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Teamwork

People Skills Chat: What Our Mothers Taught Us on #PeopleSkills

People skills Twitter Chat TOPIC: What Our Mothers Taught Us on #PeopleSkills.

WHEN: Mother’s Day, Sunday May 12, 2013 10AM EDT/7am PDT.

Here’s a time converter to assist all of you around the globe in converting 10am EDT to your local time.

A Different Format for Special Mother’s Day Chat!

Instead of our normal structured questions, I will post a one word topic every five minutes and we will tweet what our mothers taught us about it!

So collect your family people skills wisdom from the ages and get ready to share it this Mother’s Day in #peopleskills chat.

People Skills Twitter Chat: What Our Mothers Taught Us

Shout Out of Gratitude

To mothers, step mothers, Godmothers everywhere and all those who have filled those roles without the official title. Thank you for your incredible sacrifice, love, strength, and compassion.

Join People Skills Twitter Chat Sun. May 12th ’13 10am EDT/7am PDT.

If you would like to suggest some of the one word topics for this special Mother’s Day chat, please note them in the comments section below by Saturday May 11th. **What our mothers taught us about ___________ in people skills.

I also invite you to join the Google+ People Skills Community to be a part of all the people skills discussions not just on Sundays but everyday 24×7.

Hope you will all join in the #PeopleSkills Twitter chat to explore What Our Mothers Taught Us On People Skills, this Sunday May 12, 2013 10am EDT/7am PDT.

Everyone is welcome! We have only one rule in People Skills Twitter Chat: Respect for all even when we disagree.

TIP: If you have never been in a Twitter chat, you may find it helpful to log on to Tweetchat.com, enter hashtag #peopleskills, and sign in to your Twitter account. Tweetchat will insert the hashtag automatically for you and you will see all the tweets on one screen. Other tools available are OneQube, Hootsuite and TweetDeck.

I am the founder and host of the chat and will be happy to answer any questions you have in advance: Email me.

Chat with you this Mother’s Day Sunday May 12, 2013 10am EDT in #PeopleSkills Twitter Chat: What Our Mothers Taught Us on People Skills.

Until then, as always, I wish you bonds of happiness and success!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2013 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Adaptability is Genius & Generosity

Adaptability Wins in People-Skills, Leadership, Teamwork, Customer Service, and Everywhere Else!

Adaptability: Image is of the plant mimosa pudica.

Adaptability is genius and generosity. Image of mimosa pudica by: Reinaldo Aguilar

Image by Reinaldo Aguilar via Flickr Creative Commons License.

Adaptability is nature’s genius. Species that can adapt, evolve and survive.

There are those who think adaptability is genius in nature but not in people. They see people skills adaptability as weakness and lack of authenticity. To them, an adaptable person is a chameleon. Yet this is not true. Adaptability doesn’t make you a chameleon; what’s in your heart does.

With a generous heart, adaptability is genius. It is the brilliance in leadership, teamwork, customer service, innovation, career, people skills, personal relationships and much much more.

The Genius & Generosity of Adaptability

Adaptability is the capacity to see differences and changes and the willingness and skill to respond for a positive result. Adaptability is not submission and surrender. Adaptability and authenticity are not opposites nor mutually exclusive.

In Leadership.

Adaptability is the keen sense of what changes will impact the organization and the skill to change appropriately. A changing workforce, competitive products, global markets, educational strengths and shortfalls, laws and regulations, political shifts, human tragedies all create the need to adapt. Adaptability is the organization’s genius to survive.

In Innovation.

Innovation is adaptability in action. It requires leaders and teams to overcome comfort and love of what they previously created. Adaptability is the generosity to overcome habit and the genius to focus on what is needed going forward.

In Teamwork.

Teamwork is the practice of growth and change to achieve a shared success. Without adaptability, it doesn’t happen. Several things can derail team success: personality type differences, various learning styles, conative approaches, communication preferences, goal orientations, etc…

Adaptability bridges these differences into collective success. It requires both the genius of how to adapt and the generosity to put the team ahead of personal preference.

In Career.

No matter how great our plans, our schooling, or our intelligence, achieving career success is rarely a straight line up. Adaptability facilitates career success. Shifting gears when our dream job doesn’t materialize keeps us moving forward. Being open and adaptable to coaching and mentoring creates career fit.

Social networking done with mutual give and take is the generosity of adaptability in action. It is the genius of tapping shared human needs for mutual success.

In Customer Service.

If we don’t adapt to customers, they become another company’s customers. Sometimes when their needs are outside of our company’s mission, this is acceptable. Companies do fail when they try to become everything to everybody. Yet adaptability to customers within our mission is essential for success.

Adapting to customers shows our generous hearts that touch theirs. Adaptability creates memorable customer experiences that keep them coming back for more. This is the genius of shared success.
In People Skills.

People skills are the outward expression of both our identity and adaptability. People skills adaptability doesn’t undermine our authenticity. It truly shows whether we are flexible and open-minded vs. rigid and closed-minded. It shows our genius in spotting others’ styles and needs. It communicates our generosity to interact (not just act).

Mutual give and take — adaptability — is the essence of forming positive relationships with others. Those who won’t and don’t may dominate for awhile yet lose in the end. Our street smarts are a form of adaptability that protect us from those with evil intent!

Adaptability is rooted in a humble heart and an evolved mind that know life is not just about the self. Adaptability is both the genius to see we’re all on earth together and the generosity to truly live that way.

Adaptability is the genius of survival and the generosity of coexistence!

What do you think?
What stops people from adapting to changes and to others?
How can someone develop adaptability?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

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Leaders, 3 Key Steps to a WE Customer Experience Culture

Leaders, 3 Steps to a We Culture Image is: Two people connecting.

Leaders, 3 Steps to a We Culture. Image licensed from Istock.com.

Leaders and managers there are three often overlooked factors critical to building a WE culture.

I write about them in my latest guest post on Desk.com blog, Turn Your Company Culture From “I” to “We”.

I look forward to engaging with you today on this topic at Desk.com and I welcome your experiences, perspectives, and feedback in their comments section.

Thank you Alex Hisaka at Desk.com for this wonderful invitation and opportunity to write for your customers, followers, and collaborators.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

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Leaders Great Employee Attitude is Essential, Not Negotiable

Leaders often ask me, how long should we coach a bad attitude? Simple answer: You don’t.

When you hire someone, you are hiring the skills and talents of the individual AND a positive attitude toward work. Great employee attitude is the foundation for success.

Leaders great employee attitude is essential, not negotiable.

Define the basics of a great attitude and have your teams add to it!

A great attitude is …

Giving
Helpful
Contributory
Positive
Realistic
Reasonable
Resilient

A great attitude isn’t …

Disinterested
Drowsy & lethargic
Pessimistic
Head in the sand
Extreme rose colored view
Entitled and demanding
Greedy and self-absorbed

Leaders ask: what if the organization is going through difficulty? Is it still appropriate to expect great employee attitude? Yes and engage everyone to solve the problems.

An employee who uses these occasions to justify a bad attitude is taking you, the team, and the organization down. How does it help to allow this attitude to burden everyone? Success is tough enough to achieve; it’s impossible without great employee attitude.

What Must You Do to Model a Great Attitude

Empower them — for real. A great employee attitude needs to be used for something great.
Breed accountability not blame
Inspire them everyday. Be a buoy — not the buoy!
Listen when they have problems. Ask what resources they have and/or need to resolve the trouble. This empathizes without approving of a bad attitude.

It isn’t cold and draconian to set a basic standard of a great employee attitude. It is helpful to all involved.

In teamwork, bad attitudes can destroy good ones.

In customer service delivery, bad attitudes destroy revenue, customer loyalty, and sometimes the brand.

In leadership, bad attitudes create a toxic culture that can take years to undo even after a leadership change.

A great employee attitude is essential. It’s not negotiable.

Your organization can achieve greatness, productivity, and profit — even in the toughest times — when you lead, model, and expect a great employee attitude.

Question: What other attributes would your teams add to the great attitude list?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

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Workplace Personality Conflicts: Seek Results Not Revenge

In a previous post on people skills for social media greatness, I warned against certain well-intentioned behaviors that can nonetheless offend and block success.

One reader commented that anyone can get offended — so it’s a wash. Turnabout is fair play, right? No, not really.

There are serious business consequences to employees seeking revenge instead of results. Perhaps the biggest consequence is missing out on what teams can achieve when they seek results not revenge.

Workplace Personality Conflicts: Seek Results Not Revenge Image by: Istock.com

Workplace Personality Conflicts: Seek Results Not Revenge

The evil of isolation from distance or differences undermines the true potential of a team. Tugs-of-war over personality styles stifle the very instrument of success — communication. Leaders who realize the power of inspiring and coaching employees through personality conflicts, also realize great results and organizational success.

They untie this knot and replace the battles and tugs-of-war with a professional people-skills approach. These keaders address:

Who does the adapting? Everyone. When employees approach you with issues of communication style differences, coach all to adapt to reach great results.

Which personality type produces the best results in business? None of them. Business is complex involving people with different occupational views. These people have different personality and communication styles. It is the successful fusion of natural talents that delivers results.

What is the difference between a tug-of-war and a lively disagreement of ideas? Tugs-of-war are not productive. Active discussions of differing views are. Tugs-of-war strive to maintain position to win. Active discussions explore and adapt to achieve a shared success. Teams and organizations succeed when employees adapt to and work with different communication styles not battle over which communication style is right! Strive to be excellent, not right.

The Questions That Transform
When communication style differences emerge, imagine the success possible with these questions:

What can I learn from this person?
How will I grow from working with this different style?
What results can we achieve through this diversity that we can’t without it?
How can I influence a slight change in the communication style that offends me while still respecting the person and advancing end results?
How can I best ask for respect of my style while still contributing to the end results?
What common ground do we have that we can celebrate and elevate for success?
How well does the leader model communication that captures the value of diversity?

High performing teams share an incredible desire for winning results. Revenge toward each other is not a motivator. They contribute their skills, knowledge and talent AND their flexibility and ability to turn diversity into the golden nugget of success.

How well are your teams doing? Are they stuck in silent tugs-of-war over personality differences or easily tapping diversity to produce tremendous results?

I welcome your questions, comments and suggestions. Join the conversation! I am your resource and coach for turning interaction obstacles into business success.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Teamwork: Making Apologies Worthy of Acceptance

The basis of teamwork is respect. When diverse people come together on a team, respect weaves the thread of positive interaction in good times and bad.

Sounds obvious and simple? It can be if all teammates act in ways before and during the bad times that will make apologies worthy of acceptance.

Here’s a professional workplace relationship checklist for self-improvement and team development.

Teamwork: Making Apologies Worthy of Acceptance Image licensed from istock.com.

Image licensed from: Istock.com

Respect. The sooner and more completely all embrace diversity by showing true respect for differences, the greater the chance that teammates can accept apologies when a problem between them occurs.

Any sense of disrespect, disregard, one-upmanship, verbal bullying, sarcastic digs, or passive aggressive manipulation will always be the context within which your words of apology will be viewed. Even after teammates have known each other awhile, never forget the daily dose of respect to keep the threads of teamwork strong.

Checklist step: What thoughts and feelings inside of you bring you to show even the littlest bit of disrespect for others? Need to control, insecurity, discomfort with ambiguity, self-deception, fear of the new, extreme individual views, ignorance of cultural, gender, educational or personality differences?

Appreciation. While respect keeps the threads of interaction strong, appreciation turns those threads into a vivid painting of warm positive context. Every time you express sincere appreciation for a teammate’s talents, strengths, behaviors, and uniqueness, you increase the chance that your apology in bad times will be accepted by the others.

Checklist step: In a quiet moment, list out the names of all your teammates. If possible, put his/her picture next to each name. Write down 2 positive traits and 1 unique trait for each. Share this information in natural conversation when you witness these traits. When people are both respected and appreciated for who they are, they can also hear your sincere apologies in tough times.

Ownership. The ultimate challenge for accepting an apology is to hear the sincerity over the pain. At the very early stages of pain, clear words of ownership of the mistake shout out the immediate pain and prevent additional pain. Respect and appreciation can then filter in as teammates realize you own the impact of your behavior.

Checklist step: Which of these phrases have you slipped and used?

I’m sorry IF I hurt you or IF you perceived my words that way.
I was trying to help you; you should be grateful I cared.
I’m sorry I used that phrase BUT I was … busy, overtired, etc…
I didn’t mean to hurt you.
You are not an easy person to deal with but I shouldn’t have lost my temper.

Replace all these sidestepping self-protecting detours with a simple straightforward apology. Related post: The Perfect Apology and the One Word that Destroys It.

Caring. When you show respect for diversity, express appreciation for individual uniqueness, offer ownership of your gaffes and mistakes, and share empathy for others’ pain, your apologies ooze caring and have the highest chance for acceptance.

You read over and over that apologies must be sincere else they will fail. When you defend or offer an apology only when cornered, it screams insincerity. However, when you consistently show respect, appreciation, ownership, and care, people can see any one moment as a human slip.

Checklist step: Start each day with a self-declaration of accountability and integrity. Build your own reputation of being full of class and the “real thing”. Why? Because accountability and integrity show deep inner strength and inner strength is a heck of a billboard!

Some struggle with apologizing because they think it publicizes their weakness and faults. They think it is humiliating and diminishes potential success. However it’s important not to confuse humility with humiliation. The straightforward apology and remedy when needed is the perfect chance to build trust in yourself and a reputation of true greatness.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

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People-Skills: The Critical Moment to Handle With Ease

Professional relationships take time to develop and along the way they go through a few ups and downs. Those with outstanding people-skills smooth the bumpy ride by handling a critical moment with ease.

What is the one moment? The please don’t moment.

The ease and success in handling this moment comes from the courage and confidence to handle it from the heart without fear of looking weak.

People-Skills: The Critical Moment to Handle With Ease Image via Istock.

Image by: Istock

People-Skills: The Critical Moment to Handle With Ease
When someone asks you to stop doing something that bugs them, what is your response?

Do you …

Give a list of reasons why you do it?
Snipe something to suggest they are being demanding, irrational, unprofessional, or childish for asking?
Take offense and avoid the person when possible?

These answers are quite common. They come from (the ego) interpreting the request as a criticism or from the embarrassment of having troubled someone.

These answers also commonly block productivity and true success. They paint you as someone who doesn’t care about easing someone’s day by accommodating a simple request. They leave a scar that stands between you and them and all that you can achieve together.

Conversely, those who achieve tremendous success, handle this moment from the heart: “Sure, of course if it makes you happy. Thanks for telling me. I’m grateful.” This is not a sign of weakness. It shows a caring mature insight to give on the issues that help people work well together.

From the heart never fails.

For years I have been doing a special pet peeve exercise with new teams to prevent strife and with existing teams to resolve it. It has been in the top 5 “most valuable” moments in the team development workshops for it gets people used to asking for what they need and comfortable giving what others need.

There are serious issues that leaders and team members must address together. Success is fueled by clearing up the simple strife with care and creating tremendous success with those caring bonds of respect.

So, what will be your answer the next time someone says, please don’t …. ? In a split second, you can sink into defensiveness or shine by caring for those around you with outstanding people-skills. What choice will speak the truth about you? What choice will give the biggest boost to your career?

Have a question on how to handle a particular pet peeve or moment of strife? Feel free to pose your question in the comment section below or email me for a private reply.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

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Career: 25 Incredibly Valuable Things to Be Instead of Leader

A Salute to the Second Bananas in the Workplace!

25 Incredibly Valuable Things to Be Instead of Leader

People who strive for a leadership position are held in higher esteem than those who do not. A second-class message lingers about employees who do not strive to move up the ladder — despite their vast contributions to the end goal.

We can work to replace this misguided culture with communication and action that change the dynamic and truly value the entire team.

The benefits to the organizations and employees abound.

Retention of high performing team members and their knowledge and finely honed teamwork.
An abundance mentality rather than a fight for the leadership spots.
A flourishing collaboration as people experience true recognition rather than a skew toward those who strive for the title of leader.

This is the zone of true employee engagement. It highlights contributions not just as tests for future leadership slots but also as a celebration of the employee’s continuing value. People can grow and excel at what they do well rather than feign interest in a leadership position to avoid being seen as an underachiever.

25 Incredibly Valuable Things to Be

In addition to occupational skills and business knowledge, people have natural talents and people-skills abilities that deliver success to the organization.

A great collaborator. Those who have natural collaboration skills or have developed them through years of work are a definite asset to any team.
A memory bank. Even the greatest computers don’t replace someone with a memory for BOTH what has transpired AND the human impact and reaction to it. This memory bank becomes the team’s intuition and collective gut for in-the-moment decisions.
A motivator. Those who inspire themselves and others to higher levels bring every organization to unimagined success.
A velvet truth teller. These naturals at speaking the truth honestly not brutally deliver the soft strength of trust to an organization and its pursuits.
A creative. Having a creative on a team whose function is not primarily creative expands the team’s capacity to work on non-standard requests and its ability to work with creative departments.
An innovator. Those who love and deliver innovation fuel evolution and prevent the failure that comes from inertia and resistance to change.
A supporter. Supporters naturally anticipate needs, fill gaps, and often excel at last minute problem solving. Valuable for any team.
An empathizer. Teamwork needs more than occupational skills to succeed. It needs people with emotional intelligence who can sustain each other. An empathizer does this easily and well and helps all to rise above tough times to reach the goal.
A sounding board. This ability to know exactly when to listen and when to question while allowing others to own their progression uplifts all who experience this gift.
A get-it-done guy/gal. Without action, ideas die. The follow-through champs drive home success.
A healthy skeptic. Skeptics abound and often drown progress. Healthy skeptics challenge assumptions and prevent groupthink to keep progress flowing.
A critical thinker. Often tapped for a leadership position yet not always interested or successful as a leader. Their value to any team is undisputed.
A port in a storm. Those who can keep the calm for themselves and others during unexpected chaos keep the team balanced and performing during the blasts.
A practical philosopher. Philosophical insights can sustain morale, move all beyond obstacles, and even solve problems. When applied with a simultaneous eye for the practical, the practical philosopher sees solutions that others overlook.
A balance beam. Employees that see both sides of every issue, easily give and take, have hope yet still understand despair, love the present and adapt to the future, become the solid base of success for the whole team.
A sprinter. Bursts of winning energy help every team handle sudden changes and requests, jump the hurdles, and win the day.
A marathoner. Picture a grueling project that is not a sprint. Marathoners are an endless pump of energy, hope, and action during the long haul.
A billboard of diversity. An employee who is of mixed culture, has lived in different countries, grew up with parents of different generations, etc… can bring a valuable renaissance of open-mindedness to the organization and resulting success.
A nexus of personality types. Personality type differences can often be the source of discord. People who border the different personality types (and yes they do exist), help smooth the rough edges and blend the diversity into success.
A double cookie. This is a phrase I coined for people who have great capacity to use their left and right brains together. Instead of being heavily left brain or tipping over to the creative right side, double cookies deliver the power of creative analysis and the big picture. They can spot when the team is trapped on either side or in a war between the two. They spotlight the juncture for team success.
An intuitive. Historically, workplace cultures have marginalized the value of intuition. That is slowly changing to embrace intuitives’ gift of the gut to speed team success.
An organizer. The natural organizer clears the path of complexity for all to reach simple success.
A transplant. The employee who has worked in many industries, or professions, or departments in the organization delivers the single greatest advantage to reducing silos. Let us not label them as unreliable. Let us benefit from their broad vision.
A rainmaker. This rare ability to create opportunities and attract new customers is not just for sales departments. A rainmaker fuels cross teamwork. A rainmaker can energize any team to the highest level of spirited performance.
A communicator. Great communication was, is, and will be the essential fuel and necessary glue of any organization. Celebrate those who do it well and let them be the model for the organization.

What must leaders do to salute these talents and their second bananas who have them?

Change compensation schemes that claim there must be some who outperform others and base bonuses on that scheme. When you retain tremendous talent who are feeding success, make sure you give them all the fruits of their labor.

Change compensation schemes that automatically pay more if someone switches into a management/leadership position. This has been discussed for years as the dual track issue and some organizations have made great strides.

Give testimonials on high performers to other departments. Employees who don’t want to climb the ladder may want to broaden their experience by working in other areas of the organization. When a leader praises their talents to other department leaders, that leader is saluting the employee’s talent. The leader is fueling the employee’s career success and the organization’s as well.

I look forward to the day when job interviewees will be respected for answering the question, Tell us a little about yourself, with “I’m a balance beam” or “I’m a velvet truth teller”. When companies change their vertical mindset to a broader talent view, they attract and retain the best.

From your unique perspective, what would you add to the list of 25 to make it a list of 50 valuable things to be? I welcome your contribution in the comments field below.

Many thanks!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

19 Comments »

Leaders, Are Your Teams Uncomfortable With Generosity?

Leaders, if you interviewed a potential employee with great skills and an exceedingly generous spirit, would you hire them? Would the existing team members be thrilled? Collaborating freely, giving 110%, supporting in difficult times — what’s not to like?

Generosity as a trait sure sounds like a dream come true.

Then why have I witnessed so many negative reactions to generosity in the workplace? This issue is worth exploring. It affects employee engagement, teamwork, talent retention, future hiring, and of course — end results.

Leaders, Are You Uncomfortable With Generosity? Image by:Howard Lake

Image by Howard Lake via Creative Commons License.

Generosity as a personal and professional trait takes those who display it and their organizations quite far.

Generosity lifts others up with ideas, information, resources, empathy and strength.
It paints a portrait of “we” instead of just “me”.
It develops everyone through the shared knowledge of each.
It fills gaps at just the right time to reach any goal.
It should breed the ultimate in collaboration and teamwork.

Uh-oh, back up. How did that should get in there?

Leaders and managers want to believe that a generous spirit breeds positive feelings and similarly generous reactions. And it surely can. But dreaming alone doesn’t make it universally so.

In truth, generosity can also:

Breed mistrust in those who haven’t worked with generous team players. e.g. “Are they for real?”
Ignite envy in those who haven’t yet tapped their own generous spirit or who burned it out. e.g. “Who do they think they are?”
Stir resentment among team members who think the generous ones are raising the performance bar. e.g. “Stop, you’re making us look bad.”
Awaken fear that generous team members will win promotions and perks over them. e.g. “They aren’t generous, they are kissing up.”

Leaders, You Can Cultivate the Benefits of Workplace Generosity

Question yourself. Do you truly believe in collaboration or are you grounded in a competitive spirit? Collaborative cultures fuel generous spirits and generous people sustain a collaborative approach to success. Competitive team cultures can deliver success yet they can stifle workplace generosity and collaboration. Which culture do you want? Which one is your leadership style and your actions creating?

Assess the team’s makeup. How well do the team members balance individual and team needs? Do they each think their main goal is to shine as they do their job? Are they all natural collaborators, competitors, or a mix? These work styles must blend to reach success and your leadership can foster this blend of me and we.

Explore and discuss culture. Don’t assume. Leaders and teams falter when they assume everyone naturally balances me and we. Team building that raises and addresses this issue delivers a boost to team results.

Be generous. Do you have a generous spirit? Do you give employees kudos on a regular basis or live the maxim, no news is good news? Being generous with your insight, knowledge, and feedback does more than model generosity. It spreads the culture as the teams realize how great generosity feels and how much it delivers to morale and to end results. Related post: 12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement

Have the teams define what generosity is and isn’t. Is it offering help? Or is it helping only when asked? Is it jumping in and doing what you can even if it is defined another team member’s responsibility? What is the difference between generosity and intrusiveness? For teams who are learning collaboration, this step is the turning point.

Find and remove the disincentives to generosity. If you want a generous collaborative culture, team rewards must be as significant and individual rewards. Make teamwork a tangible element of performance reviews. If you talk about collaboration, applaud it and decry self-serving actions. If you overlook it or make excuses for it, you will thwart the culture and undermine their trust in you.

From your experience, what is #7?

Generosity in the workplace is not just for non-profits. A culture of generosity magnifies your employee engagement efforts with the daily spirit of giving and collaboration.

Generous spirits break down silos and build bridges to new outcomes. They spread knowledge. Generous leaders and team members create a positive vibe that propels success especially in tough times of change.

Imagine an organization of knowledgeable, experienced, highly engaged, generous teams. Guess what — it can be real! Let’s make it happen together. I am here to help you as I have so many others.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

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Employee Engagement: Capture the Magic of the I’s in Team!

In a recent meeting, someone once again quoted the maxim “there is no I in team”. The adage sprang from good intentions — to focus all on the team goal above personal pet peeves.

Admittedly, it has inspired many people who were raised on sacrifice over self and worked as a metaphorical bat with self-centered people to refocus them on the team goal.

Meanwhile, it is a disincentive to many who are inspired to maximum commitment by contributing who they are to the bigger success. Hitting them with the same “there is no you” bat is the exact opposite of what they need to hear.

Employee Engagement: A bat might not create the magic home run for the team. Image by:lambdachialpha

Employee Engagement: The Magic of the I's in Team Image by:Purple Phoenix

When we use an inspirational wand instead of a bat, we engage employees with the magic of the I’s in team:

Insight emerges from an individual’s unique experiences and views. This “I” is critical to the vitality of any business. Squelch it and we gift other companies the competitive edge.

Integrity lives within a person as they work in the organizational culture leaders create. “There is no I in team” confuses the inner voice of integrity with the risk of being labeled a whistle blowing non-team player. We can silence the voices of integrity to the detriment of the organization or clearly champion integrity as a critical “I” in team.

Initiative may well be the one living force that a business can’t live without. We must create a positive environment where all team members feel inspired to imagine, invent, improve, and initiate for team success.
The old adage “there is no I in team” doesn’t light the fuse of initiative in today’s workforce. The request, “initiate team success with your talents”, does!

Individual talents are the essence of our hiring investment. We grow that investment by acknowledging the diverse talents and mentoring them into the light of team goals and organizational success.

Invaluable diversity gives teams their greatest successes and challenges. It is in the kaleidoscope of diversity we are likely to encounter the risky power of personal pet peeves.
It is here we are most likely to spout out in frustration, “there is no I in team”, hoping to trigger flexibility from each. Yet, it is far better to coach the team from diversity to a unity of success than to neutralize diversity to achieve give and take.

Help the team learn about and from each other as people and see the bonds of individual respect and teamwork grow.

Capture the Magic of the I’s in Team

Leaders, managers, team leads, supervisors resist the urge for neutralize individuality:

Recognize the individual strengths that complement and unite to overcome the toughest challenges.
If you have a rewards/recognition budget at the end of a tough project, reward each team member in a unique way as well as the team’s efforts and collective success. Beyond a team celebration, give small individualized gifts (gift card noting “for your next fishing trip”, or “to revel in your favorite dance video” or “for your favorite author’s next book”). Go one step further and encourage all to use an internal company social media site to share their reflections on how they enjoyed the gift or what they love about their hobby.
Coach each employee to learn from each others’ strengths. It turns diversity driven conflict into personal best with generous restraint.
“Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity through variety.” ~Mary Parker Follett
Honor team members with well-earned individual praise as well as team kudos. Your recognition and care for them as individuals engages self-sacrifice and contribution. It also models this behavior into a culture of peer to peer recognition and give and take.

There are many I’s in team and we can spark infinite commitment and unparalleled success when we capture the magic of the “I’s” we hired!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

12 Worthy Kudos to Spark Employee Engagement

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New Leaders, 10 Gritty Questions to Define Teamwork

Leaders, what behavior do you expect among team members? This is not a trivial question especially if you are new to leadership.

How you define teamwork shapes how you will inspire, lead, and facilitate or solve team difficulties.

Beyond the expectation that all work together to produce success is often the unstated hidden set of expectations that can silently unsettle or even destroy teamwork.

If you are a new leader, it’s valuable to sit back and admit to yourself your definition of teamwork. With clarity of your basic beliefs, you and the teams can have a better discussion to define teamwork.

New Leaders: 10 Gritty Questions to Define Teamwork

10 Gritty Questions to Better Define Teamwork

Does teamwork mean blunt frankness, diplomatic honesty, or ultimate polite respect? Team members have diverse styles. One blunt team member can offend others. One ultra polite team member can confuse others and fall short. What do you value and expect of them?

Does teamwork require caring for each other personally? If yes, to what extent? What if a team member has a serious illness in their family and amasses debt? Does teamwork mean that all show empathy and donate money to help out? Can a person be a good team member and not do that?
What if people don’t like each other personally but pull together to achieve success? Does that meet your definition of teamwork?

If one team member has a critical specialized skill or achieves more, does that entitle them to extra respect, special treatment, or more recognition from you? It happens and your view of it impacts teamwork.
Do you expect the team to work out their own interpersonal difficulties? There is much debate about this today. Some say yes and others see the leader as a valuable team facilitator.

What do you expect of existing team members when new members join? Would you expect them to actively welcome team members for quick integration? What if they are a bit skeptical and hold back to see what team members have to offer? Is that teamwork to you?

How will your teams work with other teams? Great teamwork within a team can sometimes stifle cross teamwork. What is your view and how would you address this issue?

Tight team member relationships produce one of the toughest teamwork issues – whistle blowing. What would you want a team member to do if aware of unethical behavior, bullying, or major mistakes by another team member? Is whistle blowing a duty or disloyalty to the team?

Disagreements occur. What place and purpose do they have in teamwork? Do you expect high levels of harmony or do you see value in discord?

How will you assess teamwork? By the interaction and end results or just end results? If you view only the end results, the team may think your expectations of their interaction as inconsistent and illogical.

When a leader asks me to improve team function, I ask the leader to paint their view for me and I speak separately with the team members. The comparison unearths the gaps and sketches a road map to high performance and success.

What is teamwork to you? I look forward to understanding your definition and working with you and your teams!

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Insights on Handling a Self-Serving High Performing Team Member

Team Whistle Blowing: Duty or Disloyalty?

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service & experience, teamwork, and leading change. Kate turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Leaders’ Dilemma: Self-Serving High Performing Team Member

Six months ago, a leader described this dilemma to me:

A team member who produced results with the other team members had fallen very ill. Let’s call this team member “Reach”.

When the leader approached the team members for a show of empathy, cards, flowers, and other help for “Reach”, many team members quietly avoided the subject and some clearly declined the outreach. The leader was shocked to learn that the team members saw Reach as a self-serving opportunist.

Leaders Dilemma: Self-Serving High Performing Team Member Image by: ErickGonzalez50

The concerned leader asked me to speak with the team members to learn more about the situation, what he had missed, and how to lead better in the future.

I agreed and asked the leader to think about his definition of teamwork in the interim.

Inside the Team Members’ Perspective

Reach was well-known for saying things like: “Always associate with people better than you to achieve success.” The team members wondered who Reach was referring to? Meanwhile, they perceived Reach overlooking them while always (metaphorically) looking up.

Reach helped himself grow — he didn’t help others to grow. He was also well-known for saying, “people give and help because they want to. They shouldn’t expect anything in return.”

Did they ever speak to the leader about Reach’s attitude? Two team members reported they had separately spoken to the leader who refocused the discussion on Reach’s work contribution and results. As they compared notes of the leader’s outlook — which they shared with the rest of the team — they felt is was futile to mention it again.

How had they been able to produce results with Reach while having these negative feelings? Interestingly, they had completely shut out personal feelings for Reach and focused purely on work results.

When the leader approached them for empathy, cards, flowers and other help for Reach, they were shocked. They had accepted the leader’s results only focus and said they felt both confused and betrayed by his call for personal help for Reach — when neither Reach nor the leader had cared about them. They asked me: What is the leader’s definition of teamwork? Getting the job done or caring for and helping each other to get the job done?

I reported my findings to the leader (without identifying who said what). He was stunned. I asked him for his definition of teamwork?

He told me he always believed that teamwork included caring and helping each other to grow.

When I asked him about his results focus with Reach, he confessed he didn’t know what else to do when the team members came to him about Reach’s attitude.

He didn’t see himself as a psychologist and quickly fell back on a traditional results only focus.

People-Skills & Leadership Lessons Learned?

The risk is blindness to plummeting morale that can affect future work results.

Fear can mesmerize and stop a leader from growing.

Awareness and listening are critical leadership skills.

well-known

It isn’t enough for a leader to let the team define teamwork.

The leader’s expectations of teamwork are critical in difficult times.

If you truly believe in a results only focus, be clear and consistent about it.

What Do You Think?

-What other lessons do you glean from this dilemma filled story?

-What does it leave you wondering? What other leadership questions does it raise?

-Are you concerned that you will lose high performing team members if you include more than just results in the definition of teamwork?

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

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Do Brilliant Minds Breed Bad Teamwork?

Brilliant Minds & Teamwork Image by:Chechi Pe

A call came in from the Human Resources Director of a large prestigious law firm. The challenge?

Build more respect and teamwork between the most brilliant legal minds in the law practice and the support staff.

And not just any brilliant minds. These were the elite attorneys in cutting edge and high powered niches, all with double (some triple) degrees.

Support staff felt demoralized. Some had left. Turnover was on the rise. The HR director quipped in exasperation:

Do brilliant minds breed bad teamwork?!

Certainly everyone deserves to be treated with respect. HR and the attorney relations department addressed the few cases of actual verbal abuse. Yet the HR director wanted better daily interactions, teamwork, and morale throughout the organization.

She gave me examples of the interaction between the super educated brilliant attorneys and the support staff. I also spoke with support staff.

There was good news. The hurdles were from different levels of drive for achievement — not from a deeply rooted disrespect for support staff.

Now for the solution. The HR director noted that access to the attorneys’ time was very limited. So we first held workshops with the support staff to rebuild morale and build skill in supporting high achievers.

It was remarkable to see the support staff zealously embrace these basic beliefs of brilliant minds:

Commitment turns intelligence into brilliance. “I am always learning — please do the same.”
Facilitate and sustain my achievement or get out of the way.
The organization expects me to hit the high bar. Please jump higher with me!
Shine at what you do so I can continue to shine at what I do.
Come at me with solutions to problems — not just the problem! Otherwise, get out of the way.

Support staff remarked that this picture was one of continuous striving and learning not a desire to demean. They had never perceived it that way.

From this awareness, we re-mapped how to speak and behave in support of these high achievers.

Some say it is unfair to ask the support staff to learn new support skills instead of asking high achieving attorneys to change their ways.

Yet, high achieving revenue producing professionals respond, “If you ask me to put the feelings of teamwork ahead of results, the organization will achieve less. Why can’t we all step it up and achieve more?”

Success lies in both. Put limits on the demeaning behaviors, like verbal abuse, and train support staff, as we did, to work from the high achiever’s view. It transformed attitudes, performance, respect, and teamwork!

So to answer the initial question — Do brilliant minds breed bad teamwork? No. But a difference in expectations, drive, and goals, does.

From professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service, customer experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

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Profitable Leadership & Team Secrets of Personality Types

Behind the labels of personality types lie the secrets to more profitable leadership and teamwork.

Workplace leaders often assess team member personality types — amiable, expressive, analytic, driver — and then get busy and do little with it. As I work with them and their teams, I highlight the profitable secrets they can tap.

The Profitable Leadership & Team Secrets of Personality Types

Personality type impacts understanding and outcomes of leaders and teams. It guides you on how best to engage employees. It can make or break employee ability to thrive in organizational change.

Secrets of Personality Types:

Employee Engagement

Amiable personality types come alive through personal connection. If you want to tap the profit they can bring to the business, build interpersonal bonds with them. A just the facts approach makes them feel lonely and demoralized. You do not have to be their best friend yet if you skip the bonding you skip the profit. In today’s world of remote technology, remember to connect with amiable types face to face or on the phone. Video conference with remote amiable type employees for a winning solution!

Expressive personality types shine in and through communication. Two-way communication, a critical skill of any good leader, brings these people to full contribution. If you are fast paced, results-oriented and minimize communication, these expressive types feel shunned. You are leaving the profit by the wayside.

Analytic personality types function in an ordered thought process. They have much to contribute if you always allow for some ordered discussion. If you are brainstorming, take a small pause to capture the analytic’s ideas. If you are a highly creative leader, summarize your thoughts in an ordered manner after your creativity. Skip the order and you leave analytic types frustrated and the value they provide, suppressed.

Driver personality types crave end results and achievement. Give them the big picture, highlight critical milestones and risk factors, and then let them deliver. If you micro-manage them or ask them to have lengthy discussions on non-critical factors, they feel trapped and repressed. Although many other types dislike micro-management, driver types resent it for you are keeping them from the brass ring! They may look for a new position that gives them a real shot.

During Times of Great Organizational Change

Double driver leaders intent on pushing through massive change often overwhelm the other personality types because they focus only on the results. They issue announcements instead of holding all hands meetings. They tell themselves it’s all for organizational results. Yet the methods they use are self-serving and fulfill their driver personality type needs. Ironically, they are leaving the profit of personality types untapped and results suffer.

Likewise, amiable type leaders can get caught up in feelings and bonding sacrificing the organizational change goal. It doesn’t have to be that way. I have seen amiable leaders use their incredible bonding skills to rally support for the change and tap everyone’s talent to make it happen.

Analytic type leaders may falter in organizational change if they demand too much information before making decisions. In this case, analytics do well to trust the other personality types on the team and profit from their decision skills.

Expressive type leaders often shine in organizational change because they are natural communicators. They must remember to engage in two-way communcation. Profit from the analytic, amiable, and driver types’ ideas by remembering to let them express!

To engage employees and lead them in tough times of change, tap the profit in their personality types.

If instead you revel in the comfort of your own personality type, you leave the profit for the (next) adaptable leader.

Related post: GPS Your Brain to Work With Any Personality Type

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results.

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The Greatest Unsolvable Obstacles to Cross Teamwork

Teamwork within one team is quite achievable. Cross teamwork (between teams in an organization) remains the elusive brass ring of effectiveness.

Leaders who want to break through an organization’s performance barriers find the greatest — seemingly unsolvable — obstacles in cross teamwork. Much has been studied and tested yet the obstacles persist.

For this reason, it is worthwhile to look at the issues again.

The Greatest Unsolvable Obstacles to Cross Teamwork Image by:EvaTheWeaver

The Greatest Unsolvable Obstacles to Cross Teamwork

Perhaps listing the seemingly unsolvable obstacles here will bring new focus and insight — especially for new leaders and managers in the thick of it.

Shared Goals With Greatly Opposing Pathways. We can all nod our heads and say yes this happens. Experts will chime in with facilitation techniques and processes that can resolve the differences. Wonderful. Yet when this happens in between teams in great volume, it represents a loss of performance.

Individual Preservation. An obstacle that surprises many is a rogue individual acting purely from self-preservation.
An illustration: In an episode of the old television show MASH, the unit calls for ambulances to take the post-op patients away to make room for the new wounded. A corporal at HQ refuses to send the ambulances because he was told to take care of those Army resources. A general finally says to him, I can see you care about the ambulances. Why don’t you drive them up here yourself to ensure their safety! The corporal then releases the ambulances. The general identified the cross teamwork barrier – self preservation — and turned it into a solution.

Are any team members so risk averse that they are taking actions that actually prevent cross teamwork and organizational success? The first place to look for this is in areas where leaders have stressed security, monitoring, metrics, and strict processes. Has it gone too far?

Too Much Change and Chaos. When high volume organizational change creates a feeling of total chaos, the results on cross teamwork can be disastrous. Each team, struggling to grasp the new direction, closes in a virtual huddle to manage the chaos. Reaching out to other teams would feel like increased chaos.
How steep is your change curve? It might look great in strategy sessions yet if it puts the teams into preservation mode, it creates a performance barrier instead of solving one.

Mistaken Empowerment. Many an organization has dipped in performance as a result of mistaken empowerment. When a leader taps someone who is not ready or capable of key responsibility, many teams shut down in response to the incompetence. If it’s within a team, the leader can more easily correct the mistake. Yet when this mistake affects other teams, it affects cross teamwork and organizational performance.

Politics and Hidden Agendas. After a leadership strategy session, does each leader send the same message to his or her team? If leaders, consiously or subconsiously filter the strategy through their political or private agendas, the message comes out differently to each team. The obstacles to cross teamwork are enormous in this case because they may be hidden. The teams nod in agreement over stated goals yet each team is acting on the message received from its leader.

There are other obstacles to cross teamwork including different occupational perspectives, incompatible technology, time zones, cultural differences and so forth. However, concrete steps tend to remove these barriers.

The 5 greatest obstacles noted above take root and the effects spread like weeds strangling organizational performance. They seem unsolvable even though they aren’t. Awareness, vision, commitment, courage, and action can turn it around. Who will initiate it? That’s the question.

What say you? Would you add to this list of 5? Subtract? Or do you disagree?

From my experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers consulting, training, DVDs, and keynotes that turn interaction obstacles into business success especially in tough times of change. See this site for workshop outlines and customer results.

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