Write a headline from the future
When you and your team are planning a bold move and trying to tap into your deepest aspiration, it helps to imagine the story as told in the pages of a magazine, newspaper, or popular blog. What would be the headline of the story? What accomplishments would the story celebrate? What would make people on […]
Provocative question: Gut check your team’s goals
Success looks like different things to different teams. It depends on context, history, purpose, and the team’s identity — which means that it’s crucial to gut check your ambitions. As a team, tackle this question: Did we commit to this outcome because we really want it, or because someone told us it’s what we should want? […]
7 questions to guide decision-making
As a team, you never want to enter the decision-making process blind. Without enough due diligence, a clear sense of goals, and shared decision-making criteria to serve as a guidance system, the team could lose time and belief stumbling between options without direction. Use a question and answer method to establish guidelines for how your team makes decisions. […]
Turning the team’s good intentions into action
Our colleague Adam Schorr, a Principal at SYPartners, returns this week as a guest blogger. As a manager, one of your most important roles is to set direction for your team — to paint a picture of the future, build belief, and get everyone inspired and ready to go. But what happens when you’ve done […]
A question to help identify stale habits
If you find that your team is stalling, spinning, or keeps bumping up against the same old obstacles, maybe it’s time to take a long hard look at the team’s day-to-day behaviors and assumptions. Kick off discussion with this provocative question at your next team meeting: What habits or behaviors have become such an ingrained part of our team culture […]
“In the same way emotion connects customers to a brand, it connects a team to the work.”
— Susan Gregg Koger, at the 99U Conference 2014
Make a map of your team’s superpowers
Last week, we talked about superpowers, the talents that are innate to each person. As a team, you want to know what each person’s superpower is, so you can take advantage of all the team’s inherent potential. You’ll be able to create powerful duos by pairing up people with complementary superpowers—and you’ll be able to […]
Synching up the team’s working styles: Part II
Note: This is the second part of a two-part series on Working Styles, a Teamworks tool that helps teams better understand and play to each person’s strengths. Read part one here. In the first part of this series, we discussed differences that can throw a wrench in the dynamics of any team — from contrasts in the […]
Introducing the Teamworks Question of the Week
A number of us on the Teamworks team have had our heads buried in Warren Berger’s new book, A More Beautiful Question. In it, Berger talks about the power of “an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something.” Asking simple, honest questions is a core […]