An interview John Bradford, Senior Vice-President, Consulting & Coaching Services for Profiles International http://www.profilesinternational.com/. John speaks about leadership and teamwork on how they are vital components of superior organizational performance.
The difference between a group and team of people working together
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
Leadership & Team Development Question of the Week. Join in on the discussion
Strong leadership and team development is more crucial now than ever before for your organization if it is to make it through rough waters and to ride the tides of good fortune.
Leadership that drives high performance in an organization does not just happen but is a decision that comes from understanding what motivates and drives people to perform. To help you remove any ambiguity in your thinking about what makes for great leadership we are offering you to participate in our leadership and team development question of the week.
This weeks question is:
What type of person and what style of leadership are required in a leader intent on developing a team of managers and/or vice-presidents reporting directly to him who are self-directed and fully autonomous?
You can post your answer in the public forum on the Three Brain Synergy website. To access the forum, register for FREE as a Basic Member and then log in to the basic membership area and click on Forum. You will see the question, and you can post your answer right there.
We are offering a prize of our complete Know-Yourself e-learning to the first person to post the correct answer i.e. an answer that agrees with the TBS philosophy. This is a value of $197.00. We will post the answer next Monday on August 24th on the forum.
Participating in this discussion will help you to clarify in your own mind what kind of attitude it takes to be the leader of a high performance organization.
Stephen Goldberg
New Case Study on Leadership & Team Development
I just completed delivering a six week leadership workshop on Styles of Leadership and Team Development with a new client in the telecom industry. There were six half-day sessions spread over the six weeks.
I met the owner earlier this year to discuss opportunities to improve the people side of business rather than the processes or systems. Most small business owners are caught up in keeping their sales funnel full and on managing the processes to deliver the goods.
This company is small with about 50 employees in total and most of them working out of the home office in Montreal. There is a sales office in Western Canada and in Europe.
The organization is quite flat in structure with only six people in management roles including the president/owner. Most of the managers had never had any formal training in leadership and had been promoted to these positions as the company grew.
I curently use only one approach to leadership development, the Styles of Leadership & Team Development program developed by Fritz Glaus. I do this because it has contributed to producing the best results for my clients. It is part of a complete approach to help the business owner or CEO free himself from the day to day decisions regarding how the company of organization operates. This allow him to act on new opportunities and use his talents to solidify the organization in whatever way he sees best.
It takes a leader or business owner that is at the point of realizing that greatness is about bringing out the best in people and helping them fully understand and use their qualities to the benefit of all. This then required the leader to start by understanding himself and his direct reports.
The Styles of Leadership and Team Development program incorporates the types of people approach that Fritz Glaus has applied to the training workshops. The program also lay the framework for people to be open to change and continuous personal development. They learn that we all have strengths and weaknesses and this is normal and not to be feared.
During each session over the last six weeks I could see the managers opening up a little more and making attempts to apply what they were learning. Before the third session one of the direct reports of one of the managers participating in the workshops came to me with a big smile and said that she could already see some change from the managers, especially the person she reported to. She said that they were making a distinct attempt to communicate more often and recognize people’s efforts and contributions.
The program integrates the types of people approach to self-knowledge and understanding of others with the principles of participative management and continuous improvement. Each person identified a key restrainer that interfered with fully using their qualities and set a goal to lessen the impact of this restrainer on their performance.
I met with president a week after the last session and he said that he could see the managers making an effort to apply what they learned. He could see them holding more effective meetings and using the problem solving techniques that were taught.
The next phase of the mandate is to establish win-win performance agreements between the managers and the president. The system we developed has the manager, with our help, formulate a win-win performance commitment with his boss along with support commitments from his boss.
I had the first meeting with the president to begin this process and will submit a new post about that soon.
Stephen