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It happens to high- and low-performing teams alike: The ties that bind everyone together just aren’t as strong as they could be. Maybe you’ve inherited a team that’s always been sluggish and uninspired, or one that’s usually steady, but the trust is eroding under pressure. Or perhaps you’re just trying to take your team to the next level. Whatever the case, every team needs to reflect once in a while on what could be improved. It’s human nature to be conflict-averse, but it’s every manager’s job to bring points of conflict out into the open and move forward together. Unfortunately, most meetings aren’t the best venues for doing that. Typical team meetings focus on planning what’s ahead–an upcoming project, the next quarter’s top goals and metrics, expectations moving forward. But there’s a simple alternative, focused on reviewing the immediate past, that can change how your team works for the better.
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The world's top companies are starting to manage employee energy like a strategic asset. They know that ever-increasingly pace of change requires more and more human energy.Any entrepreneur will tell you that it take a tonne of energy to grow a business. The key is to manage it; sometimes you have to exert energy, other times you need to conserve it to go the distance, and after a sprint you need to replenish it. A group of senior executives from companies like Facebook, Alibaba, IBM and Johnson & Johnson got together to come up with strategies to better manage collective human energy in their companies. Here are their top five hacks to maximise human energy:
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From a wealth of real-world examples such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to a ton of science and expert opinion, there's no shortage of evidence that introverts can make great leaders. But, of course, quieter types can only demonstrate this fact if they decide to step up to the plate and lead. And according to new research, many introverts may be shying away from leadership positions in which they'd actually excel, because of misplaced fears about their potential and capabilities.
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Ask the members of any team if they want to institute better processes, and be prepared for them to roll their eyes. “‘Better processes’ means ‘more bureaucracy,’” someone will mutter. But ask that same team how much they enjoy doing projects the hard way — duplicating efforts, scrambling to meet deadlines when someone drops the ball, or bearing the brunt of customer fury — and you can expect the floodgates to open. Why do people love to hate “process” but rail against disorganization? It is because most people associate processes with checklists, forms, and rules — the overseer breathing down their necks. Not surprisingly, leaders wanting to foster innovation and creativity are reluctant to institute such rigid controls and procedures.
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To effectively lead and motivate employees, you don’t need charisma and a grand vision. Research from Michigan State University (MSU) found that being a successful boss was more about mind over matter. The study, published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, found that a leader’s focus, or mind-set, affects his or her own behavior, which in turn affects employees’ motivation. And the good news is that your mind-set can be changed to produce certain outcomes from workers, from creativity to loss prevention. “Effective leadership may be based in part on a leader’s ability to recognize when a particular mental state is needed in their employees and to adapt their own mental state and their behaviors to elicit that mind-set,” says Brent Scott, MSU professor of management and study coauthor. “Part of the story here is that you don’t have to be Steve Jobs to be an effective leader. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to managing.”
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You don’t need to be told why it matters to be transparent and honest at work–that much is a given. So is the overall usefulness of expressing yourself clearly, confidently, and with as few filler words as possible. But in the effort to do that, many of us fall back on common expressions that might sound totally fine in social situations but can do some quiet damage in the workplace. One of them is “I’m sorry.” Another is “to be honest.” The latter turn of phrase–and versions of it, like “honestly,” “frankly,” “if I can be honest with you,” or “let me be frank”–is easy to resort to when you want to cut through the crap, come clean, or offer your unvarnished opinion. But these expressions also tend to attach themselves to–and subtly encourage–certain messages that are either better left unsaid or ought to be rephrased. Here are times when “to be honest” can make you sound less authoritative around the office.
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Are you one of the never satisfied strivers? The type of person who, despite having some obvious successes in life--a solid career, a modicum of financial security, the respect of your peers--just never feels like you've quite made it? Are you always a little worried you could be accomplishing more? If so, you probably feel kind of crummy sometimes compared to your more easily contented competitors, but according to new research out of Stanford, all your ambition has a serious upside (hat tip to Science of Us for the pointer). Perpetually feeling like you're a bit unsuccessful, it turns out, is a pretty good sign you're going to go on to achieve even greater things.
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You already know the basics of leaving a polished first impression, like dressing well, making eye contact, and having a firm handshake. That's great advice, but it's probably not enough. If you really want to be memorable (for the right reasons), you need to think about what you say and how you say it. Here are a few straightforward pointers that many people miss.
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You’d probably be lying to yourself if you said you’ve never gone into a new job and resolved to outperform your team’s expectations. You have plenty of good ideas and want everyone to know that you’re a genius of sorts. Most of the time, that mind-set’s great for your career—it pushes you to be your best day in and day out. But the problem is that some people think that motivating themselves this way gives them permission to push their teammates around. While your company hired you because you bring something unique to the table, that doesn’t give you license to be condescending about it. So if you want to convince your coworkers that you perform above your pay grade, here are a few mind-sets you should adopt ASAP.
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Good leaders can steer a business through the nine to five, but great leaders can navigate a company into the next generation. While a good leader is content with the status quo, a truly great leader has the ability to innovate and disrupt to ensure organisations stay on the cutting edge. They go above and beyond the duty of a manager to inspire staff and build a motivated workplace. Stepping up from a good to a great leader could make a huge difference to the direction of a business and it's possible with some simple, but effective practices.
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What does it take to be a great leader? In a fascinating series of talks, business leaders, researchers, a famed general, and an orchestra conductor tackle that question from their diverse viewpoints. Some of their answers will surprise you. Here are seven of their best lessons.
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When you think of relaxation, you think of meditating in the morning, or taking a hot bath at night—perhaps a glass of wine is in the picture too. But sometimes, when your day gets crazy stressful, you need something to calm you down right then and there. These simple exercises will do the trick.
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Every team is made up of different personality types, and some demand more time and attention from the leaders who manage them than others. As every team leader knows, there’s no hard and fast management strategy that fits every kind of employee. Short of that, though, there's a rough framework managers can use to decide how to direct their energy toward getting the most out of all the personalities on their teams. Here’s a quick rundown of eight of the most common personality types and how to manage each one.
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Companies want to be profitable and maximize their performance and impact both in the world and within their industry. With that said, accomplishing those feats starts with cultivating a culture to allow those things to happen which starts with a priority on employee well-being. Culture is important -- it affects engagement, mindset, reputation, recruitment of talent, and well being. When looking to cultivate a healthy and high performing culture, start by emphasizing these six points:
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We might spend days, months, or even years trying to figure someone out. Is he who he says he is? Should I trust her? The wheels in our head spin as we think of all the variables and how they'll play out. And still, we keep hearing that we should just listen to our instincts. Complicated questions, simple answer. What should we do, and where did this whole idea of the gut instinct come from, anyway? Intuition isn't some magical, mysterious quality that we carry with us. It actually comes from the knowledge and past experiences that we all carry. Even if we're unable to explain why we feel the way we do, there's a logical explanation behind our gut feelings. Whenever you encounter anything new, the unconscious side of your brain is constantly making assessments. It takes in certain cues, such as a smile or parts of a story, and then matches it with something similar in our database of memories to come up with a conclusion. Meanwhile, our conscious side remains unaware of this rapid process taking place.
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Nearly 70 percent of CEOs now recognize culture as one of the greatest sources of competitive advantage. Whereas company processes, technology, and strategy can be copied, an organization's DNA cannot be reproduced. With this realization, many organizations are turning to cultural change to fuel future growth and performance. Kaiser Associates, a business strategy and consulting firm, defines a high-performing culture as an organization that performs better than its peers in regards to business performance, innovation, employee productivity, and engagement, over a sustained period of time. For now, let's focus on how companies can leverage performance management best practices to build a winning culture.
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Defined hierarchy. Commanding leadership. These corporate ligaments secure firms in the face of threats and unify them against competition. Few beliefs are more widely held in business. The intuition, though, is wrong. “When you look at real organizations, having a clear hierarchy within your firm actually makes people turn on each other when they face an outside threat,” says Lindred Greer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Effective teamwork against threats requires not hierarchy, but egalitarianism; not centralized power, but a culture in which all voices count. Along with Lisanne van Bunderen of the University of Amsterdam and Daan Van Knippenberg of Drexel University, the research team teased out this finding through two complementary studies. In the first study, an experiment, teams of three students developed and pitched a consultancy project to a prospective client. Some of these teams were non-hierarchical, while members of other teams arbitrarily received titles: senior consultant, consultant, junior consultant. Likewise, some teams faced no rivals, while others were told they were competing with a rival firm for clients. The researchers found that the subset of hierarchical teams facing competition with rival firms struggled with infighting while the egalitarian teams cooperated on their work.
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We all know that the work landscape is changing. The jobs that will be in demand are shifting as more are automated by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robots. Teams are becoming more disparate and globalization has added new collaboration challenges. At the same time, more millennials are taking on management roles, and even our work spaces will undergo changes between now and 2025. “Change will be happening so quickly that 50% of the occupations that exist today will not exist 10 years from now. So we’re going to be living in an environment that is extremely adaptable and changing all the time,” says Liz Bentley, the founder of Liz Bentley Associates, a leadership development consulting firm.
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In any fast growing company, it's natural that conflict arises. It holds true at just about any company -- every type, every stage. Doesn't matter what market or size. You'll see it happen most between functional areas. Sometimes marketing and operations will be at odds. Sometimes, it's marketing and sales, or sales and finance. Technology may want to go one direction, marketing another. Finance might lean too conservative. It's why it's super important for your leadership team to have strong interpersonal skills and interactions. You can't rely on hiring great people alone. You also need to set the pace for solid interactions, help create and foster them. Nurture it at every turn. We accomplish it a few ways at my company.
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How you spend your night can have a huge impact on the day that follows. Do you spend your time ruminating over issues? Or maybe you stress over something that didn't quite go right during the day. There's no doubt, how you think affects how you feel. This is particularly important at night as you try to unwind and prepare for rest. This sets you up for sleep which serves many vital purposes. When I look at my clients who achieve the most during their days and are happiest, they are the ones who have a healthy routine at night. They set themselves up for success the following day by thinking and acting in a particular way.
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The internet is chock full of daily habits that will help your routine, but what about bad habits? Because habits are so ingrained into our daily routines, we often don't notice how harmful ones sneak in and ruin our success. Try eliminating the following habits from your life and see how your success in business and in life improve:
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Most business leaders can agree that teamwork is important for getting anything done. But the agreement usually stops there. In many cases, the company's immediate needs take over, and there's seldom enough time for deep thought about how to actually develop an effective team. Groups of people are often thrown together and told to get to work. And while many organizations do well when it comes to a team's technical aspects, like bringing in people with the right expertise and establishing deadlines, the less quantifiable, "people-building" element tends to get lost. With a little effort and foresight, though, managers and team leaders can avoid some of the most common problems plaguing teams.
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Eureka moments are rare. The backstory behind great ideas is often more complex and winding than having an apple fall on your head. But the best part is that creative ideas aren’t reserved for a special group of people; they can come to anyone if you change your mind-set. "The fact is, almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work," Teresa Amabile, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, told Fast Company in 2004. "Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells." Whether they’re coming up with an innovative new product to launch, finding a solution to a universal problem, or picking a cool new place to grab lunch, people who consistently have great ideas have formed habits that help them think. Here are eight simple things those "creative geniuses" do that you can do, too:
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. When Google acquired the online photo editor Picnik in 2010, CMO Lisa Conquergood and the rest of the Picnik team went, too. They worked on the site until Google narrowed its focus and closed Picnik in 2012. Still believing in the concept, the original Picnik team left Google and founded the photo-editing site PicMonkey. However, during her two years' tenure at Google, Conquergood got a chance to experience the productivity and workflow in one of the world’s most successful companies.
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Every team is made up of different personality types, and some demand more time and attention from the leaders who manage them than others. As every team leader knows, there’s no hard and fast management strategy that fits every kind of employee. Short of that, though, there's a rough framework managers can use to decide how to direct their energy toward getting the most out of all the personalities on their teams. Here’s a quick rundown of eight of the most common personality types and how to manage each one.
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“Retrospectives” are common at tech companies and startups but still underused everywhere else. They shouldn’t be.