Archive for the ‘Team Building’ Category
Monday, May 7th, 2012
How do you know when it is time to bring on a business partner? I just brought on an executive leadership partner, and am so excited for the great opportunities this will bring to AGI. My new partner, Lou Partenza, brings amazing business expertise, new business development experience, and will help me expand the capabilities of AGI and take it to the next level.
Until Lou came aboard, I was spread pretty thin, which was preventing me from growing the business the way I envisioned. We all have our capacity limits and I was reaching mine. I have an amazing team, but I was carrying too much of the load myself. The sheer volume of accounts and potential new business demanded I bring another executive-level person into the fold. I brought in Lou as my partner, and by doing so I immediately increased my company’s capacity.
Define Business Partner Needs
Besides increasing capacity, there are other very good reasons to consider bringing in a partner. Maybe you want to enter a new geographic market or start selling in a new community with a culture and/or language barrier. The long-term goals of your company should weigh heavily in your decision to bring in a partner and the type of partner you seek.
The first step is to decide what role you want the partner to play. Do you need someone for an executive leadership role for business guidance, or do you need someone with a total focus on new business development?
Based on the desired role, define the skill set for this person. The search process should be similar to bringing on a full-time employee. You want to look for a partner that has a set of complementary skills—skills that you may not have but really need in your business. The difference between a partner and employee is your partner will be someone who will assist you in making key decisions for the company, so they should be someone with whom you really mesh. You need to be able to bounce ideas around and have equal amounts of commitment to growing the company.
Define Success
Once you identify your potential partner, be careful to clearly define the role that you want them to fill, and define success metrics and expectations around that role.
Finding the right partner isn’t something that happens overnight. My advice is to start looking passively now. Even if you aren’t sure you need a partner (or a full-time employee for that matter) you should be in a constant state of recruitment. Great talent—especially at the partner level—is not easy to find. Talk, ask around and always be looking for great talent for key areas of your company.
Don’t Rush Into a Business Partnership
One caution: don’t make the mistake of bringing on a business partner too soon. Make sure you are eating well before you bring someone in. It takes energy and money to bring someone in as a partner. It’s important to be able to recognize where you are in your company’s evolution and know that you are financially stable before you commit to that extra executive salary.
Howard Shore is an executive leadership coach who works with companies that need leadership development and business management coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides strategic planning and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about executive leadership coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:Activate Group Inc, adding a Business Partner, Business Coach, business expertise, business management coaching, Business Partner, Coaching in Miami, decision to bring in a partner, Define Business Partner Needs, Executive Coaching, executive leadership coach, executive-level person, growing your business, how you know when to add a Business Partner, Howard Shore, leadership development, New Business, new business development experience
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Monday, April 16th, 2012
How are your business results this year? Are you achieving your goals or falling short? If you aren’t 100 percent satisfied with your team’s performance so far this year, it is time to think about how to build a high performance team.
Our last event was a resounding success. The sales force development workshop in March attracted around 80 C-level leaders. In a concentrated three-hour workshop, we explored how to develop a high-performance sales team through the right sales strategy. We covered:
- Why strategy is so important to the sales organization
- What processes and systems are crucial to success
- How their company compares to other well-run sales organizations
- Which areas of their sales force management are falling short
- 9 reasons why sales people fail to perform to their potential
- Secrets to strengthening their sales recruiting process
These seminars work! One of the attendees, Ron Callis, CEO of Firefly, said he had been studying TopGrading for a number of years but couldn’t get his arms around how to implement it. He shared his recent success with applying the concepts that were shared in a previous AGI seminar, which helped his organization gain more time, better candidates, and quick and successful ramp-up to success.
Our next business seminar, Building and Leading High Performance Teams, will be delivered as a convenient webinar on May 10, from 12pm to 1:30 EST.
In it, we will learn:
- How high performance teams work
- How to develop a high performance team
- How to recognize and understand the processes that enable high performance team formation and development
Hurry because space is limited and our last webinar filled up quickly!
ADD TO CALENDAR
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Friday, March 9th, 2012
Do you have a Jeremy Lin on your team? You might. You may think you understand the potential of every person on your team but the truth is, you could have unbelievable, untapped talent sitting “on the bench” just waiting to be discovered by you—or your competitor. As company leadership we must think like championship coaches and learn to recognize and develop game-changing talent.
Jeremy Lin had been passed over, cut and underutilized his entire career. Yet, he quietly kept practicing and getting better. When the NBA lockout was going on, he used that time to practice harder and get better. When the season started, they kept him on the bench, and he kept practicing and getting better. And when they had no one else to put in, they put in Jeremy…and he blew everyone away. But what if he never had the chance to play? He would have been one of the best talents in the NBA, gone to waste.
So how do you identify your hidden Jeremy Lin? And when you find raw talent on your team, how do you develop it?
1. Use Talent Assessment Tools
Having great talent on your team starts with the hiring process, and that process should start with using assessment tools early in the candidate screening process. Talent assessment tools are keys to understanding the natural talents of your candidates. You can also use them post-hire to identify employees’ hidden qualities and talents that may have gone unnoticed. Every person has natural abilities—skills that cannot be taught—and areas that they have the capacity to develop. Things like strategic thinking, vision and data analysis capabilities cannot be taught but are an enormous asset to the team. Folks with these abilities should be coached and put into a leadership development track that builds on those talents. Assessment tools like the OMG Assessment and TopGrading are extremely effective in discovering these traits.
2. Ask the Right Interview Questions
Again, having great talent means finding great talent during the hiring process. After you have the results of your assessment tools and begin to understand what the natural talents of the candidates are, you need to make sure your hiring managers are asking the right questions to identify the people who are best suited for the team and the company’s strategy. As experienced leadership development coaches, we recommend asking the following about the candidate’s key past job experiences:
- What were you hired to do?
- What were your accomplishments?
- What were your low points?
- Tell me about your team…
- Who was your boss and what would they say about you?
- What were they like to work with?
- When I talk to him/her what will they say were your greatest strengths and your areas for improvement back then?
- Why did you leave?
- What are your future goals?
3. Manage by Walking Around
Are you really noticing people for who they are or are you judging them with personal bias? The goal of executive leadership should be to capture all the positive energy that occurs when someone is working at high levels of performance. When employees are in the right role for their talents, performing work that is satisfying, they are happy and energetic, and it’s infectious. Learn to spot this energy, develop it and use it to motivate others. People who are challenged with tasks they enjoy breed positivity.
So how do you encourage this energy?
4. Assign Special Projects
As you are walking around and noticing your energetic employees, ask them questions and try to get a sense of what they want and love to do. Then give them opportunities to excel at those things. All leaders, from executives to managers, need to do this.
Jeremy’s special project was to play point guard when there wasn’t anyone else to jump in. He excelled and he became the “A” player that changed the team.
Howard Shore is an executive leadership coach who works with companies that need leadership development and business management coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides strategic planning and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about executive leadership development coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:"A" players, Activate Group Inc, Assessment Tools, Assign Special Projects, candidate screening process, change the team, changing talent, coaching, Executive Coach, Howard Shore, Jeremy Lin, leadership development coach, leadership development coaches, NBA, NBA lockout, OMG Assessment, potential of every person on your team, Talent assessment tools, team, Topgrading, your competitor
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Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
In his book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Pat Lencioni identified team behaviors that reduce positive results in an organization. In my opinion, this book is a must-read for all managers and C-level leaders.
As the company leader, you are the core of your team. Your primary responsibility is to motivate and use the team to create customer loyalty; deliver products and services; execute the company strategy and anything else required to achieve goals. Some teams are big, and some employees may have to play on more than one team. This is where problems could arise.
Lencioni identified the most common problems that arise in teams and how to overcome them. I’m summarizing here, but seriously recommend reading the whole book. It’s a great read and worth every penny.
Absence of Trust
Absence of trust is the hardest dysfunction to overcome and it can be a killer. In some teams, too much time, energy and good ideas are wasted trying to protect reputation. Employees are reluctant to ask for help and to offer assistance to others, causing lower morale and unwanted turnover. As a leader, you can prevent this dysfunction by encouraging open dialogue in meetings. Then, work with your managers to identify situations where employees demonstrate lack of trust and bring it out in the open through discussions that focus on the strength of each team member, and address behaviors that lead to mistrust.
Fear of Conflict
If you’ve overcome the absence of trust dysfunction, your team is now mentally prepared to engage in passionate discussion without the fear of judgment. They know that while their idea may not be accepted, at least it will be heard. What is important here is to focus on discussion and resolving issues quickly without resorting to personal attacks. That being said, healthy conflict saves time and results in better decisions. Practice restraint and allow conflicts to resolve naturally. But as the company leader you must set the expectation that personal attacks will not be tolerated. Wipe out this dysfunction by looking for passive-aggressive behavior behind the scenes or back-channel attacks and calling it out.
Lack of Commitment
Is commitment lacking in your organization? It may have resulted from a lack of healthy debate in meetings, which led to false consensus and no buy-in. Productive conflict taps into everyone’s perspectives, which allows everyone to confidently buy in and commit to decisions. Build commitment in your company by demonstrating decisiveness, and communicating awareness and acceptance of the fact that some decisions may turn out wrong. Then, cascade messaging to key people in your organization to support follow-through on decisions and ensure that everyone is aligned.
Avoidance of Accountability
Accountability is a team effort. Team members need to hold each other accountable when behaviors and actions do not support team goals. Peer pressure is the most effective means of producing performance. Foster accountability by creating clear standards with defined indicators that enable each team member to know that they are doing their part. The more detailed the action plans and the more specific the performance metrics are, the easier it will be to hold people accountable. However, there should be an external fail-safe measure in place so that the team cannot run too far off course.
Inattention to Results
Sometimes ego and self-preservation get in the way of company goals, and that results in inattention to results. If teammates are not being held accountable for their contributions to the collective results, they will likely look to their own personal interests. You can avoid this trap by having good measures in place that align an individual’s incentives with that of their team. Set the tone to focus on results and make sure your conversations with individuals are consistent with focusing on organizational results and not encouraging selfish behaviors.
You can significantly increase your team results by improving their performance by nipping these dysfunctions in the bud.
What other dysfunctions would you add to Lencioni’s list?
Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:5 Dysfunctions of a Team, Absence of trust, Accountability is a team effort, achieve goals, Activate Group Inc, Avoidance of Accountability, Business Coach, business growth expert, coaching, company goals, company leader, create customer loyalty, Executive Coach, Fear of conflict, Five Dysfunctions of A Team, healthy debate in meetings, Howard Shore, inattention to results, individual’s incentives, Is commitment lacking in your organization?, lack of commitment, Pat Lencioni
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Friday, October 21st, 2011
STOP…wasting money on team-building exercises and retreats that, in the end, fail to bring about the desired results anyway. A significant reason that team-building initiatives fail is that too much emphasis is placed on the misconception that team-building should be fun. The purpose of team-building is to improve the performance of a work group, thereby creating better outcomes. This requires change, and for most people change is not fun … it is hard work. Team-building can be fun… if the members of the work group enjoy the learning process and relish the opportunities that change will bring.
If you want to improve teamwork and performance in your organization you have to look at the four core elements to driving team performance: relationships, goals, roles, and rules. All four of these elements must be executed well for the organization to flourish.
Relationships
Ironically, improving relationships is probably the last area you should focus on. Yes, the area that most leaders spend most of their time addressing is usually the symptom, not the problem. Almost every organization that has team-building issues will find their root of their problems in goals, roles, and rules. In my experience, when we address goals, roles, and/or rules, many of the relationship problems disappear.
Goals
The first step toward achieving success as a team is to state your goals properly. You know your goal is well stated when anyone who reads it knows exactly what you are trying to accomplish and in what time frame. The better a person states the goal, the easier it is to create the action plan. An acronym commonly used for stating a goal properly is SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistically High, and Time-based).
Roles
In order for a team to function properly it is important that every member of the team understands specifically the actions and/or activities assigned to them. This is not as simple as some make it out to be, which is why this is usually an issue for team. There are two different types of roles: task and maintenance. The “task” roles relate to driving the desired outcome of a team. The “maintenance” roles relate to managing team processes and relationships among people on the team.
Rules
Rules are a very important component of teamwork. This is one of those areas many leaders, particularly in entrepreneurial and family-owned businesses have the biggest concern with. Everyone is fine with rules as long as they apply to others. You cannot have one set of rules for some people and another set for others.
Contact us if you need team-building ideas.
Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.
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Tags:acronym commonly used for stating a goal properly is SMART, Activate Group Inc, Attainable, Executive Coach, goals, Howard Shore, improving relationships, Measurable, need team-building ideas, Realistically High, Specific, success as a team, Team Building, team-building exercises, Time-based, wasting money on team-building exercises and retreats, when we address goals, work group
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Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
Not many of us look forward to meetings. Whether you have them weekly, monthly, or quarterly, they are bound to be accompanied by groans and complaints. This is a problem. These negative responses towards team meetings may be because performance and contribution are down. Your meetings are lacking substance and people are no longer interested in what the team leader has to say. Is this because the team leader is no longer taking into account what the team has to offer?
It is often said that if everyone agrees than someone is not needed. This may be true, but the real issue may be that the team dynamics in the organization have been broken. There are many leadership missteps that may be killing and destroying teamwork and cause conflict avoidance. Here are a few examples of when a leader can destroy the team.
- Stopped being curious and really does not listen to people when issues are raised in meetings.
- Intimidating or threatening so subordinates have fear of reprisal so they do not want to speak up.
- History of judging people in the room (and voicing those judgments) when opinions differ from theirs or are not strong and thus people do not want to be vulnerable.
- Appears to only be self- interested.
- Tendency to interrupt other team members before their idea may be completed.
- Makes personal attacks when they are not getting their way.
There are times in our lives when we must revert back to that old childhood adage of “play nice with others”. These team meetings are essential to the core of your company. Meetings give us the opportunity to not only remain up to date on the progress of the business, but to view the progress of those responsible for it. Inhibiting ideas and squelching brain-storming will cause a fall in production from the employees and result in an eventual loss in profit. If everyone is not weighing in and openly debating and disagreeing on important ideas at your meetings, look for passive-aggressive behavior behind the scenes or back-channel attacks. What organizations find is that healthy conflict saves them a lot of time and leads to better decisions. The role of the leader is to practice restraint and to allow for conflict and resolution to occur naturally.
Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.
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Tags:Activate Group Inc, business growth expert, coaching, Executive Coach, Executive Coaching, Howard Shore, improving motivation, issues are raised in meetings, Lead Your Team Meetings, leadership missteps, role of the leader, self- interested, Team Building, team leader, team meetings
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Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
By Howard Shore
A great way to tell whether you have a strong team is by the amount of regular, healthy conflicts that occur in meetings when decisions are being made and if decisions are really being made at all. It is often said that if everyone agrees than someone is not needed. This may be true but the real issue may be that the team dynamics in the organization has been broken. This breakage may be causing key people that can be contributing to stop contributing.
There are many leadership missteps that may be killing and destroying teamwork and cause conflict avoidance. Here are a few examples of when a leader can destroy the team.
- Stopped being curious and really does not listen to people when issues are raised in meetings.
- Intimidating or threatening so subordinates have fear of reprisal so they do not want to speak up.
- History of judging people in the room (and voicing those judgments) when opinions differ from theirs or are not strong and thus people do not want to be vulnerable.
- Appears to only be self interested.
- Tendency to interrupt other team members before their idea may be completed.
- Makes personal attacks when they are not getting their way.
According to Pat Lencioni’s book Five Dysfunction of Team, “fear of conflict” is one of the five dysfunctions that are critical to teamwork. The leader has to make sure that this behavior is not tolerated, and that topics focus on the issues that need to be resolved. If everyone is not weighing in and openly debating and disagreeing on important ideas at your meetings, look for passive-aggressive behavior behind the scenes or back-channel attacks. What organizations find is that healthy conflict saves them a lot of time and leads to better decisions. The role of the leader is to practice restraint and to allow for conflict and resolution to occur naturally.
Howard Shore is a business growth expert that works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com .
To learn about and sign up to attend our upcoming events please visit: http://www.activategroupinc.com/events/
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Tags:Activate Group Inc, Business Coach, C-level learning events, conflict avoidance, destroying teamwork, Executive Coach, Executive learning events, Five Dysfunction of Team, healthy conflicts, Howard Shore, improving motivation, issues raised in meetings, passive-aggressive behavior, Pat Lencioni’s, whether you have a strong team
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Thursday, March 10th, 2011
By Howard Shore
Does your organization, project, or next big deal depend on teamwork? Well, how strong is the trust within your team? Trust is essential to maximizing results.
Imagine that you are playing basketball. You are in the fourth quarter with 30 seconds left on the clock, and you are down one point. It is critical that you can count on the other members of the team. Imagine a team where you can count on any player’s ability to make that final shot versus another team where you do not have confidence in anyone to make the final shot. And if you need to stop the opponent from scoring before you get the chance to take that final shot, you must be able to depend on your team to play tough defense and get the ball back. What if you felt like someone on the team would not pull their weight?
This is essentially what goes on in the workplace every day. If trust-building is not dealt with, you cannot maximize the performance of your organization. “Trust” starts with the premise that one’s peers’ intentions are good, and that there is no reason to be careful around group members. Once trust has been broken, its absence is hard to overcome.
In most teams, too much time and energy – and too many good ideas – are wasted trying to protect one’s reputation by managing behaviors, comments, and interactions because of a lack of trust that was created in previous interactions. People are reluctant to ask for help and to offer assistance to others, causing lower morale and unwanted turnover.
In addition, absence of trust in others causes people to create poor work behaviors. Instead of addressing the trust issue, they choose to do things themselves instead of delegating. Or, when others display a behavior they do not like or seem to not be delivering on promises, they take work away instead of addressing the issue at hand. Worse, they may even set lower goals so that they know they can achieve them without the assistance of others.
To address this lack of trust on a team, a leader must demonstrate vulnerability first, and make sure they are authentic and use good timing when doing so. Leaders must encourage open dialogue in meetings, look for situations where people engage in behavior that demonstrates lack of trust, and bring it out in the open. They need to have everyone openly discuss the strength each team member brings to the team. They also need to describe the behaviors that lead them to be distrustful and get them to address those behaviors. No one, including the CEO, is immune from this exercise. One bad apple will spoil the batch.
Howard Shore is a business growth expert that works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com .
To learn about and sign up to attend our upcoming events please visit: http://www.activategroupinc.com/events/
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Tags:Absence of trust, Activate Group Inc, addressing the trust issue, Business Coach, business growth expert, Business Success, C-level events, Executive Coach, good ideas, Howard Shore, lack of trust on a team, leader, Learning Events, maximize the performance of your organization, Maximizing Results, playing basketball, poor work behaviors, set goals, setting goals, team work, trust team, trust within your team, trust-building, unwanted turnover
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Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
By Howard Shore
In today’s business environment it is rare to find a product or service that is truly unique. Even if a company can develop a way to deliver its product or service that differentiates it from the competition, most of the time there is no legal means to prevent others from copying the method, and the advantage goes away quickly. So, the only two ways to truly differentiate your business from your competition is through your people and your company’s culture.
I want to talk about people because so many leaders give this topic lip service but do little to master the issue of building an outstanding team from top to bottom.
Most leaders say they only want to hire top people. They say they will not accept mediocrity on their team. They say they have pride in the people who work for them. How do I know this is merely lip service? I see these signs present in their companies:
- People doing the work of others because those others do not do their job well.
- Positions created to fit an existing employee instead of finding the right employee to fit a position created to fit the company’s strategy.
- Management tolerating the same mistake by an individual over and over again.
- Constant complaints by co-workers about a particular employee?
- People waiting around to be told what to do rather than figuring it out themselves.
- Little innovation in each position.
- High turnover in certain key positions.
- Higher overall turnover than one’s best-in-class competitors.
- Management spending more time “doing” instead of coaching, mentoring, recruiting, and holding people accountable.
- Little or no turnover in the company – an employee’s job is theirs forever no matter how they perform.
These problems result in lost revenue, increased costs, and lower margins. Many times leaders are under the misconception that they do not have a choice, that this is the only way they can do business. Ironically, they find it more comfortable to deal with the issues I’ve described and their consequences than to learn how to build the right organizational structure, define positions better, and be smarter about hiring. By taking the time up front to do it right, they would grow faster, have more time, reduce costs, and expand margins. Instead, they choose what is comfortable.
Howard Shore is a business growth expert that works with companies and people that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com , or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com.
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Thursday, October 7th, 2010
In Cindy Krischer Goodman’s article “Culture change: Just do it” (Miami Herald, 10/6/2010), there are two examples of successful cultural transformations in progress. If you missed the article, it was about how Barbara Simmons, CEO of Plantation General Hospital, has rallied her employees’ customer service and job satisfaction and the efforts of Kim Cripe, CEO of Children’s Hospital of Orange County to increase the quality of service at her institution.
In both cases, the CEOs realized the need to make changes to their corporate culture in order to improve outcomes. Most companies want to change outcomes but are not really committed to doing what it takes. They usually change some policies and procedures and throw in a training course. While these steps are valid parts of the journey, the real issues usually are cultural, stemming from the top and cascading down. They are flawed leadership and management philosophies and are hidden weaknesses that prevent organizations from getting what they need. Until the CEO takes responsibility and makes personal changes, there will be no sustainable improvements in the rest of the organization.
Goodman’s article pointed to three important factors. First, for cultural transformation to take hold, an organization has to be ready to make a 2-to 3-year commitment. Employees will likely push back, expecting yet another “program of the month” that will fade shortly after it’s announced, and, because change is never comfortable, will try to make things stay the same. Second, it is essential to create a vision to rally everyone around and to clarify the non-negotiable core values that will be expected from everyone. You then have to train everyone on what behaviors demonstrate those values and institutionalize them. Lastly, the CEO (most importantly) and top leaders must put themselves out there as the catalysts for changes. They have to be out there every day as the catalyst for change. You cannot outsource or delegate this to a consultant, trainer, coach, or subordinate.
Howard Shore is a business growth expert that works with companies and people that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com .
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Tags:Activate Group, Barbara Simmons, business growth expert, catalysts for changes, Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Cindy Krischer Goodman, corporate culture, Culture change: Just do it, Customer Service, Howard Shore, improve outcomes, Inc., job satisfaction, Miami Herald, successful cultural transformations
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