Over the past 10 years in the field of human and organizational development, the approach to team building has moved from problem solving and conflict management to helping work groups and organizations build a foundation of trust, cooperation, and mutual support. Focusing on collaboration rather than resolving conflict, Building Better Teams: 70 Tools and Techniques for Strengthening Performance Within and Across Teams offers a fresh approach to team building. It provides proven tools for the most common needs of teams, including establishing trust, building consensus, managing change, working virtually and across boundaries, and dealing with setbacks.
"If you need the best practices and ideas for superior team building - but don't have the time to find them - this book is for you. Here are 10 inspiring and useful perspectives, all in one place"--Back cover.
This book stitches together a complete design journey from beginning to end in a way that you’ve likely never seen before, guiding readers (you) step-by-step in a practical way from the initial spark of an idea all the way to scaling it into a better business. Design a Better Business includes a comprehensive set of tools (over 20 total!) and skills that will help you harness opportunity from uncertainty by building the right team(s) and balancing your point of view against new findings from the outside world. This book also features over 50 case studies and real life examples from large corporations such as ING Bank, Audi, Autodesk, and Toyota Financial Services, to small startups, incubators, and social impact organizations, providing a behind the scenes look at the best practices and pitfalls to avoid. Also included are personal insights from thought leaders such as Steve Blank on innovation, Alex Osterwalder on business models, Nancy Duarte on storytelling, and Rob Fitzpatrick on questioning, among others.
Lead each person on your team up the learning curve. What's the secret to having an engaged and productive team? It's having a plan for developing all employees--no matter where they are on their personal learning curves. Better morale and higher performance happen through learning, argues Whitney Johnson. In over twenty years of coaching, investing, and consulting, Johnson has seen that employees need continuous learning and fresh challenges to stay motivated. The best bosses know this, and they know how to make it happen by thoughtfully designing people’s jobs around the skills they have today as well as the skills they'll need to be even more valuable tomorrow. That's how entire organizations stay competitive in an unpredictable, rapidly changing business environment. In this book, Johnson explains how to become one of those bosses and how to build your A-team by: Identifying what your employees already know and what they need to learn Designing their jobs to maximize engagement and learning Applying a seven-step process for leading each person up their learning curve We all want opportunities to learn, experiment, and grow in our jobs. When our bosses work with us to help us leap to new challenges, the result is a team that knows how to thrive, no matter what the future holds.
A brand new collection of powerful insights into business team-building… 4 pioneering books, now in a convenient e-format, at a great price! 4 remarkable eBooks help you create and inspire great teams to unprecedented levels of performance Your success is crucially dependent on your ability to create, lead, and inspire teams to achieve extraordinary results. The comprehensive resources in this 4 eBook package will help you do precisely that. In Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success, the legendary Ken Blanchard ("The One Minute Manager") and former Southwest Airlines CEO Colleen Barrett help you achieve breakthrough performance by leading with love. They explain what "love" really means in the organizational context, why leading with love is not "soft" management, how to handle inappropriate behavior, how to make "servant leadership" work, and how to sustain leadership with love. Next, in 17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent: Why Engaged Employees Are Your Greatest Sustainable Advantage, David Russo top workforce optimization consultant David Russo identifies exactly what great organizations do differently when it comes to managing people. Russo distills these differences into actionable rules covering everything from resourcing and compensation to leadership development, risk-taking to change management. You'll learn how to build genuine esprit de corps in any environment, ensuring that your employees' efforts, minds, and hearts stay focused on your mission, and stay committed to results and competitive advantage. In Managing People and Performance: Fast Track to Success, David Ross reveals how to get the best possible performance out of every member of your team, whatever their personality or skill set. Using Ross's breakthrough tools, techniques, checklists, and guidance, you'll master indispensable skills for creating, developing, and managing high performance teams--and, at the same time, accelerating your own career development. Finally, in How to Get What You Want...Without Having to Ask, international best-selling author Richard Templar brings his inimitable blend of originality, imagination, wisdom, and straight talk to the challenges of negotiation, persuasion, and influence. The world-renowned author of best-sellers like The Rules of Life, Templar offers up 100 clever, simple, pain-free ways to get people throughout your organization to happily say "yes" to you, and smooth your team's path to success! From world-renowned leaders and performance experts Ken Blanchard, Colleen Barrett, David Russo, David Ross, and Richard Templar
From the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams, a practical guide for leaders looking to make their organizations more interconnected and unified in the midst of sudden change. Too often, companies end up with teams stuck in their own silos, pursuing goals and metrics in isolation. Their traditional autocratic structures create stability, scalability, and predictability -- but in a world that demands rapid adaptation to a new reality, this traditional model simply doesn’t work. In Team of Teams, retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal and former Navy SEAL Chris Fussell made the case for a new organizational model combining the agility, adaptability, and cohesion of a small team with the power and resources of a giant organization. Now, in One Mission, Fussell channels all his experiences, both military and corporate, into powerful strategies for unifying isolated and distrustful teams. This practical guide will help leaders in any field implement the Team of Teams approach to tear down their silos improve collaboration, and avoid turf wars. By committing to one higher mission, organizations develop an overall capability that far exceeds the sum of their parts. From Silicon Valley software giant Intuit to a government agency on the plains of Oklahoma, organizations have used Fussell’s methods to unite their people around a single compelling vision, resulting in superior performance. One Mission will help you follow their example to a more agile and resilient future.
"A vivid, compelling and highly readable insight into building world-leading teams and organizations." - Dr Catherine Raines, Chief Executive, UK Trade & Investment The Business of Excellence offers a unique and compelling perspective on the drivers of excellence in teams and organizations. The author, Justin Hughes, brings an unusual mix of experience and insight, having worked as a management consultant to some of the world's most successful organizations, in addition to having served for 12 years as a military fighter pilot, where he became Executive Officer on the RAF Red Arrows. The challenges of high performance and leadership are explored in depth, and are illustrated with insights, interviews and case studies from the military, sporting and corporate worlds. The material includes a proprietary performance model that can be applied to a wide spectrum of organizations, focusing on: · People: the primacy of attitude over skills · Capability: building alignment before setting people free · Delivery: a process to close the gap between desired and actual outcomes · Learning: how to accelerate performance in real time · Leadership: exhibiting a set of behaviours such that others choose to follow · Risk: avoiding the victory of compliance over outcomes. In The Business of Excellence, Justin deconstructs the drivers of high performance with a rare clarity, insight and accessibility, to illustrate and explain tangible tools and methods, all of which can be applied by readers in their own teams and organizations.
Unleash innovation potential with creative, serious play Building a Better Business Using the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Method delivers a creative approach to enhancing innovation and improving business performance, with the focus on unleashing play. Written by the two original Master Trainers for LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP), the book outlines how LSP can develop teams, people, relationships and business . Based on the merging of play with organizational development, systems thinking and strategy development, LSP can foster improved meetings, faster innovation processes, team growth, and better communication. The belief that everyone intends to "do good" and has the potential to do it is at the heart of LSP. The method nurtures the idea that everyone in an organization can contribute to discussions and outcomes. Building with LEGO bricks is a type of creative play that triggers a different kind of thought process, unleashing imagination and potential that is frequently untapped by the logical mind. The book explains this hands-on, minds-on approach, and discusses the theory as well as the practical implementation of LSP. Topics include: Observation of internal and external interaction dynamics Fostering a free and honest exchange of opinions Suspending hierarchy for better, more effective communication Facilitating change by encouraging exploration The LEGO SERIOUS PLAY method is employed by start-ups and multinational corporations alike to maximize synergy among teams and throughout organizations. For leaders looking to boost effectiveness and see better results, Building a Better Business Using the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Method is a comprehensive introduction to this creative management technique.
Great teams don’t just happen. How often have you sat in team meetings complaining to yourself, “Why does it take forever for this group to make a simple decision? What are we even trying to achieve?” As a team leader, you have the power to improve things. It’s up to you to get people to work well together and produce results. Written by team expert Mary Shapiro, the HBR Guide to Leading Teams will help you avoid the pitfalls you’ve experienced in the past by focusing on the often-neglected people side of teams. With practical exercises, guidelines for structured team conversations, and step-by-step advice, this guide will help you: Pick the right team members Set clear, smart goals Foster camaraderie and cooperation Hold people accountable Address and correct bad behavior Keep your team focused and motivated
Most teams underperform. Yours can beat the odds. If you read nothing else on building better teams, read these 10 articles. We’ve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you assemble and steer teams that get results. Leading experts such as Jon Katzenbach, Teresa Amabile, and Tamara Erickson provide the insights and advice you need to: Boost team performance through mutual accountability Motivate large, diverse groups to tackle complex projects Increase your teams’ emotional intelligence Prevent decision deadlock Extract results from a bunch of touchy superstars Fight constructively with top-management colleagues
