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Teams
America, Where’s Your Team Spirit?
I’ve been a sports fan my entire life, but recently my interest has waned. The money is really getting out of hand, and even in team sports the focus has shifted from collective vision and shared leadership to individual star power and inflated egos. The magic moments so celebrated in the best sports movies seem,…
Psychological Safety
“Psychological safety” is a term used to describe the safety in groups which allows the openness for sharing ideas and surfacing conflict. Although there is no OSHA-like agency that governs and monitors the safety of our emotions and feelings in the workplace, both contemporary leaders and generations of past leaders have valued psychological safety in…
The Bright Side of Moving
At the end of June, Greg and I moved out of the home we’ve shared for 16 years. Prior to the move, it was seven months of sorting, organizing, disposing, donating, packing. I rank moving right up there with the night before a colonoscopy, putting on a bathing suit for the first time of the…
Mind Reader
Whenever our family watches a superhero movie, inevitably we ask each other, “What would you want your superpower to be?” My wife always chooses the classic ability to fly. My son invariably requests multiple powers so he doesn’t have to choose, while my answer has always been the ability to read the bad guy’s mind….
Stop Growing and Developing
While I am a huge fan of the book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck,” I think author Mark Manson got one element wrong. He claims there is a natural “Law” called the “Backwards Law,” which suggests the human desire to improve and want for more is counterintuitive and that the opposite is…
Pomodoro Productivity
I recently read a magazine article on something called the Pomodoro Method, a technique that helps with focusing on single tasks for shorter periods of time, resulting in improved productivity. It is a very simple technique that utilizes a timer and 25 minutes of focus, followed by a short break. A little back story: Recently…
What’s kicking your ass?
If you feel like your team is dysfunctional, uncooperative, toxic or broken, you’re not alone. Most corporate teams are not really teams; they are groups of people who show up Monday through Friday, work 8-9 hours a day, claim to be working towards a common goal, and say they want the same thing for the…
There is no ‘I’ in ‘Team’
We’ve all heard the axiom before. Usually it’s in the context of reminding someone they are too focused on their own interests and not focused enough on the team. Sometimes it’s declared as a preemptive strike against the fear of lack of compliance to the agenda or team’s mission. Sometimes, it’s ensuring that the “cowboys”…
Right People – Right Seats, pt II
In my last blog post, I revisited the analogy shared by Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great,” where he suggests that we need to get the right people on the right seats of the bus. In this blog post, I will focus on the book “Get a Grip,” by Gino Wickman and Mike…
Right People – Right Seats, pt 1
Right People – Right Seats: This post is the first of two related posts. Here we’ll take on the “Right People” and in my next post, we’ll discuss “The Right Seats.” Part I: Right People The title of this post may remind you of one of the more widely known analogies of getting the right…