Poor Communication costs you, both professionally and personally. One source estimates employee misunderstandings cost organizations $37 billion per year. “Misunderstandings” are defined as: actions or errors of omission by employees who were misinformed (or misunderstood) company policies, business processes, job functions or a combination of all three. Additionally, communication barriers resulting in productivity losses had a cumulative cost of $26,041 per year per worker. Leaders must make a conscious decision to improve. Eighty five percent of our success in life […]
As a leader of a group, a team or an organization you must remember to focus on the impact you have on the audience. When you are coaching or evaluating your own interactions, do not focus on how you delivered the message (what you said or what you did), focus on the reaction you see. That is the true test of a productive session. Regardless of the vehicle used to coach (a story, an assignment, a book to read), […]
When we think of efficiency, we tend to picture something mechanical like a train–a well-tuned system that chugs along, each part working in unison, creating a beast of unusual power. And it is true that trains are very efficient, which is why when we create teams in our companies, we try to craft the most efficient possible group. Lots of time and money is spent figuring out which teams would have the smoothest dynamic. It turns out, though, that in […]
Company culture seems to be a widely circulated term, but one that few people clearly understand. Culture is the ‘good stuff” in an organization that makes individuals work harder, more enthusiastically, with honest direct communication, which translates into peak performance. It may be defined as: a company’s values, practices, beliefs, language or simply the way of thinking that exists in an organization. If you want to be a truly successful and innovative company, culture must be a daily focus in […]
Dean Smith began his long and historic coaching career at the University of North Carolina in 1961, at the tender age of 30, but already with a long history of compassion and inclusion behind him. As a high schooler in rural Kansas in the late 1940s, he pushed his school to integrate the basketball program, which at the time had separate teams for black and white players. He kept that activism up at UNC, where he signed the first African-American […]
WellStar Health System in Atlanta, Georgia is a great place to work. And it’s not just the not-for-profit health group’s 14,000 employees who think so. For two years in a row, Fortune has named the company one of the 100 best companies to work for. WellStar’s executives credit their focus on work-life balance for the award. They know that to build a strong team, executives must support employees both at work and at home. In conjunction with this, the company […]
Have you ever been a part of a TEAM, a true team? Whether it is in your profession, an athletic team, or in your community, chances are that if you have, you remember the experience fondly and it is or was one of the most rewarding in your life. What is the definition of a team? In the book, “The Wisdom of Teams”, it was defined as “a small number of people with complimentary skills who are committed to a […]
We believe that hiring “A” players is the most important job within an organization and it can be one of the biggest challenges. To get and keep your top performers, you have to engage both their current skill sets and their future aspirations while demonstrating a culture of trust and respect. Rather than trying to identify what the exact answer is for you in your industry, we like to use ‘The Rule of 44.’ In four areas, have four different […]
The Golden Rule is something I hear about quite often: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I grew up with that rule, but over the years, it has created much frustration on my part in terms of getting leaders to lead and teams to be teams in a powerful manner. It has also limited the ability and results of leaders and teams in molding culture. It has bogged down processes and allowed strategic plans to […]