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Tag: management (Page 3 of 4)

10 Tips for Better Teamwork

06/02/2019 /

Effective teamwork is both profoundly simple and difficult at the same time. It’s not always the task at hand that challenges teams in their progress, it’s the relationships and the little things that happen day-to-day. According to this article, teams have basic needs that must be acknowledged and fulfilled if you expect your teams to experience their greatest success.

The following  ten tips describe the environment that must occur within the team for successful teamwork to take place:

  1. The team understands the goals and is committed to attaining them. This clear direction and agreement on mission and purpose is essential for effective teamwork.
  2. Team members trust each other. The team creates an environment in which people are comfortable taking reasonable risks in communicating, advocating positions, and taking action.
  3. Communication is open, honest, and respectful. People feel free to express their thoughts, opinions, and potential solutions to problems.
  4. Team members have a strong sense of belonging to the group. They experience a deep commitment to the group’s decisions and actions.
  5. Team members are viewed as unique people with irreplaceable experiences, points of view, knowledge, and opinions to contribute.
  6. Creativity, innovation, and different viewpoints are expected and encouraged.
  7. The team is able to constantly examine itself and continuously improve its processes, practices, and the interaction of team members. The team openly discusses team norms and what may be hindering its ability to move forward and progress in areas of effort, talent, and strategy.
  8. The team has agreed upon procedures for diagnosing, analyzing, and resolving teamwork problems and conflicts. The team does not support member personality conflicts and clashes nor do team members pick sides in a disagreement.
  9. Participative leadership is practiced in leading meetings, assigning tasks, recording decisions and commitments, assessing progress, holding team members accountable, and providing direction for the team.
  10. Members of the team make high quality decisions together and have the support and commitment of the group to carry out the decisions made.

 

Imagine: Flickr – U.S. Pacific Fleet  (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Managing Workplace Diversities

21/11/2018 /

Workplace diversities like gender, age, social class, physical disability are always a crucial and diffuclt element for managers and human resources officers.

“Managing Workplace Diversity – a contemporary context” is a practical freebook that covers key issues in workplace diversity including contemporary concepts like the migrant worker, transgender issues, AIDS, etc. as a means of broadening our knowledge in this dynamic field of management.

Diversity.jpg

Image: Flickr – George A. Spiva Center for the Arts (CC BY 2.0)

 

How to raise successful kids (or business colleagues) without over-parenting

31/10/2018 /

Though this TED talk suggestion may seem rather strange for a blog focusing on leadership and business skills development, it actually gives us an important message about how to accompany other along a path of growth by adopting an encouraging rather than punitive attitude. Julie Lythcott- Haims reminds parents (but leaders and managers too!) that there are many ways of reprimanding a person and some are much more fruitful than others in actually determining a change in the other person’s behavior.

Another important message is this: managers should always be on the lookout for situations they can learn from. In fact, some of the most important lessons often spring from situations which have nothing to do with the business environment!

 

 

Dealing with Difficult People

21/02/2018 /

If you can’t afford to ignore  the annoying and troublesome people in your life, then Dealing with Difficult People is the book for you. Learning the 21 ‘tried and true’ tools will be useful in many situations. For example, to be a viable and successful business person, you have to be able to deal with all sorts of people.

To discover more here is the full book.

Image source: Flickr – tprussman (CC BY-NC 2.0) 

Event planning tips

14/02/2018 /

Are you afraid of organizing an event? In this article, the author asks 5 professionals, specialised in event planning for their tips.

 

1. Listen To Your Audience–Right From the Beginning.

The last thing you want is to throw a conference, then find that there’s no interest in the topic. The best way to keep in touch with your audience? Survey them at the beginning stages of the event.

2. Let Your Fans Spread the Message

It’s easy to set your fans up to tell the right story. You just need to call upon them, keep them accountable, and make it easy for them to share.

Make sure it’s easy for everyone to use the same hashtag. Pre-fill your event’s Twitter hashtag into your mobile event app. This way anyone tweeting with the app will automatically use the same hashtag.

3. Ask your “event insiders” to live-blog

When executed well, live-blogging is a great way to get people excited about the sessions and attractions at your event. Keep posts short and media-rich, and aggregate blog posts into an RSS feed.

4. Send push messages for immediate attendee updates

In addition to a headset for communicating with your internal team, use your mobile event app’s push message capability to send urgent updates to all attendees.

5. Use a feedback tool to stay on track

And if someone has feedback they want to share? Provide an official place for event feedback in real-time.

6. Keep things in perspective

Even when things get hectic, you have to trust your team. You’ve all worked to get to there together!

Image source: Flickr – Shadowgate (CC BY 2.0)

5 Mistakes good leaders should avoid

20/09/2016 /

Steve Cartwright, in this article on Web Design, points out the five common mistakes made by leaders:

  1. Focusing on tasks rather than reaching the ultimate goal. You can’t lead others if you don’t know what you’re striving for, so be sure you’re clear and focused on the vision rather than the small tasks of the job.
  2. Checking up on employees rather than engaging them. Make it a point to get to know your team members: it’s important to get your vision across, and you can’t do that if you merely check in once in a while.
  3. Don’t stick to your own leadership style. You can learn from other leaders in history and in your business, but don’t mimic them when it comes to your leadership style: find your own way and stick to it!
  4. Resist change. Many leaders tend to do what they’ve always done in terms of leading. If you want your business or team to prosper and grow, take some time to expose yourself to new ideas.
  5. Hire people too fast to fill a slot. True leaders take their time when hiring and make sure they can complete the work and grow along with the company or team.

Leadership

Image source: Flickr – nist6dh  (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Getting around the limits of empathy

14/07/2016 /

Although empathy is considered to be at the heart of several crucial sectors – from product development to customer service, including also leadership, failing to recognise its limits can impair individual and organisational performance.

As Adam Waytz brilliantly describes in its article there are three main problems you can run into when dealing with empathy, and luckily three valid recommendations for getting around them.

Problem #1: It’s exhausting

Being an heavy-duty cognitive task empathy depletes our mental resources.

Several studies on health and human professionals, as well as those who work for charities and other non profits, show that empathy is exhausting, in any role in which it’s a primary aspect of the job.

Problem #2: It’s zero-sum

Empathy doesn’t just drain energy and cognitive resources – it also depletes itself.

The more empathy we devote to one aspect of our life, for example our job, the less is left for others (family for instance). Moreover the zero-sum problem leads to another type of trade off: empathy toward insiders – people in our team or organisation- can limit our capacity to empathise with people outside our circles.

Problem #3: It can erode ethics

Empathy can cause lapses in ethical judgment. Extreme loyalty toward insiders may push us to take their interests as our own and to overlook transgressions, or even worse to behave badly ourselves. With actions like cheating or stealing to benefit those in the immediate circle people put empathy for a few before justice for all.

So how to rein in a land of excessive empathy?

As a manager there are a number of things you can do to mitigate these problems.

1. Split up the work

2. Make it less of a sacrifice

3. Give people breaks

Despite its limitations, empathy is essential at work.Understanding and responding to the needs, interests and desires of human beings involves some of the hardest work of all. Managers shouldlook for ways to give employees breaks,Encourage individuals to take time to focus on their interests alone. When people feel restored they’re better able to perform the demanding task of listening to what others need.

Empathy

Image source: Flickr – AleKsa MX (CC-BY 2.0)

 

 

Image source: https://locallocale.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/empathy-schmimpathy-why-bother-nathan-mctague-empathy-parenting-advice/

Eighty/Twenty

16/07/2015 /

80 and 20. For those who are familiar with management consulting techniques, these two figures may say a lot:

  • 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its customers;
  • 80% of a company’s complaints come from 20% of its customers;
  • 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of the time its staff spend;
  • 80% of a company’s sales come from 20% of its products;
  • 80% of a company’s sales are made by 20% of its sales staff.

The 80/20 rule basically states that, in many circumstances, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

This rule is formally known as the Pareto principle, after the Italian economist who, in the last decade of 19th century, observed that 20% of Italian population owned 80% of the land in the country.

Many business consultants built upon this intuition solid analysis tools in order to improve companies’ results, in terms of revenues, sales, profits.

But some of them, as Richard Koch, went further, trying to convince us that the 80/20 rule, like few more simple principles similar to that, “work extremely well for making money, for your career, and for your happiness and value to others.”

80-20

Image: Flickr – Keith Chu – 80/20: it’s a rule (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Being a Better Leader: Four Exercises

02/06/2015 /

According to Roxi Bahar Hewertson, every choice you make in your daily worklife has a ripple effect throughout your team and organization. Here are four exercises that will make you a better leader, by ensuring that these effects have intended consequences. Such exercises concern the following issues:

  1. Start with you;
  2. Practice listening;
  3. Team dynamics;
  4. Culture is like air.

To discover more, visit here!

800px-Ripple_effect_on_water

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons – Serge Bacioiu (CC – BY – 2.0)

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