Team Performance Archives - Bridge Between

How to Lead From a Distance

December 6, 2018December 6, 2018 Taylor Stauffer Leave a comment

How do you provide a sense of purpose to your team when face to face interaction isn’t an option?

The importance of having regular meetings with team members can’t be overstated. Whether it’s to give feedback (positive and negative) or just to ‘check in’, much has been written about why this is important for overall team health, as well as individual job satisfaction and effectiveness.

Depending on the nature of the business, you could have staff that are working at a distance, or even a team scattered over a large geographic area, making connecting in person very difficult, if not impossible. So how can you authentically empower your team members from a distance and not have them roll their eyes at you?

1. Be clear on your purpose, as a team

If everyone is clear about what you are working towards and what the values are of the organization, it’s easier to motivate people, even from far away. When people are scattered, they need to feel that unifying purpose and they can’t do that if they don’t understand what the team is all about.

If everyone is clear about their roles and responsibilities, to each other, to the project and to you / the organization, they can get on with their work with a sense of confidence that they’re on the right track. Then it’s up to you to make sure they retain that feeling.

2. Keep in touch

Out of sight, out of mind: you might be tempted to push off the effort to keep in touch with each individual team member simply because you don’t see them every day. It’s easy to say that you don’t have the time and that you’ll do it next week. However, leading by example is essential to distance teamwork being effective. Reaching out regularly to each person individually also needs to be a part of your routine, as it would be in an office environment. It shows respect, commitment, interest in your team members, and enhances their trust of you. Hopefully, they will appreciate and even replicate the behavior with others.

More often than not, this will require a formal communication strategy, at least at first. Processes by which team members check in with you and you check in with them. Everyone works differently and so work with your team members in a way that is authentic to them. If a daily meeting is too much, drop it to weekly. Not everyone ‘needs’ to check in daily to feel included and empowered to get the job done. Others may need that support at least at first.

3. Don’t skip the small talk

Conference calls and video conference meetings are the norms for teams that don’t work in the same space, but often, they’re fairly regimented in the aim of not wasting anyone’s time. Fair enough, but there is a lot of ‘team building’ and morale-boosting that goes on during water cooler chats. It’s in these more informal interactions that you, and others, can learn each other’s non-verbal cues and idiosyncrasies. Replicating that in a Skype call isn’t necessarily easy but the person leading the meeting sets the tone for it and should make time for a little small talk at the beginning or end of the meeting. After all, you know what they say about all work and no play!

Another aspect is celebrations! Yes, celebrating a birthday, milestone, or project success at a distance can be tough but technology is there to make it easier. Such as? Send a package to each team member in advance that contains a treat, with instructions not to open it until the video conference scheduled for the celebration day. Then you can all open them together and celebrate! It may seem silly but it’s in these little ways that you can build a solid community, even miles and miles apart!

4. Open door policy

Make sure that your team knows when they can reach you freely, in the same way as they would in an office environment. If you were in the same space, they’d be able to see whether your office door was open or closed or have a sense of whether you are in the middle of a crisis issue and can’t break.

At a distance, those cues are gone, so creating a calendar with blocks of time when you’re available makes sense. Like a professor who has posted office hours, you can let your team know that they can always reach you but that X, Y and Z time slots are the best!

5. Focus on the outcomes and the effort

Unlike an employee whose desk is right outside your office, you can’t really observe or track how much effort a remote employee is making. Frankly, you shouldn’t be micromanaging an employee right in front of you that way either, but that’s another blog post!

Instead, focus on the outcomes. Are they delivering their projects/work on time? Is the work well done or does it seem rushed and incomplete? If they’re doing good work and they’re doing it on time, that’s what matters! If not, that needs to be dealt with too, so that other team members aren’t left feeling like that person isn’t pulling their weight.

Key to all of these efforts is authenticity. You have to believe in what you’re doing, and your team, in order to reach them. Going through the motions isn’t enough. Trust in the people you work with, show them what you expect and walk with them along the path. Even at a distance, thanks to technology, you can do all of these things and do them well.

The Recipe for a Strong Team

September 24, 2018September 19, 2018 Taylor Stauffer Leave a comment

The recipe for a productive, happy team isn’t complicated. Like actual food recipes, it’s all about working with real, authentic ingredients. No fake elements, no aggressive attitudes.

Toxic work cultures aren’t new but they all tend to operate the same way. A culture of ‘motivation by fear’ works, but only in the short term. If you want a team that is inspired, that sticks together and works well as a unit, you need do everything you can to avoid a toxic style and bring dignity to the table, instead.

Give praise as well as feedback

Have you ever noticed how often people speak up when it’s to complain about something but how they will speak up less often to offer praise for a job well done? If a team member feels appreciated and is actively told they’re doing something right, despite constructive feedback that might seek to improve their performance, they will be happier in their roles.

Even if they are not performing as you would like them to, from their point of view, they may be doing their best. A manager or leader who doesn’t recognize that will lose their confidence.

Use their strengths

A team member who feels their skills are being underutilized will never be happy. If, however, you are using their skills to the best of your ability, they not only feel more fulfilled but you are clearly demonstrating that you see them for what skills they have and what they can add to the team as a whole. It’s important for people to have that recognition, to know that those above see them for who they are and what they can accomplish.

Lead by example

This is basic: if you want people to behave a certain way or work a certain way, you have to do it too. Walk the walk, as the saying goes, instead of standing on a pulpit issuing orders. That also means that you need the skills to do the work too. You won’t gain respect of your team if they feel that you can’t do the job alongside them.

Akin to this is leading with authority. It’s difficult to lead a team if you don’t really understand what you’re doing. You need to come from a position of knowledge in order to get people to listen to and follow you. That said, you can’t know everything and being honest about what you don’t know is an opportunity for the team to see you as human, rather than an authority figure. That’s important for their own validation but also for you to be able to relate to one another.

Listen to your team

Do you want team members to step up with new ideas? Do you want them to offer suggestions and find new ways of working? You need to listen to them. This doesn’t mean that you have to do what they ask every time, but you have to at least take their opinions under consideration. Nothing will cause a group of people to stagnate faster than a management team that doesn’t care what they think.

This needs to happen as a group, but also on a one-on-one basis, so that your team always feels that they can speak to you about concerns they might have, whether they are personal or professional. Do you have a single mom who is struggling to manage her home and professional life? Let her work from home on a regular basis, so that she can gain some control.

Add a dash of dignity

While respect is earned, dignity is something everyone should receive, without having to qualify for it in any way. Treating people with dignity is a minimum requirement for all successful teams. This comes back to the notion of controlling people with fear, as a toxic work environment will do. This management method strips away people’s dignity because they don’t feel safe. The ability to make your team members feel safe at work is an essential step to building a superior, effective and efficient team.

You want your time to feel inspired, safe, valued and appreciated. From there, you’ve got what it takes to build a solid team that will help you grow a project, a business, or an entire industry!

Productivity is Catching: How to Boost Team Productivity

January 10, 2018February 10, 2018 Shannon Cassidy Leave a comment

How modeling effective productivity skills can have a positive impact on your team members.

You know the old saying that kids do what you do, not what you say? Employees are by no means children, but there is a grain of truth to the concept, even for adults!

The single biggest barrier to productivity in the workplace is… drum roll, please: managers. Team members saddled with an ineffective, discouraging, uninspiring and unmotivating leadership will not be as productive. Of course, there are other factors in how productivity is missed, but poor leadership is top of the list.

When it comes to productivity, leaders who model the desired behavior, as well as encourage, inspire and motivate, will find the productivity of their team members goes through the roof.

First and foremost: Walk the walk

Engage in and model the behavior you expect your team to display. There is nothing a leader can do that is more compelling and motivating than applying the rules to themselves.

If you expect your team to be respectful of one another, be respectful to each of them. You expect them to communicate with one another? Do the same. You expect them to provide peer feedback that is constructive? You need to model that.

A leader who walks the walk, instead of just talking and then going in another direction, will be respected; this is of major importance to the high productivity of a team.

Understanding the difference between working long and real productivity

Productivity is not about the hours spent sitting in a chair, in a cubicle or at a workstation. An employee who arrives at 8 and leaves at 7 is not necessarily being productive with their time. Unfortunately, many lesser managers engage in and reward that behavior instead of praising the employee who gets their work done and done well.

Why? When asked, some managers feel that the one employee’s behavior sets an example to others about tenacity and working hard.

Note to this manager: it doesn’t.

What does set an example are leaders understanding what their team is accomplishing and what individual members are contributing. Rewarding effort, not time in the chair, makes all the difference.

Recognizing the value of training

Anyone who says they know it all is lying. Every level of an organization can benefit from training at some point or other, which enhances productivity. Being open to learning and change, at the highest levels, models behavior that a team will more readily adopt.

Supporting the value of training, as well as other needs the team might have, shows an openness and adaptability that can only enhance productivity across the board.

Feedback and recognition

As noted in the beginning of this post, productivity is affected most by ineffective, discouraging, uninspiring and unmotivating leadership.

Modelling the right behavior is an indirect way of encouraging team members. If paired with more direct methods, such as constructive positive feedback and recognition of effort, a leader is providing inspiration to each and every team member — motivation that can be returned to them in productivity and loyalty.

Whatever you are looking to achieve with your team, modeling the right behavior is the surest way to get what you want from them. Respect is a two-way street and employees who receive it will return it.

If you want to make changes to how you lead and work, take it 5 degrees at a time for substantive, long-term results. The 5 Degree Principle will help you to attain your goals, in work and in life, one step at a time.

5 Necessary Elements for Effective Teams

October 31, 2017October 31, 2017 Shannon Cassidy Leave a comment

You’ve got a team assembled. Now what?

Bodies in chairs do not a team make! There are elements which are necessary within a team for it to work as a finely oiled machine. After all, a solid team can create unbelievable results as well as competitive advantage in the marketplace:

“The idea of building a good team is not just an abstract: these are real people, real projects and real goals.”

But bringing together different personalities with a range of skills and goals, you have to find some common points to build a cohesive team.

It’s important for any good leader to build up their teams to reflect five common elements of team success:

Results
Accountability
Commitment
Conflict
Trust

We’ll look at each of these in turn, in ascending order:

1. Trust

If you’ve ever worked in a group where team members didn’t trust each other, you’ll know exactly how it feels, compared to a team that has built up that inter-member reliance.

From a business point of view, trust comes with transparency. You’re not guessing what your colleagues are thinking: you know. You’re not wondering if someone is talking behind your back because they’re not. A team that has trust has members that have each other’s backs in terms of support for one another.

They’re also quick to point out and accept errors. That’s because, with trust, you know that your colleague isn’t pointing out a mistake to get you in trouble or for their own gain. They’re pointing it out because it’s in the interest of the common goals that you all agree on.

Honesty is vital to building real trust.

2. Conflict

It’s unrealistic to imagine a team of people agreeing about everything, all of the time. Conflict is inevitable but it’s the style of conflict that the team engages in that matters. This is linked to trust in that if you don’t have a team whose members trust one another, you can’t have healthy debates about issues and ideas.

Constructive disagreement is totally acceptable, knowing that the goal each person has is not to ‘take down’ the other but to contribute to the good of the team.

A team that can engage in debate but still provide a safe environment where everyone is heard respectfully is a solid team!

3. Commitment

When everyone has a voice and that voice can be expressed in a safe, trust-based environment, then it’s that much more likely that everyone on the team will be committed to whatever decision comes at the end of the discussion.

It doesn’t become about winning or losing: the commitment to a team and its decisions means compromise, sometimes, but again with the knowledge that everyone is working toward a common goal or results.

4. Accountability

Teams flounder when there are members who aren’t pulling their own weight. A committed team will hold each other accountable to the plans, processes and steps that need to be taken, to ensure that everyone is ‘in the game’, so to speak.

No one takes the credit and no one takes the blame but every team member does have to serve every other team member and one way to do that is through accountability.

Think of a football team, as an analogy. The goal for the team as a whole is to get the ball to the other end of the field. Each person on the team has a role to play and they know what that role is. If the quarterback stops doing his job or the halfback quits halfway through a play, the team, as a whole, will fail, so they hold each other accountable.

By working as a team and supporting one another and holding each person accountable for their part of the play, the team works as a cohesive whole and will score.

“By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!” (Source)

5. Results

This is the end goal of any team: to work together to achieve results. Whatever those results are, there is always a goal and getting there as a team creates strength that can be leveraged onwards.

With a solid grasp on these five elements, a team can make decisions quickly and effectively, leverage everyone’s differing skills, value all opinions, avoid destructive conflict, and have a solid goal that each member has a stake in reaching.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? If you want your team working and thinking this way, contact us to take part in the ‘Five Elements of Effective Teams’ program. It’s a benefit for the individuals, the team as a whole and the organization that supports them!

Risk Taking: How to Encourage Growth on Your Team

August 30, 2017December 23, 2017 Shannon Cassidy Leave a comment

Whether you call it risk-taking or innovation, growth comes from moving forward, not standing still!

Taking risks in business is hard enough; allowing your team to do it with only minimal intervention on your part? That is harder still! But it’s risk-taking and creative innovation that encourages team growth, not stagnation., so one of your roles as a leader is to push your team to take a little risk.

So, one of your roles as a leader is to push your team to take a little risk.

Risk doesn’t have to be reckless

If you want to encourage your team to grow and innovate, you have to give them clear parameters within which they are allowed to do so.

Whether that involves defining how much money can be spent in the pursuit of a new business track or creates boundaries on decision making and the point they need to involve you or a process of review, smart risk taking isn’t without limits.

Just be sure that your limits aren’t in fact so constraining that innovation isn’t ever going to be a part of the picture. A little discomfort and out of the box thinking is what propels people, and companies, forward.

Create a safe place for your team to take calculated risks

People will take risks if they know that they aren’t putting their necks — and their jobs — on the line. Fear is probably the greatest barrier to innovation.

Instead, you have to create a safe environment where your team clearly understands that despite everything done to mitigate problems, innovation comes with …well, risk!

Learning from mistakes or failure is essential. Whatever your team is attempting could all go very wrong. Or, it could all go very right. Either way, your ability to create a culture that includes accepting failure is the only way to encourage team members who fail to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and strive for more.

Either way, your ability to create a culture that includes accepting failure is the only way to encourage team members who fail to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and strive for more.

Model the behavior you expect to see

You can’t create a culture that encourages risk if you don’t engage in the behavior yourself. Leadership is all about walking the walk, not just talking the talk, so while you might fall flat on your face in attempting a little risk taking, playing it safe won’t motivate anyone.

As a member of the team yourself, you need to involve others in your decisions and demonstrate how you intend to take on and mitigate risks for the best possible outcome. Clear communication is fundamental to creating the right environment for growth.

Don’t just reward success

While there’s no question of giving everyone a ribbon ‘just for coming out’, it is important to reward successes AND failures. Not just any failure, of course, but ones that come from a strong attempt and smart risk-taking.

If failure is not only tolerated but even praised for the goals that a team member was trying to achieve, others are more likely to take a step towards a little risk themselves. A team member need only understand that their career growth won’t be stunted by a failure.

And, in fact, might be improved by one, to decide that it is something they’re willing to engage in.

You can take it as far as celebrating the mistakes or failures, literally! Putting it out in the open and having the whole team own a failure creates some of that safety that individuals will be looking for.

Remember, not every failure is a categorical mistake. There is always something that can be learned and always some positive side effect that can be leveraged, if only that your team feels free to try again.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst

Part of mitigating risk is figuring out the worst case scenario in any given plan. If your team learns to look at all the possible consequences and assign relative value over risk to them, they will quickly be able to judge what is a smart risk or innovation and what isn’t.

That’s part of their growth as a team, and the company as a whole, which will help propel everyone forward, as time goes by.

However you inspire your team towards innovation, remember that nobody wins the game by playing it safe all the time. There are times for risk and there are times for safety: your job as a leader is to have a clear vision for both so that you can encourage your team in the right direction.