Management Blog

Empowering Your Team - Top 10 Tips

This is an example of the valuable information you can find on our development academy site. Click here for more info.

Top Ten Tips for Empowering Your Team

1. Share the Big Picture
   Making sure that people know and have access to the organization's overall mission, vision, and strategic plans helps them to feel that they are part of, and contributing to, something bigger than themselves and their individual job  - “we are all in this together”.
2. Show You Value People
   Your facial expression, body language, and the words you use continually express what you are thinking and feeling about the people who report to you. Work to show that you value people for who they are rather than just for what they do. This shows a deeper level of appreciation and helps to strengthen relationships.
3. Share Goals and Direction
   Share the most important goals and direction for your team. Ensure that everyone involved has a clear picture of what success will look like.  People who have a clear picture of the desired end point are much more likely to get there -  “start with the end in mind”.
4. Look To Expand The Decisions Members of Your Team Make
   This is probably the crux of empowerment – the more decisions your team can make without you the more empowered the team is but enable success by making certain that you have given people (or made sure that they have access to) all of the information they need to make thoughtful and effective decisions.
5. Fundamentally Trust People
   Trust the intentions of people to do the right thing, make the right decision, and make choices that, while maybe not exactly what you would decide, still work.
6. Delegate Authority and Impact Opportunities, Not Just More Work
   Don't just delegate the drudge work; delegate some of the fun and important stuff, too. Delegate the important meetings, the committee memberships that influence product development and decision making, and the projects that people and customers notice. The employee will grow and develop new skills and you can concentrate on your unique contribution.
7. Provide Frequent Constructive Feedback
   Provide frequent feedback so that people know how they are doing. Sometimes, the purpose of feedback is reward and recognition. People deserve your constructive feedback, too, so they can continue to develop their knowledge and skills.
8. Solve Problems: Don't Pinpoint Problem People
   When things go wrong it is so easy to look around for someone to blame, however a more constructive and empowering approach is to communally identify what in the overall work system allowed the error to occur.
9. Use A Coaching Approach…Listen and Ask Questions
   Provide a space in which people will communicate by listening to them and asking them questions. Give guidance by asking questions, not by telling people what to do. People generally know the right answers if they have the opportunity to produce them. When an employee brings you a problem to solve, ask, "what do you think you should do to solve this problem?" Or, ask, "what action steps do you recommend?" Employees can demonstrate what they know and grow in the process.
10. Help Employees Feel Rewarded and Recognized for Empowered Behaviour
    Because if employees feel under-compensated, under-titled for the responsibilities they take on, under-noticed, under-praised, and under-appreciated, their performance probably won’t be great. They won’t feel motivated to go that extra mile!

For more information on empowerment visit our website.

 

The Proven Effectiveness of Team Development

There has been and ongoing debate as to whether it is possible to measure the quantitative effect of management development courses. The existing evidence is somewhat contradictory and therefore Call of the Wild, as with all our courses, sought to find out if such a measure can be made in order to provide reassurance for the client that they would get a real rather than perceived return on investment.

The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in work performance after completion of a typical three-day outdoor management development (OMD) session organised by “Call of the Wild”.  This session involved participants working as members of a team in a variety of outdoor challenges, in order to develop skills that would prove valuable if they could be transferred back to the workplace environment.

Click here for more information on the  team development research

Difficulties in Building Successful Teams - Different Geographic Sites

I think everyone would agree that building successful teams is much easier when the individuals work in the same building or area. The more dispersed geographically the more difficult the task is. This is for a number of reasons:-

1. People feel isolated

2. There's a lack of team identity

3. A "them and us" attitude can develop

4. Communication is often slow

5. The chance for shared experiences is lacking

How do you combat these problems? You look at ways of building a one team ethos. Read this article for more ideas on building a one team ethos.

Team Building Outdoors - Why it Works

 

 

Team building at its best results in synergy i.e. 1+ 1 = 3 the sum is greater than the individual parts. The power of outdoor-based team building lies in the experiential nature of the learning that takes place. Well-designed and well-facilitated outdoor leadership and team building tasks have several advantages over traditional classroom based methods, a list of these advantages would include:-

 

• Environment-research has shown that  taking individuals into an unusual and stimulating environment can have a noticeable effect on the desire to develop new team skills.
• The tasks have real outcomes-Well designed challenging programmes will include tasks that have real and measurable outcomes for both individuals and teams; this is an ideal metaphor for the workplace.
• Teams are able to make mistakes and learn from them with no consequence on the business.

 When developing our team building courses Call of the Wild aim to give teams the chance to enhance several aspects of team working.

 

• Communication
• Trust
• Open and frank discussion
• Goal setting
• Problem solving
• Listening skills

 

It is through the development and implementation of these skills that teams can begin to work to their potential.

 

Critical to the success of our any team building programme is the amount of time allowed for feedback and facilitation, as it is only on reflection that learning can be identified and consolidated.

 

Team building is important to most organisations and should be seen as an essential component of any training plan.

 

Fior more information on team building programmes  and outdoor team building visit our website.

Building a Team - Top Tips To Get Effective New Team Members

Making sure the new team member feels included and understands the role

1. Set a culture of rich pictures in well-crafted stories. 

When the shape of a team changes, nothing progresses a smooth transition like a good story.  Stories can break ice among strangers to create shared experience and camaraderie.  Stories can set the stage for working creatively, welcoming differences, and they can help people relax, share talents and keep calm when times get tough.  So make it a way of life to offer rich pictures in well-crafted stories. 

A rich picture is one with lots of detail.  It’s as if you were looking closely and then showing others what’s in your mind’s eye.  Use words about colour, shape, size, the mood and feel of rooms, interplay and relationships.   Here’s an example.

What a first day for Steve.  Poor guy came in drenched after running from the parking lot under the kind of sudden darkness and torrential downpour we tend to get at this time of the year. But, since it happens a lot, Ben brought out the big towel and a steaming cup of fresh coffee and Barbara told Steve her own first-day story, which everyone found pretty funny, and Steve agreed that after all he’d look back on this morning with a big smile.

The richer your pictures, the more powerful and lasting the shared experience listeners take away.  So don’t wait until you have a new team member to start your work with rich pictures.  You’ll want to be ready when someone new comes onboard. 

2. Advertise the new role as a team / context story.  

The more you can control the responses to an ad, the more cost effective the ad and the more likely you are to draw qualified candidates who will integrate quickly.  Making the ad a bit of a story can communicate both the job and the culture.  Here’s an example.

We started as two in 1987 and now we’re eleven, looking to make an even dozen who delight our clients with the most attractive interactive customer-friendly sites on the web and enjoy the pleasure of collaborative working in a warm, friendly environment.  Home working a definite possibility some of the time.

Tell stories at interview, too.  They offer a portrait of the cast, a twilight experience of the culture and some sense of the unwritten behaviour codes.

3. Before the new team member comes on board, let everyone know the new person’s credentials and at least one story about her or his prior work. 

Even if the organisation is small and typically you all speak face-to-face, it is useful to send an email, perhaps including the new team member’s CV/Resume but certainly including an introduction that is a rich picture.  Your aim is bringing the new person to life as an individual with a personality and a style, a sense of humour -- someone who will be a little bit familiar to everyone even before they all meet.

Day One

4. Wherever possible, bring the whole team together, whether remotely or in person. 

Use VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) that allows everyone to see one another using web cam.  Welcome the new team member with some company stories that leave no doubt about what it’s like to work on the team - roses and warts and all.  In fact, if it’s convenient, you might start at hiring time by involving some team members who’ll tell a story or two.

5. Promote collaboration by setting respect, compassion, openness, and integrity as the ground rules, and tell stories to show why.

Since there’s no time for politics, you’ll need to set the stage for collaboration. You want the new team member to feel collaborative and believe that the others will welcome, accept and trust  her or him.  Tell a rich-picture story about collaborating at difficult times.  State openly that you live by respect, compassion, openness and integrity, and then tell a short story about each one.

6. Ask some team members to tell a story about what the team will accomplish. 

Remind that every team member is a key protagonist in the story of how the whole team will meet the challenge.  Some people find it useful to compile the ideas, pictures, key players and anticipated futures into a document or even a drawing.  It may seem a bit naff or artificial.  However, the result is that the new person quickly knows the others as individuals, and the getting-to-know-you time goes down by orders of magnitude.

Nuts and bolts

7. Assign a mentor who’s a natural storyteller and who is primed to tell company stories with a point. 

You need a short learning curve, so either take the role yourself or identify one team member as mentor who tells stories that make points fast. If the team is ongoing, make the rotating mentor role part of what’s great about being on this team.

8. Regularly ask about how things are going. 

You want to pick up issues before they become problems.  You want to know whether a new person is adjusting quickly and whether any of the team see issues with the new person’s manner or work product.  Telling a story about something difficult is easier than making a complaint.  Use stories about how things are going for you to model the kind of stories you wish people to tell.

9. If you find there are issues or problems, bring the team together and tell the story of the issue or problem as you understand it. 

Include in the story some ways you see to resolve the problem. Your aim is to depersonalise the problem.  Here’s a snippet of an example.

You know, every time someone forgets that deadlines are responsibilities, not goals, customers call to remind us about how it is to deliver on time.  Remember?  ABC said they would buy from us even though our prices are higher because they can count on us to have the goods when they need them.

You want to present mistakes and problems as opportunities for development, and team members as sources of support for one another and ideas for solutions.  Telling a story with a problem and a good solution leading to a positive ending inspires people to work together with that story form as a model.

Inclusion complete

10. Is the new team member trusting, decisive, committed, self-confident and perhaps ready to mentor someone new? Look for clues in the stories people tell. 

The more people are trusting, decisive, committed and self-confident, the more productive they will be.  The more you foster these qualities right from the start, the more quickly a new team member will work hard, learn from mistakes, develop a loyalty to the team and a determination to do a quality job.

You might tell a story on the first day illustrating how trust, decisiveness, commitment and self-confidence can quickly see the new team member a happy, productive team colleague.

These tips reflect ideas in a paper by Dr. Madelyn Blair & Robert Clymire at Pelerei, Inc. a Washington DC area storytelling and consultancy firm.    pelerei@mac.com  . The article is taken from our Development Academy. For more information on team development and team building training visit our website.

Team Building Events - Top 10 Tips for Organising a Succesful Team Event

1. Set objectives

Ask yourself why are we doing this? What do we want to get out of  this course or event. Is it just a  fun event, or do we you have specific issues to address such as improving communication. Is it just a getting to know you exercise?

2. Know and Agree Your Budget

There is nothing worse than going out to find an event supplier without knowing what you have to spend. Especially if you have to report back to the purse string holder after you have spent a lot of wasted time discussing programmes in detail with a prospective supplier.

3.Think about who you will taking

The objectives above will to a large degree help with this. It is unusual to have the same age range in your team who all like the same things. It is more likely you will have a wide age range who will have different ideas and fears about a team building course or event.

4. Get Buy in or Ownership

Keep them in the loop. Explain to them the reasons behind the event to allay their fears. Many people fear such events as they believe they are being put under the microscope and assessed by the  powers that be within the Company. Explain this is not the case and spell out the objectives.

5. Decide on the nature of the event

Low impact high impact, outdoors, indoors ? Again this will be determined by the objectives you set, the issues to be addressed and the individuals involved. You may wish to put people under pressure, you may want to put them in an unfamiliar environment. Alternatively you may just want some light indoor challenges.

6. Distance with overnight

Is this event being to be held locally or further afield. Are you going to stay overnight or just go for the day. This again will be determined by 1 and 2 above in particular. Budget will obviously play a big part in this decision. In our experience an overnight stay can add more value to an event as people can learn more about themselves and their colleagues with this itinerary rather than a single day close to home.

7. Venue  and geographic area of search

Once you have decided on an overnight stay or a local event you can work out relative travel times to  a mutually convenient part of the UK or Europe. This will be dictated by the choice of event to a degree eg outdoor wilderness, seaside etc. remember to factor in travel costs and decide on whether the travel time to and from an event is work or own time.

Team Building Skills - 10 Reasons Why Teams Fail

These are 10 reasons put forward by Don Carew and Eunice Parisi-Carew as set out in Ken Blanchard's book "Leading at a Higher level."

1. Lack of sufficient charter that defines the team's purpose and how it will work together to achieve this purpose;

2. Inability to decide what cosntitutes the work for which they are interdependent and mutually accountable

3. Lack of mutual accountability;

4. Lack of resources to do the job, including time;

5. Lack of effective leadership and lack of shared leadership;

6. Lack of norms that foster creativity and excellence;

7. Lack of planning;

8. Lack of management support;

9. Inability to deal with conflict;

10. Lack of training and group skills.

There are others which could be included such as lack of role models, no perfomance meassurement, too many teams, not teams but groups, emphasis on individuals and a culture of competition will erode the ability of teams to perform.

 

For more information on high performing teams , team building training  and leadership training courses visit Call of the Wild's website.

How to Create Exceptional Team Spirit - Top Tips

1. Convey a Positive Attitude

Your attitude toward the project conveys your confidence and commitment to the team.  Express enthusiasm for the job.  Encourage members to approach the job as a challenge rather than a problem.  Help team members understand they have your support.  Remind the team of the larger issues they are addressing and reaffirm your confidence that you will all feel proud of the results. 

2. Put the Goal in Context

Demonstrate how the team’s work relates to the organization as a whole.  Show links between and among the organization’s business areas.  Before going forward, take time to discuss opportunities for the members of the team to develop and shine.   If the team members are in the early stages of their careers, confirm that each feels the project is worthwhile and sees a chance to contribute.

3. Set High Standards

People are happier and more energetic when they have a clear picture of expectations.  Be explicit about the quality of work you expect, and about how you will measure that quality.  Provide formats for work.  Create detailed meeting agendas that will require a high degree of preparation.  Establish a work ethic early on that will require a strong commitment to the project.  Team members will feel you are treating everyone fairly if you expect everyone to maintain the same standard. Challenge team members to produce their best work.  Building confidence in their work, and trusting the work of others are essential to creating a strong sense of team spirit. 

4. Encourage Interaction

Provide opportunities for team members to work together.  Combine jobs to create cross-functional synergies. Allow the unique skills, talents and knowledge of each individual to complement those of the other members.  Give team members a chance to build working relationships.  These relationships are essential elements in a cohesive, spirited, motivated group. When possible, give team members latitude in their approach to problem solving.  Provide an opportunity for creative investigation and analysis.  Encourage people to share perspectives and ways ahead. This will help to create a sense of unified purpose and potential success.

 

For more information on creating high performing teams and team building training visit our website

Effective Team Building - Work Out Who is Who in Your Work Team

Who is in your work team?

We tend to think that our team members are those in the same department or all those who report to the same boss. Actually, most of us find that we work more with people from other departments than we do with people in our own. See if this is true for you.

The Star Exercise shows just how complex everyone's job is and how many people we deal with daily. It shows how often we are internal customers ourselves and how often colleagues are internal customers of ours.

Instructions

1. Take a sheet of paper and draw a circle in the centre. Enter your name in the circle. This is the centre of the star.
2. Add circles around your circle containing the people, departments or areas who you deal with in doing your job. Most of these will be outside of your department.
3. Draw an arrow between each of these circles and your circle.
   • If you receive things (instructions, materials, information, paperwork and so on) from this person or department, draw the arrow with the tip towards your self.
   • It you give things (instructions, materials, information, paperwork and so on) to this person or department, draw the arrow with the tip towards that person.
4. Select the two or three relationships that are most important to your job. Highlight these with bolder lines

Team Work Building - How to Encourage a One Team Ethos

Team work building and Top Tips for Getting a One Team Spirit within a Large Business.

1. Organisational Objectives

Is everyone aware of the business objectives of the Company, its mission statement and how the individuals contribute towards meeting these objectives.

2. Keep everyone in the loop as to what’s happening within the Company.

Online Social Networking
One step on from the intranet which can be passive is setting up a Company blog. Employees can then post their own articles, podcasts, video profiles of staff in their office – the options are limitless.

3. Intranet

Keep everyone in the loop as to what’s happening within the Company.

4. Keep Them Involved

All training should be offered across the Company if practical. Vary the venues so employees get familiar with the offices and staff.  Invite staff to visit head office and regional offices, hold familiarisation days. Even induction days could be held at different venues and not just at head office or the office they are to work at. This links back to the first point above.

5. Visit

Make regular visits to the other offices

6. Listen to What People are Saying

They are the experts in that part of the country and know their customers.

7. Same Terms and Conditions

If you don’t then it will instil a them and us attitude.

8. Team Development and Social Events

Wherever possible these should not be exclusive to Head Office. Invite everyone as this is a  great way for staff to get to know each other.

9. Communication

Keep everyone informed of what’s happening and that means everyone. Not just the chosen few at Head Office.

For more details take a look at our website and at our team building training page