The Number One Team Momentum Killer
There’s one constant that will kill team momentum for your new direction, goals, and priorities.
Under pressure, people go back to their old habits.
Teams
5 Best Corporate Team Building Companies
It can be tough to find suitable corporate team-building companies. How can you know which one is right for your team? To help, we’ve compiled a list of our five favorite team-building companies. Each one offers unique and exciting events that are perfect for any group. Whether you’re looking for an outdoor adventure or a …
10 Reasons Team Building at Work is Important
Most people would agree that team building is an integral part of work. After all, it’s hard to be productive when you don’t get along with your co-workers. But what are the specific benefits of team building? And why should company leaders invest time and money in team-building activities? Here are ten reasons why team …
What is a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)?
One of the tools that project managers use to help them manage their projects better and more efficiently is a work breakdown structure (WBS). You might have heard the term work breakdown structure and had questions about how you could implement it on your next project. We’ll define a WBS, the types, and its elements …
The Overlooked Secret To Retention: How To Build Familial Teams
When we were forced to leave the office and take our work home, a lot of leaders were concerned about the productivity and accountability that might be lost from this new working environment. However, we learned that people were much more accountable and dedicated to their jobs while working from home than was ever thought …
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The Five Stages of Business Team Development Explained
As your business grows, your workplace team grows too. But building a successful team requires more than choosing people with the right mix of professional skills. Therefore, it is essential to understand how to develop your team and bring them together correctly. High-functioning teams don’t happen without work and a structured process. Today we’ll jump …
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The Missing Pieces In Team Building
For decades, corporate team building has consisted of style inventories, communication skill building and teamwork games like ropes courses, trust falls and escape rooms. While these activities might bring a team closer together as friends and are certainly fun activities, they have little if anything to do with actually building job-related teamwork. Building effective teams …
Why Most Business Teams Are Amateurs, And How To Become Professional
In my 35 years of consulting with business teams to lead breakthrough change efforts, I’ve learned one surprising thing: Professional business teams act like amateurs! If you want to learn about high-performing teams, pay attention to teams that have to perform well together. The success of sports teams, dance companies and music groups depends on their teamwork, …
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6 Best High Performing Teams Books
High-performing teams are the goal of every company. A team or whole organization that is hyper-focused on its goals, achieving exceptional business results, usually consists of people with specialized skills and complementary expertise. They work together at the highest levels to consistently outperform their competitors. If your team couldn’t currently be described as high-performing, fear …
5 Workplace Miscommunication Examples (& How to Avoid Them)
For a business to be successful, it’s essential that its employees effectively communicate and work together to ensure that tasks are done correctly. But language is a complicated art, and miscommunication can always occur, even when people are trying to make themselves as clear as possible. But while miscommunication can’t always be avoided- especially in …
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5 Best Examples of High-Performing Teams
For most business owners to have continued success, they need to employ individuals they believe can help further their company’s growth. However, even with dedicated personnel, it can still be challenging to find the right fit. Building a successful team is more than just putting talented people together and saying, “Here, figure it out.” It …
How to Be a Team Player in Business
“The Last Dance,” an HBO documentary about the Chicago Bulls, tells us a lot about teamwork. When Michael Jordan first joined the Bulls, he was the star of the team. He was excellent at his craft and they won more games because of it. But they never won the NBA championship. That is, until Phil …
The Importance of Multidisciplinary Teams
A renowned basketball coach once said that the inherent strength of a team is found in each member. And that the unique strengths of each member are what makes the group a team. Phil Jackson was talking about the importance of multidisciplinary team synergy relative to basketball players using different skills and tactics in unison …
Drexler Sibbet Team Performance Model: Does It Work?
The best organizations operate through teamwork, but getting each member to work seamlessly with each other can be a challenge, especially without a plan. Drexler-Sibbet’s Team Performance Model provides organizations with a framework designed to understand team development. It’s known to be one of the most effective, efficient models for enhancing team performance. Let’s take …
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7 Habits of High Functioning Teams
By Mark Samuel – Organizations are only as successful as the teams who move them to success. The difference between being a high-functioning business team and a low-functioning business team is the difference between achieving breakthrough success and producing stagnant results. It’s the difference between experiencing team harmony and getting stuck in interpersonal conflict. It’s …
The Best Virtual Team Building Activities
By Mark Samuel – While many companies are starting to plan their journeys back to the office, many are making coming back to work optional for their employees and some organizations are simply staying virtual. In my 35 years of helping organizations build high-functioning teams, I never once thought virtual team building was possible, let …
Cross-Functional Teams: Challenges & Tips
Cross-functional teams haven’t always been popular, but nowadays we know organizations can’t get breakthrough results without them. When departments operate in functional silos, they simply don’t have the knowledge, awareness, or resources to help the organization move to the next level. An organization that doesn’t have cross-functional teams is like a person whose arms and …
5 Dysfunctions of Cross-Functional Teams
By Mark Samuel – A cross-functional team is any team that includes members of multiple departments.Creating cross-functional teams in your organization can be a great way to reduce breakdowns, improve business execution, and attain breakthrough business results. But you have to be aware of the 5 common dysfunctions of cross-functional teams if you are going …
Tips for Developing a Cross-Functional Team
Companies of all sizes benefit from what successful start-ups already know. Cross-functional teams can be a goldmine of innovative ideas and productive collaboration. Suppose you can minimize the dysfunction of creating teams with employees from different departments and different levels. In that case, you can get a lot done that benefits the whole company and …
What Is A Cross Functional Team
Cross-functional teams (CFTs) are groups of employees from different functional areas within a company or business. Another word for cross-functional is cross-departmental. For example, a CFT could include individuals from marketing, sales, research and development (R&D), engineering, human resources (HR), and more. These teams can serve as an organization’s primary hierarchical structure or as working …
6 Advantages of Cross-Functional Teams
By Mark Samuel – What is a Cross-Functional Team? Business organizations are riddled with silos. A silo is when functional teams or departments don’t communicate or work with each other, and act as solo entities within the same organization. This causes many problems within the organization such as communication and execution breakdowns, wasted resources, and …
How to Set Up a Cross-Functional Team in 5 Steps
By Mark Samuel – Business teams are always looking to be better together, to be more productive, to get along better, and to achieve successful business results. One of our favorite ways to get breakthrough business results quickly and easily is to form a cross-functional team of managers. This article will give you a step …
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Team Agreements: What You Need to Know
By Mark Samuel – What are team agreements? Team agreements are agreements that are co-created by the members of a team about how to behave, communicate, and work together on a team. Related Article: The Missing Link for Business and Culture Transformation Business teams are often treated like a group of individuals working together, rather …
How Agile Can Transform Itself For The New Decade
By Mark Samuel & Stacia Topping – Agile has proven to be such a valuable process and tool for technology companies that organizations in other industries have adopted it with success, as well. But our world continues to change, causing the business environment to speed up, become even more integrative and require an accelerated need …
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Business Teams 101: Definition, Building, & Execution
By Mark Samuel – What is a business team? A business team is any team that works together for a common goal, typically for a business organization or company.Business teams aren’t any different from other teams like sports teams or musical groups. When looking at Organizational Development around how to effectively operate as a business …
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Common Knowledge About High Performance — Debunked!
By Mark Samuel – In the field of organizational consulting, there are certain principles about achieving high performance that are considered common knowledge. I received my master’s degree in organizational development, and when I began my career as a consultant, I applied the principles and practices I’d learned in university and from mentors exactly as …
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Team Relationships: How to Understand & Improve Them
By Mark Samuel – We’ve all experienced team relationship breakdowns, especially at work in our teams and organizations. We try to address those team relationship breakdowns by implementing teamwork and trust-building exercises, style assessments and communication processes. But so often, those relationship breakdowns don’t experience any permanent shift. Why is that? This article will help …
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Removing the Confusion About Business Priorities
By Mark Samuel – The word “priority” can often be a point of confusion for leaders and employees at all levels within an organization. Some of the common comments I hear include “We have too many priorities,” “We make everything a priority,” “We decide on a few priorities, but don’t stick to them” and “We …
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Team Habits: The Missing Link for Business Transformation
By Mark Samuel – Most team consultants talk focus on individual habits, styles of communication, and personal accountability, but hardly anyone ever mentions team habits. “I felt like I was banging my head against a wall the last two years. We’ve implemented team building programs, Agile processes, and competency-based training, but while a few pockets …
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Is Tracking Performance Getting You Results?
By Mark Samuel A few years back, a client of mine implemented a Performance Management System to assist managers in coaching their direct reports. The company spent nearly one year customizing the system to work for their organization, culture and business. That is a lot of time, money, and resources spent on developing their employees. …
Guiding Your Team Through Inevitable Setbacks
By Mark Samuel It’s when we are sick and tired of being stuck that we are the most motivated to make a change. This could be getting more organized, losing weight, or improving our communication skills. We create set of habits to support ourselves in making the change and we have a ton of willpower …
Are Old Habits Holding Your Company Back?
by Mark Samuel In the middle of a recent coaching session, a CEO complained: “I shared our new vision and mindset change in an All-Hands Meeting. People were inspired, asked questions about it, and committed to act! But it’s been 3 months and I haven’t seen any significant change!” It’s easy to blame people for …
Tips on Developing a Collaborative Mindset
In business and life, there are often moments when one simply can’t seem to find a way forward. A collaborative mindset is a critical part of the path ahead. We are used to changing individual habits like eating, exercising or being more organized, but we are not prepared to change habits as a group. These “team habits” …
Is Your Team Stuck? Three things you haven’t tried yet.
by Mark Samuel When your team just isn’t stepping up to produce the results you desperately need, months can be wasted in assessment to determine the cause and how to change it. Often even more time is then invested in strategic planning sessions, project plans, KPIs, balanced scorecards, and training — all in an effort …
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