Yearly Archives: 2009

Win-win agreements for scaling the organization

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I used a new title to describe this post that continues my case study of the organization I am coaching on implementing the win-win agreement process that embraces the Three Brain Synergy methodology of types of people.

The title reflects the goal of the owner of the company who sees this process and the leadership training that proceeded it as essential to scaling the organization. What he means by this is that in order for the organization to continue to grow and be less dependant on him driving everything, his managers and their teams need to develop greater autonomy in decision-making and be more pro-active in taking initiative to identify and act on key opportunities.

He realizes that this will only happen through shifting his own leadership approach and by coaching his direct reports so they make better decisions and themselves delegate and develop their team members.

The win-win process we are implementing is geared to assure that each manager is committed to their own leadership transformation and that they are well supported by the president. Thus each win-win agreement is a two-way written document that covers the performance commitments of the manager and is supported by a written support committment by his/her boss.

Over the last few weeks I have interviewed each manager and their manager and drafted both the performance commitments and the support commitments. Now I am meeting with the two parties, the manager and his boss to review the final drafted document. Once this is agreed upon by both parties, the next step will be to conduct a practice review coaching session. In the coaching session they are to practice the skills of coaching and active listening they learned in the training workshops.

The goal each month is to have them meet to discuss and evaluate the performance of the manager for each leadership behaviour that is crucial for the realization of their most critical operational responsibilities as described in the document. The same is done for the support commitments by the boss. Both parties must agree on the evaluation score and this happens through discussing their perceptions while practicing active listening. They must come to consensus on the final evaluation score.

I will sit in on a few sessions following the practice session to monitor their performance and assure the sessions take place.

The next phase will be to introduce the empowerment initiative process, which really drives continuous improvement for both the managers and the operations.

I will soon report on the progress of the evaluation coaching sessions. For more information visit the Three Brain Synergy website.

Stephen Goldberg

The difference between a group and team of people working together

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Over the last fifteen years that i have worked in the training and coaching field I have met many business owners and executives who always had concerns about people performance in their organizations. I see this as good because I don’t think we are ever fully satisfied with ourselves and people when it comes to our business and organizational performance. Being able to openly admit what bothers you to a stranger is not easy, but it is always beneficial to voice your concerns.

One thing i have noticed consistently over the years is that most business owners and executives do not understand what teamwork is. They often mistake people working together as teamwork. In our training workshops we explain the four stages of team development and what it means for people to function at each level. Most employees in organizations I have visited or worked with usually had people functioning at the first level of team development most of the time, which we describe as the dependency level.

To have teams function at a higher more productive level requires team members to learn new skills in collaboration, communication, decision making, problem solving etc. It also requires the business owner to change his/her leadership style to foster team development and less dependency supervision. I mention again the business owner because change has to start at the top or the culture of the firm will not evolve much.

I posted the question, what is the difference between groups of people working together versus a team of people to my leadership groups on Linkedin. Interesting responses have started to come in. Someone posted links to two articles which I think are great, especially the first one.
Here are the links to these articles:

The Top 10 Key Differences Between a Team of Individuals and a Group of Individuals
Team Tactics: The Critical Difference between Groups and Teams

So what does it take to create a dream team starting at the top management level? It starts by understanding the difference between a group and a team followed by the role of the leader in making this happen in his/her organization.

This month we will be holding a tele-seminar, Creating Your Dream Team where we will describe the Three Brain Synergy approach to creating a dream team and the fundamental knowledge that it takes to make this transformation a reality.

You can join the discussion by signing up for the free call now.

Stephen Goldberg

Great article on selling for entrepeneurs got my creative juices flowing. Turn tire-kickers into customers

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I like reading articles like the one linked here about being creative in selling. As creatures of habit we often get caught up in doing what we thinks works and is comfortable.

The truth is there are always ways we can improve and reading Rick Spence’s well written article got my creative juices flowing.

Turn tire-kickers into customers. Read, enjoy and prosper!