Great tips on effective communication from leader, Joe Torre! Consider applying to your business team.
Baseball manager Joe Torre has led far more diverse and ego-driven teams than
most of us ever will. Yet, Torre’s teams have won repeatedly, thanks to these four
“rules of straight communication” he has developed over the years:
1. Remember that every player has a special need for one of these things:
motivation, reassurance or technical help. Determine what that need is and
meet it.
2. Deliver tightly focused, positive messages, such as a quick word of praise
for a good play. Simple words of appreciation are more powerful
motivators than many leaders expect.
3. Work hard to establish rapport with team members from backgrounds that
are different from your own. It does take extra work, but the results can be
extraordinary.
4. Let team members know that you accept the full range of their emotions,
including fear and uncertainty. Unless people admit their fear, they will
never be able to confront obstacles and grow.
—Adapted from Joe Torre’s Ground Rules for Winners, Joe Torre and Henry
Dreher, Hyperion. From 2008 National Institute of Business "leadership Tips"
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Get Your Complex Team to Collaborate
3 ways to build collaboration within complex teams:
1. Train employees in the right skills. Most people don't collaborate by nature. They need the right skills: appreciating others, engaging in purposeful conversations, and productively solving conflicts.
2. Help employees get to know each other. People who know each other socially are more likely to collaborate. Invest time in networking and social events to build a sense of community.
3. Model collaborative behavior. Employees emulate what they see at the top. Leaders should visibly work together and even fill in for each other on occasion.
Edited from Harvard Business Review on "Building Better Teams"
For more information on build high performing teams and getting the BEST results from your team, contact Donna King at Results Coaching 913-745-5499. Visit www.resultscoaching.us
1. Train employees in the right skills. Most people don't collaborate by nature. They need the right skills: appreciating others, engaging in purposeful conversations, and productively solving conflicts.
2. Help employees get to know each other. People who know each other socially are more likely to collaborate. Invest time in networking and social events to build a sense of community.
3. Model collaborative behavior. Employees emulate what they see at the top. Leaders should visibly work together and even fill in for each other on occasion.
Edited from Harvard Business Review on "Building Better Teams"
For more information on build high performing teams and getting the BEST results from your team, contact Donna King at Results Coaching 913-745-5499. Visit www.resultscoaching.us
Friday, September 9, 2011
You Can't Dictate Culture — but You Can Influence It
Most senior managers struggle with culture because it's so difficult to define. Even less tangible than a "soft" concept, culture is more like a cloud: You know it's there, but it's nearly impossible to grasp. as "the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group." But how do you come to an agreement on those "shared" attitudes, values, goals, and practices? And even if you do, how do you get hundreds (or thousands) of people to think and act in the way you agreed upon?
The answer is that you don't. Even after thousands of years of civilization, leaders still have trouble getting everyone to follow any basic precepts of behavior (think the Ten Commandments). In other words, culture is not a "goal" to be mandated, but the outcome of a collective set of behaviors.
Leaders however can influence those behaviors in several ways — and by so doing shape the culture of their firms. Whether you are a CEO or a department manager, here are three steps that you can take:
Convey your vision of a winning culture. If you want to be more than just the caretaker of an existing culture, then you need to define your aspirations. What will be different, and how will it make a difference for the success of your organization? More specifically what are the most critical behaviors that will characterize the culture you want to create? For example, Jack Welch used the mantra of "speed, simplicity, and self-confidence" as the beacon for his transformation of GE's culture in the 1990's — in stark contrast to the company's analytical, bureaucratic, and hierarchical culture at the time. This aspirational vision sparked dialogue at every level of the company about what people needed to do to make GE successful — and to be personally successful at GE.
Demonstrate how new cultural behaviors can advance the business. Nothing reinforces new behaviors more than success. So once you define these behaviors, work with your team to apply them to a specific project that might need to be accelerated or improved. To do this, challenge your team to achieve a specific stretch goal in a short period of time, while explicitly trying to bring the new culture to life. For example, several years ago a financial institution set out to create a more collaborative, proactive, and externally focused culture. To demonstrate what this meant, one of the trading groups worked with a relationship team to find ways of improving cash flow for a specific client — while keeping the new cultural imperatives in mind. Their success encouraged other groups to try similar experiments, such that the new culture gradually became more of a reality across the company.
Put teeth into the new culture by integrating it into HR processes. People tend to do what's measured and rewarded. So a third step for building a new culture is to use the desired behaviors as criteria for hiring, promoting, rewarding, and developing people. The real turning point for GE's transformation came when Jack Welch publicly announced to his senior managers that he had fired two business leaders for not demonstrating the new behaviors of the company — despite having achieved exceptional financial results. This made it very clear that the culture was not just a soft concept — instead, it had tangible outcomes and consequences.
Shaping a corporate culture is one of the most difficult challenges for a leader. But if you want to get started, following these guidelines will probably be more effective than telling the HR director to go out and "get us one of those."
Excerpt from Ron Ashkenas' article in HBR, June 21, 2011
Visit CreativeCounts or Results Coaching for more information
The answer is that you don't. Even after thousands of years of civilization, leaders still have trouble getting everyone to follow any basic precepts of behavior (think the Ten Commandments). In other words, culture is not a "goal" to be mandated, but the outcome of a collective set of behaviors.
Leaders however can influence those behaviors in several ways — and by so doing shape the culture of their firms. Whether you are a CEO or a department manager, here are three steps that you can take:
Convey your vision of a winning culture. If you want to be more than just the caretaker of an existing culture, then you need to define your aspirations. What will be different, and how will it make a difference for the success of your organization? More specifically what are the most critical behaviors that will characterize the culture you want to create? For example, Jack Welch used the mantra of "speed, simplicity, and self-confidence" as the beacon for his transformation of GE's culture in the 1990's — in stark contrast to the company's analytical, bureaucratic, and hierarchical culture at the time. This aspirational vision sparked dialogue at every level of the company about what people needed to do to make GE successful — and to be personally successful at GE.
Demonstrate how new cultural behaviors can advance the business. Nothing reinforces new behaviors more than success. So once you define these behaviors, work with your team to apply them to a specific project that might need to be accelerated or improved. To do this, challenge your team to achieve a specific stretch goal in a short period of time, while explicitly trying to bring the new culture to life. For example, several years ago a financial institution set out to create a more collaborative, proactive, and externally focused culture. To demonstrate what this meant, one of the trading groups worked with a relationship team to find ways of improving cash flow for a specific client — while keeping the new cultural imperatives in mind. Their success encouraged other groups to try similar experiments, such that the new culture gradually became more of a reality across the company.
Put teeth into the new culture by integrating it into HR processes. People tend to do what's measured and rewarded. So a third step for building a new culture is to use the desired behaviors as criteria for hiring, promoting, rewarding, and developing people. The real turning point for GE's transformation came when Jack Welch publicly announced to his senior managers that he had fired two business leaders for not demonstrating the new behaviors of the company — despite having achieved exceptional financial results. This made it very clear that the culture was not just a soft concept — instead, it had tangible outcomes and consequences.
Shaping a corporate culture is one of the most difficult challenges for a leader. But if you want to get started, following these guidelines will probably be more effective than telling the HR director to go out and "get us one of those."
Excerpt from Ron Ashkenas' article in HBR, June 21, 2011
Visit CreativeCounts or Results Coaching for more information
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