When I was an undergraduate, artificial intelligence seemed to be a discipline long on promise and short on results. (Everthing was about “10 years away”, even 20 years later, it was still “10 years away”.) Therefore, I was pleasantly impressed when IBM’s Watson machine won an episode of the US quiz show Jeopardy in early…
Category Archives: team
5 Essential Steps for Getting Your Team Moving
There is a lot of good literature on how to develop a high-performing team, e.g. The Wisdom of Teams by J.R. Katzenbach and Gordon K. Smith. In this article I focus on five essential steps you need to take to ensure your team is moving in the direction you want it to. Step 1 Make…
How much initiative do you want?
When discussing with clients how to lead subordinates, one question that arises often is, how much initiative should my people show? In their classic HBR article, Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? Oncken and Wass lay out a five-level scale of managerial initiative (1 – 5 in the figure). My clients’ staff are more resourceful…
Further thoughts on “Burning MBTI Questions Answered”
Sandy McMullen has started a series “Burning MBTI Questions Answered” on her Personality Plus in Business blog. The current question deals with a conflict between two team members. Given the level of information in the question, Sandy does a great job of offering a framework in which to think about a solution, rather than trying…
Give the other person a chance to do some of the work
In a recent leadership team-building workshop, we practiced giving clean feedback. Later, Jane asked me during a break for a chat about how to deal with another participant who had blocked her attempt at giving feedback on a behaviour causing a lot of friction between them – during shift handover, Mary reacted to improvement suggestions…
Why You Need The No Asshole Rule
McKinsey offers an excerpt entitled Building The Civilized Workplace (you need to register in order to read this) from Robert Sutton’s new book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace And Surviving One That Isn’t. The article includes a checklist for the most common behaviours as well as what jerks can cost your business,…
Developing goals together
A commonly held misconception is that the boss must set the goals. It is helpful is they know in which direction they want to move their team. However, involving their staff in developing the goal, helps to bring a different spirit into the organisation. Through this involvement in formulating the goal, staff are prepared to…
