Archive for October, 2009
Mind Your Environment – Create a Healthy Team Environment
FOSTER THE CLIMATE
In the workplace, leaders are environmental caretakers. They preside over the climate of a team, and their positive influence can make the office a healthy and inviting place. On the other hand, if leaders ignore the team environment, then the workplace can become toxic and hazardous to all who inhabit it.
| 3 Ways to Create a Healthy Team Environment | |
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1. Encourage a Spirit of Togetherness
The true measure of a successful leader is not getting people to work. Nor is it getting people to work hard. The true measure of a successful leader is getting people to work hard together.
Leaders have to create an environment in which people see themselves as a single unit, the team, rather than as a collection of individuals. Building a team culture means stressing that mutual success matters far more than personal brilliance. For a leader, the goal is to instill an attitude of “we” rather than “me.”
2. Paint the Big Picture When people don’t understand how their work matters to the team, they fall into mindless routine, and they deny putting their heart into what they do. Leaders have to guard against a purposeless environment by building bridges between what and why. By helping people see their contributions to the team’s goals, leaders ennoble them with a sense of meaning. 3. Learn from the Customer When an organization doesn’t understand its customer, then the team environment becomes wasteful and inefficient. Efforts go into products that sit on shelves. Time and energy are sunk into marketing services nobody wants. Eventually, the team tires of doing unproductive work, and its morale nosedives. Leaders foster a team environment in which the customer experience is a primary consideration. They refuse to allow their teams to guess at what customers need. Instead, leaders teach teams the discipline of consulting customers regularly. By allowing customers to define success, a team learns where to focus its attention and is able to position itself to excel. This Week’s Guest Author is John Maxwell John C. Maxwell is an internationally respected leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold more than 18 million books. Dr. Maxwell is the founder of EQUIP, a non-profit organization that has trained more than 5 million leaders in 126 countries worldwide. He is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week best-selling author. To read this entire article click here http://www.giantimpact.com/articles/read/creating_a_healthy_team_environment/
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Expect the Expected
Expect the EXPECTED. Guest Author Barry Hoffman shares his insight.
Here are ten questions a leader should be totally prepared to answer at all times:
1. What is your budget for this year?
2. How are you tracking to your budget?
3. What are your primary objectives for this year and how are you tracking against them?
4. How many people do you have? [also by location or function]
5. How many _____ …..? [what you do, make, buy or sell, including latest pricing or costs or whatever are the primary measurements of your area].
6. How does that compare to last year?
7. How does that compare to other companies? [this common question is one you can always be prepared for by reading professional journals, published consultant studies or industry association publications]
8. Who are your sharpest people?
9. Are you ready for more responsibility and if so, what are some areas of the company that you would like to manage in addition to your present unit[s]?
10. What did you think of my ______? [the President's latest speech, mission statement, article in the company newsletter, TV interview, etc.]
What are some ways that you can be prepared to answer these questions on the spot?
