Nine Habits
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 […]
Keep an inspiration log
In the day-to-day grind of the workday, it’s easy to lose your sense of excitement and purpose. And, when you feel drained and distracted by the demands of your to-do list, you struggle to remember that there’s a deeper meaning to the work you do. And yet inspiration can come from many places: from a productive brainstorming session […]
Stay a step ahead of change
There’s nothing so certain as change, and nothing more dizzying than being caught off-guard by it. You may be focused on powerful, purposeful work — but if your team has tunnel vision, all that time and effort might be undermined. Here’s a question that will help you stay prepared.
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. […]
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 […]