Archive June 2014
Making meetings more effective
Meetings are an immutable fact of team life. When you collaborate with other people, you can’t not meet. But you can meet more effectively. Most of us attend 5-10 meetings a week (sometimes more), and many of these meetings suck the life out of us because they run too long or weren’t properly planned. Raise your hand if any […]
Minding the gap when a team member leaves
When team members leave, it almost always causes a temporary disruption to the team’s state of flow. But even when a new normal sets in, there can be gaps the team doesn’t always see or recognize — places where old team members were especially strong or unique qualities they seemed to have. If your team has seen more than […]
When you’re not seeing eye-to-eye, change the lens
Reframing — getting creative in how you see and solve problems — is one of our nine habits of a great team. But being able to change the lens is a useful skill for individuals too, especially if you find yourself in a tense moment with a colleague. When you’re in a heated conversation, reframing can remove some of […]
How to disagree and keep your duos going strong
Wherever there are passionate, dedicated people working together on a team — with their own strengths and working styles and nerve-working buttons — there are bound to be disagreements. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Conflict is healthy for a team as long as it gets addressed, and as long as team members approach […]
Imagining life after the problem is solved
When a team is stuck, it’s natural to start interrogating the situation: What’s happening? What caused the problem? Is it part of a pattern we’ve seen before? These are great questions, but sometimes they can lead the team to root causes that feel big and daunting. If you find yourself paralyzed after you’ve analyzed a problem, try asking a […]
Go beyond typical team icebreakers
If you have a team of people who’ve never worked together before, it can be really eye-opening to do an icebreaker that goes beyond the typical get-to-know-you stuff. Sure, it’s fun to learn where someone grew up or who would play them in the movie of their life, but here are some team icebreakers that will help reveal deeper aspects about who people are, what they value, and how they like to work.
Knowing when to raise a flag
Almost all of us have a gut sense when things feel off with the team — like when everyone is working later and later hours but the team still struggles to hit deadlines, or when conversations between team members have an edge to them. While it can be hard to summon the courage to say […]