Team Effectiveness

The Benefits of Training for Project Managers

December 20, 2018

  Jen’s note: This post is sponsored by Strategy Execution, a training company dedicated to the career advancement of project management professionals. One of the aspects that I admire about the project management profession is the rigorous attention applied to professional development. This post highlights some of the training avenues a project manager might take. […]

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Is Failure to Speak Up Impeding Your Team’s Productivity?

October 5, 2017

As a leader, you know that productive employees bring value to your team.  Recent findings from a white paper by consulting and training firm VitalSmarts highlight the magnitude of high performers’ productivity: they are 21 times less likely to experience tasks or responsibilities that “fall through the cracks.” Moreover, the research found that these same […]

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Don’t Overload Your Team Ecosystem With Star Players

August 31, 2017

You want a team loaded with star players, right? What leader wouldn’t want a team filled with high-performing folks?  Isn’t a team stacked with rocks stars is a good thing? It depends. Research into team performance reveals a surprising element: you can have too much of a good thing. Consider the study reported in Gartner’s […]

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Are Unspoken Issues Creating Mischief on Your Team?

September 29, 2016

When the results of Google’s research on team effectiveness (called “Project Aristotle”) were revealed earlier this year, the conclusion was surprising: the best teams have just one thing in common. Factors such as clear goal-setting and team member dependability are certainly important, but they’re not what definitively sets great teams apart from their average counterparts. […]

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Help Your Team Be More Productive with these 4 Tips

August 9, 2016

If you asked your team members what saps their productivity, what would they say? They’d probably mention unnecessary meetings, interruptions or poor communications, right? What if — shockingly — you were listed as one of the reasons that your team couldn’t get their work done? Wait a minute, you say, I’m not a micromanager; I […]

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Scavenger Hunts as an Easy and Cost-Effective Way to Build Teamwork

July 12, 2016

This post is brought to you by Strayboots, a company that provides customized mobile-enhanced scavenger hunts for corporate team-building events.  See below for full disclosure. When you were a kid, did you ever participate in a scavenger hunt at a birthday party? There’s nothing like the thrill of the hunt, trying to find obscure items […]

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Why New Managers Must Excel at Setting Goals

March 21, 2016

Goal-setting in the workplace is key to getting things done. Countless studies on human motivation and performance bear this out. Yet it’s a fact that’s often lost on first-time managers. And even if they understand the importance of setting goals for team members, new leaders miss the nuances of this important management skill. I turned to […]

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Ideas for Creating Positive Workplace Morale

June 12, 2014

What companies are “doing” workplace morale right? That’s the question up for discussion via a series on workplace morale, which is running on both the Switch and Shift blog and SmartBlog on Leadership. In the spirit of promoting what tactics work for organizations, ​this series highlights the ideas and companies that are creating positive morale and thereby […]

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Announcing: The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team

April 29, 2014

I’m very excited to announce that as of yesterday, the corporate arm of my business, SkillSource, has been approved as an Authorized Partner for Wiley’s brand-new Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team program, based on the New York Times best-selling book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. You may recall that in March […]

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Career Conversations: Leaders, Are You Getting It Right?

February 12, 2014

As a leader, how effective are the one-to-one career conversations you have with your employees? If you’re thinking “what career conversations?” you might be setting the HR department up for its next round of exit interviews.  Don’t feed the exit interview beast; use “stay interviews” instead. You can learn more about the concept of stay […]

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