The most effective team member is one that has a good deal of emotional intelligence. Working and testing teams for decades, it is often quite apparent how much emotional intelligence a team or team member has. Teams with a depth of emotional intelligence seem to work through problems and deal with conflicts more […]
Too often teams get into conflict because the members can’t see differences as an asset. The first thing to go is communication. People who see things differently stop talking. Instead they start talking to other people and expressing increasing frustration and anger at someone they are not even communicating with. While […]
To keep the system healthy and functioning it is important for the owner to convene a meeting of just the family members in a regular basis – maybe twice a year. Any issues or problems should be worked out in this meeting rather than through gossip and infighting within the company. This meeting […]
What does all this tell us about family owned businesses? The key word is “family.â€? Even the best of families have problems. Combine money, power, and influence and it is a wonder any family owned business survives. In my experience, owners often make a fundamental mistake when they hire relatives without […]
First, the owner had to come to grips with his own need to avoid conflict and please everyone. As it turned out, the firings had been done in a major show of anger. Everyone knew he had a temper. He didn’t loose it very often but when he did, it was volcanic. […]
The founder of a family owned business experiences a totally difference set of challenges from other family members. This difference is incredibly large but managing the transition between first and second generation depends on extremely good communication, understanding and trust between the generations. The transition is multiplied in difficulty when there is more […]
Family owned businesses are most unique in their dynamics. Throughout my 25+ years of consulting they have presented the most interesting challenges and rewards. Family owned businesses are significantly different than other types of businesses. While they face the normal challenges of the marketplace, they also face the internal challenges of family […]
Conflict is something that is always a potential problem in any team. There are many causes but one of the most common is goal conflicts. Two people on a team are working towards different goals. The first thing to do in dealing with conflict is to get the two people in the […]
The after action review process helps create a continuous improvement mentality at the grass roots level. Through constant practice, employees begin recognizing and implementing improvements and learn to do it as a team. Blaming and judging are eliminated as people learn to focus on the behavior and impact of a certain activity. […]
How do you get teams to effectively praise and recognize one another? The secret lies in the coach’s behavior. While the coach should be praising and recognizing team members, the real task of the coach is to teach the team to do this. Team members know much more about a member’s performance […]
High performance teams generally have high rates of praise and recognition among themselves. In watching and working with one team in a Pharmaceutical company several years ago, I was able to document rates of praise and recognition that exceeded 2 incidents per day in one team over several weeks time. The team members […]
In years of research and experience with high performance teams there is one common theme: they are all good a feedback. Real time performance feedback is the key to rapid development for the individuals and for the team. Regular and effective feedback between team members increases trust between members and increases skills. […]
Working with a coaching client (Kevin) today I heard of an interesting strategy with respect to mentoring. Kevin said that he has found it helpful when coaching an individual to ask, “How would I communicate and coach this person if they were my son or daughter?â€? He said it has really helped him […]
This interesting concept first discovered by the psychologist Martin Seligman bears looking at from a coaching perspective. It is the idea that a person can be trained to feel and act helpless under a given circumstance or situation. Psychologists first explored this concept in the laboratory. See
Learned Helplessness article
for a full explanation. […]