Teamwork requires communication. Communication is the lifeblood of a team. It’s how leaders and teams coordinate what needs to be done, who needs to do it, and how all those various tasks fit into the broad whole of collaboration. As a leader, communication skills are arguably the most important skills to develop. And if you’re an aspiring leader, you’ll need to improve your communication skills before you even find yourself in a leadership role. In this episode, we’ll outline four ways to impro...
Oct 09, 2022•9 min
Onboarding has become a rather sterile term. It began as a recognition that how employees start in a new company, or a new role, can have a dramatic effect on their performance, engagement, and even their tenure. But gradually more and more demands started to be added to the process—legal requirements, mandatory trainings, pages after pages of employee handbooks. And without warning what started as a cause for celebration turned into a cascade of contract signing. But a growing body of research ...
Oct 03, 2022•10 min
It’s difficult to stay motivated at work in almost every job. In some ways, fading motivation is inevitable. Research on flow states and eustress suggest that humans are highly motivated when there’s a perfect balance between the skills they have and the demands of the job. But getting into that balance is tricky. When you’re starting a new job, the demands are high and your skill levels are likely not suited to it. You’re overwhelmed. But as you grow and develop in the role you grow towar...
Sep 25, 2022•11 min
Do you know if you’re a micromanager as a leader? Do you know if your people consider you a micromanager? The tricky thing about micromanagement is that its universally frowned upon, but not universally defined or acknowledged. In other words, everyone agrees micromanagers are bad—but no one is willing to admit they are one. A recent poll found that 55 percent of employees surveyed believed their boss was a micromanager. If the majority of people believe they’re being micromanaged, there’s a goo...
Sep 12, 2022•10 min
If you’re doing your job well as a leader, then you’re going to grow your team and yourself. That means that people are going to grow out of your team into new roles on new teams. And one of those people will eventually be you. You’re going to grow out of that leadership role. But how well you handle the transition—how well you step down from a leadership position and enter the new one—is going to have a big effect on your future leadership. In this episode, we’ll outline how to step down ...
Sep 05, 2022•12 min
John Maxwell famously said, “everything rises and falls on leadership.” Although research offers a more nuanced picture. For an organization to succeed, it takes a variety of contributions from talented individuals at all levels. But when leaders fail, the whole organization can indeed fall. In this episode, we’ll review several reasons why leaders fail. Failure is feedback. Failure is a great teacher. And for current and aspiring leaders, the failures of leaders past can be a great teache...
Aug 29, 2022•12 min
There is a misconception about leadership that just won’t seem to go away. It’s the commonly held belief that the best leaders are charismatic and inspiring and hence, the best leaders are highly extroverted. Too many people still seem to believe that extroverts make better leaders than introverts. In a survey of senior corporate executives, 65% viewed introversion as a barrier to leadership. And in what I am sure is a total coincidence, that same percentage is also the number of extroverts in s...
Aug 22, 2022•9 min
The future of work is teams. That’s a trend that’s been around for a long time. Jobs that could have been alone at one time or another happen more efficiently and at higher quality because we work in teams. The easy problems in work and in life that could have at one time been solved by a lone genius are gone. Only complex problems that require creativity at the team level remain. So, if the future of work is teams, it’s worth examining the future of teamwork. And here, there are several t...
Aug 08, 2022•10 min
Culture is a huge factor in the success or failure of a team. There are cultures so focused on performance and talent that they leave everyone drained. And then there are cultures where individual members, no matter how talented, put the needs of the team over their needs and, as a result, everyone wins. But there’s a lot we misunderstand about culture. When you hear many people describe their culture, they point to easily observable elements like symbols, slogans, dress code, foosball tables, o...
Aug 01, 2022•11 min
Teamwork is impossible without communication. Teams have to share information; they have to share ideas. Without communication, teams can’t coordinate tasks. They can’t help each other; they can’t do anything other than work alone in silence. Since communication is so vital to teamwork, it’s no surprise that the quality of communication affects the level of performance of a team so strongly. There’s a big difference between communication on an average team and communication on a high performing ...
Jul 25, 2022•8 min
Communication is the lifeblood of any relationship. And that’s especially true for the leader-teammate relationship. How well leaders communicate with their subordinates affects how motivated and productive they are. And how well leaders communicate with their entire team affects how the team members communicate with each other…as well as how motivated and productive they are. So, if you want to be effective as a leader, you’ll need to communicate effectively at work. But a big obstacle to achie...
Jul 18, 2022•11 min
Trust makes a massive difference on the performance of teams. And that fact has been found in research on teamwork over and over. For example, a 2011 study of nearly 200 teams from the United States and Hong Kong, found that when trust went up, so did performance. In a way, trust on a team acts as a social lubricant. When teams trust each other, the social frictions are reduced, which makes it easier to collaborate and easier to share one’s true perspective on any challenges the team faces. ...
Jul 10, 2022•11 min
There’s a lot to think about as a leader. There are goals to pursue. There are people to manage. And every day new problems arise that make pursuing those goals or supporting those people more difficult. Amid all these demands, it can be difficult to think any more deeply than just reacting to the moment. Leaders know they need to think strategically, but often don’t know how to find the time to do so. But strategic thinking isn’t about carving out large blocks of time to ponder problems. Instea...
Jul 05, 2022•9 min
Teamwork may indeed make the dream work, but teams that lack a teamwork culture can be a nightmare. Pick your sport, and you can find a professional team that focused on acquiring talented players but failed to get the results their bulging salary budget should have brought. And the reason teams of star players fail more often than they should most often comes down to culture. Or at least, that those star players don’t want to be part of a team-oriented culture. Instead, they want to shine on th...
Jun 27, 2022•11 min
In a time when most organizations are struggling to attract and retain talent, one simple intervention can help reduce turnover dramatically. Despite their infrequent use, stay interviews are a powerful tool for helping managers keep top talent on their team and keep everyone engaged. In one study, conducting stay interviews in the burnout filled halls of a hospital was found to reduce turnover by 40 percent. Stay interviews are modeled after exit interviews—a common practice in large organizati...
Jun 13, 2022•9 min
Failure is inevitable. Projects fall apart. Clients leave. Sometimes circumstances outside of the team’s control doom them to failure. But every failure creates an option. Teams can take the loss at face value. Or learn from it and get better. Reflection on failure can be a powerful growth tool for individuals and teams. In one study, having participants spend just 15 minutes a day reflecting on their work increased performance by 20 percent compared to just spending the same 15 minutes working....
Jun 06, 2022•8 min
You don’t need a title to be a leader. But, it helps. And for many aspiring leaders, getting noticed and seen as a potential new leader in an organization can be difficult. There are ways to demonstrate leadership skills outside of a formal leadership role, but those skills won’t necessarily bring the position unless noticed. Some organizations have “high potential” programs to identify and develop new leaders, but others don’t—and instead rely on individuals to prove themselves by creating thei...
May 31, 2022•9 min
One of the biggest factors in helping a team collaborate optimally is the level of trust on the team. The extent to which team members feel safe to express themselves, believe their colleagues will deliver on promises, and trust their leader to lead can have a massive effect on their ultimate performance. And as we know from research, trust is a reciprocal process. When one person acts with trust, the other feels trusted and responds with greater trust. But that virtuous cycle can turn into a vi...
May 24, 2022•9 min
Creativity is a team sport. It’s been that way for a long time. But the level of teamwork required to solve problems and find innovation has increased over the last decade and even century. Most of the simple problems of the world have been solved, and the ones that remain are too often too complex to be solved by any lone, individual genius. But not all teams fair equally when it comes to creative tasks, because many team leaders are better prepared to lead teams where the work is simple and ea...
May 24, 2022•9 min
In this episode, we’ll outline how to fire an employee in a way that is specific, but humane. Research suggests that the boost in productivity from releasing a poor employee is larger than the boost gained from hiring a star player. And sometimes it’s not even about releasing a poor performer, there’s economic or industry specific reasons for having to lay off valued teammates—and it must be done gracefully. 0:00 Introduction 1:21 Do It In Person 2:31 Bring A Third Party 3:31 Lay It All Out 4:44...
May 09, 2022•10 min
Team alignment can make or break the success of any team. But many leaders struggle with how to build team alignment and so just assume that smooth running meetings and responsive teammates means team alignment. But that can be a big mistake, because even a small misalignment in the beginning can compound and create a devastating project breakdown. Team alignment is a bit like the flight plan created by airplane crews before takeoff. Being a few degrees off course when leaving New York for Los A...
May 02, 2022•8 min
According to the Gallup organization, only about 20 percent of adults report being highly engaged in their job. In the United States, the number rises slightly to about 30 percent. But that is still 7 out of 10 people who are missing out on an essential element of a positive working life. And for many of this unsatisfied majority, the easiest solution seems to be quitting and trying again at another job. But there’s a lot more methods to attempt before going that route. In this episode, we...
Apr 25, 2022•10 min
In this episode, we’ll outline the six ways leaders influence organizational culture. Leaders and researchers have engaged in a constant dialogue about the importance of culture, the ways to build culture, and the differences between a positive and toxic culture. But surprisingly little has been said about how leadership influences organizational culture. It’s not that no one talks about it. It’s just that most attempts at building a positive culture focus on visible artifacts or perks and...
Apr 18, 2022•10 min
There aren’t a lot of jobs left that people can do in complete isolation. There aren’t a lot of problems left that can be solved by lone geniuses. Performance is a team sport, one that requires we help each other. You shouldn’t be hesitant to ask for help, and you can’t escape having to ask for it. So, in this episode, we’ll outline how to ask for help at work in a way that boosts your chances of getting it. 0:00 Introduction 2:00 Don’t Fear Rejection 2:47 Be Specific 3:39 Ask One Person 4:43 As...
Apr 11, 2022•10 min
Just because you don’t have a title, doesn’t mean you’re not a leader. But if you want to someday gain that title, and the position of team leader or manager, then there’s a dilemma you’ll have to reconcile. You’ll have to be able to demonstrate leadership at work to the people who make promotion decisions, without having had a leadership role to point to. But working on any team creates leadership moments that you’ve probably seized upon in the past, you just may not have known about them. Or, ...
Apr 04, 2022•8 min
Bad bosses are a sad reality of working life. Hopefully, you’ve never had to deal with toxic leadership. But if you’re reading this, you probably have. It seems like toxic leaders are far too common in organizations of all sizes. So in this episode, we’ll outline six ways to deal with toxic leadership—and we’ll save the most obvious tactic (leaving) for last. 0:00 Introduction 1:33 Set Boundaries 2:52 Document Actions 4:10 Build Support 5:06 Avoid Drama 6:15 Step Up 8:12 Leave 9:31 Conclusion //...
Mar 28, 2022•11 min
High performing talent can make or break a project’s success—or an entire organization’s success. Recent research suggests that high performers aren’t just a little bit more productive, they are drastically more productive than average. One study found high performers created 400 percent more value than their average counterparts. But it’s not enough to merely attract high performers and set them loose. Even the best employees need support and supervision from their leaders. In this episode, we’...
Mar 21, 2022•10 min
Employee engagement has been a hot topic for several decades. And for good reason. Business teams with highly engaged employees have a 59 percent lower turnover rate than those with less engaged staff. Highly engaged teams are 17 percent more productive. Engaged teams receive 10 percent higher customer reviews. And yes, businesses with engaged employees have higher profit margins than non-engaged competitors. But getting employees to feel engaged is no small feat. Even how to measur...
Mar 14, 2022•12 min
Dealing with difficult employees is unavoidable. But the good news is that taking the time to deal with a difficult employee can have a dramatically positive effect on the team. According to Harvard Business School professors Michael Housman and Dylan Minor, the productivity boost gained from removing toxic employees is greater than any boost gained from adding a star performer. In this episode, we’ll lay out a five-step process to help deal with a difficult employee. 0:00 Introduction 1:5...
Mar 07, 2022•11 min
Most leaders agree on the importance of building a positive organizational culture. Positive organizational cultures come from the accumulation of positive team cultures. Most employees’ experience of work is really the experience of working with the teams they serve on. So, teaching team leaders how to shape team culture will have the largest impact on creating a positive organizational culture overall. In this episode, we’ll review four actions team leaders can take to build a positive team cu...
Feb 28, 2022•9 min
