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More companies are now embracing "agile" meetings and daily check-ins to make their teams more productive and efficient. The hard rule? Keep it under five minutes or be ready to be rudely cut off in front of your peers.

While some argue this laser approach to meetings won't get anything accomplished, The Wall Street Journal recently published a story that convincingly declares otherwise.

Time is too precious to waste in high-demand business settings. The old ritual of booking conference rooms and clogging calendars with 30 or 60-minutes of drudgery is being replaced by five-minute huddles where teams cut to the chase and make decisions on the spot.

And once you’ve built it, how to maintain it

Gray skies, chilly temperatures, failed New Year's resolutions: these unfortunate afflictions can all contribute to winter blues. Feeling down? Your team might be, too. But employee happiness and engagement are key to work productivity and success.

Research shows happiness at work makes people 12 percent more productive. And in one Gallup study, highly engaged teams outperformed poorly engaged teams by 22 percent in profitability.

As a leader, that means fighting winter gloom should be a priority.

While larger companies may have the resources for structured employee development programs or more lucrative perks, smaller companies must take a different approach. Here are six low-cost tactics you can implement today to boost motivation and provide a positive work environment in which team members thrive:

The way brainstorms are practiced in most companies today is still almost exactly the same way that was recommended by their inventor, advertising executive Alex Osborn, over 60 years ago. Business and our understanding of how the brain works have both moved on so much in that time, and yet we’re still hanging onto this old technique for so many of our idea-gathering sessions.

Here’s how to rethink your brainstorm so it goes for longer than you're used to, but proves much more productive once it’s over.

Effective ways to build trust within your team. Trust is the primary ingredient of any kind of relationship.

One of the most common questions I get asked by senior managers is “How can we find more innovative people?” I know the type they have in mind — someone energetic and dynamic, full of ideas and able to present them powerfully. It seems like everybody these days is looking for an early version of Steve Jobs.

Yet in researching my book, Mapping Innovation, I found that most great innovators were nothing like the mercurial stereotype. In fact, almost all of them were kind, generous, and interested in what I was doing. Many were soft-spoken and modest. You would notice very few of them in a crowded room.

So the simplest answer is that you need to start by empowering the people already in your organization. But to do that, you need to take responsibility for creating an environment in which your people can thrive. That’s no simple task, and most managers have difficulty with it. Nevertheless, by following a few simple principles you can make a huge difference.

Team brainstorming seems like a good idea--at least, on paper. What usually happens is this: the company is experiencing a tough problem that no single person seems able to solve, so someone decides that more minds means more processing power, and before you know it you're all gathered in the conference room.

One or two people churn out bad idea after bad idea, while everyone else stares at the wall or multitasks. There are no major breakthroughs and most of you are irritated at the waste of time.

Sound familiar? Why is this such a problem?

A new book combines science with management techniques to offer strategies for peak performance.

In the past decade organizations have invested significant resources to try to address the gender gap in senior management. But these efforts aren’t really working. Women account for just 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs and fewer than 15% of corporate executives at top companies worldwide. The only area where women pull ahead of men is in human resources, where they account for 71% of all HR managers.

So much of your job isn’t about hitting goals, but rather about being rooted in reality, constantly striving to bring perspective and empathy to whatever situations you encounter. Sometimes, finding the right words can be the biggest challenge of your day. But other times, you’re overthinking it, and it’s as simple as saying these six tiny sentences.

I recently watched a UK talk show where Tom Hanks and Ron Howard were guests. Howard, director of many of Hanks’s most successful films, was asked what he liked about working with Hanks. His response was that he appreciated two qualities in Hanks—confidence and creativity.

This got me thinking. What makes us want to work with certain people? If we could choose our dream team, what would we look for? It would most likely depend on the task at hand—and, most likely, everyone’s team would be a bit different. That being said, I made a list of what I would look for if I were forming a team.

Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) members are young, innovative business professionals continually finding new ways to be a better leader for their businesses. Ten of them share how you can be different, disruptive, or rebellious as you launch a new team.

 

In the ideal meeting, all attendees participate, contributing diverse points of view and thinking together to reach new insights. But few meetings live up to this ideal, in large part because not everyone is able to effectively contribute. We recently asked employees at a large global bank a question: “When you have a contribution to make in a meeting, how often are you able to do so?” Only 35% said they felt able to make a contribution all the time.

There are three segments of the workforce who are routinely overlooked: introverts, remote workers, and women. As a leader, chances are you’re not actively silencing these voices — it’s more likely that hidden biases at play. Let’s look at these biases and what you can do to mitigate their influence.

The unconscious bias: Smart people think on their feet.

What happens: A program manager calls a meeting to think through a resourcing issue. She summarizes the situation, shares results of a recent staffing analysis, and then tees up the discussion. This works great for extroverted thinkers (those that talk to think). But from the get-go, the introverted thinkers (those who think to talk) are at a disadvantage....