have a lot of advantages. When you're seeing each other day to day, you get a better picture at what's going on behind the scenes in someone's mind and what you could latch onto to inspire and motivate them. In a remote team, that's a whole lot harder. There's a ...
Dec 09, 2020•8 min
Finding ways to reinforce purpose on a daily basis can be difficult. So, in this episode, we’ll review three ways that you can frame that purpose in a team that will help them internalize your purpose. It will reinforce it, and it will help your people feel like they are actually working toward something bigger than themselves—even when they’re focused on the day-to-day tasks. People don’t want to join a company; they want to join a crusade or a cause—and these three frames (these three “fights”...
Dec 09, 2020•10 min
Remote work has been on the rise for a long time, but 2020 gave extra accelerant to the remote work fire. In this episode, we’ll cover three activities to focus on when managing a remote team: Set Objectives Mutually Track Progress Regularly Give Feedback Collaboratively And if you take all of them together—focusing on the outcome, not the activity—you'll find something amazing. You'll find that people willfully engage in the activities without you needing to track them and bring the whole team ...
Dec 09, 2020•9 min
No matter how long your tenure as a team leader, you've probably seen it. Motivation can fade. Individual employees who seemed so full of life and so full obsessed for the job eventually settle into rhythms and patterns and might even burn out. Teams that were formed with an inspiring mission eventually fall into those regular old habits of teamwork and can become demotivated and disengaged. In this episode, we're going examine four specific reasons why motivation doesn't last, and what yo...
Dec 09, 2020•10 min
When it comes to motivating individuals and teams, a lot of leaders assume they need a great deal of power to make changes to the whole organization. But that doesn’t mean that, if you’re not, you don’t have any options when it comes to motivation. There are a few key levers that leaders at any level can use to help their team get more inspired to do the work they're tasked with doing every single day, and even help them expand their job into one that is more purposeful, more motivating and more...
Dec 09, 2020•9 min
Creativity is a team sport, and creative problem solving is no different. But where many team leaders struggle is in how to lead their team through a problem solving process. Too many leaders just gather their team for brainstorming or some other meeting intended merely to toss out ideas. There's a lot of work to be done before and after brainstorming. Problem solving isn't one meeting; it's three. The Problem Meeting: where we shape the right question The Idea Meeting: where we generate ideas T...
Dec 09, 2020•11 min
