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As The People-Skills Coach, I start this post with the assumption that you are willing to take ownership of the impact your actions and words have on others. You are ready to deliver the perfect apology!

Well the perfect apology is found in simple sincerity and the ONE word that destroys it is …

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IF

I am sorry IF I hurt you. IF? Do you own it or not? Do you care to rebuild my trust or not?

I am sorry IF that came across as … IF? You are aware that it came across badly so why waver?

We are sorry IF we have not met your business needs. IF? We wouldn’t be discussing it otherwise.

Your intentions don’t matter much if a team member or a customer is offended by what you have said or done. Rebuild the trust with a sincere apology as soon as you are aware of his/her reaction.

Replace IF with THAT or FOR and see the difference.

I am sorry THAT I hurt you.
I am sorry FOR the impact this had on you.
I am sorry THAT came across as …
We are sorry THAT we have not met your business needs. We will …

Why does this little change make a big difference to others? Because it is clear that you are putting their needs ahead of your pride. Simple sincerity makes for the perfect apology.

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Are there are other words that destroy the perfect apology?
What apology format have you found successful?

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach in This Technical World goes far beyond etiquette and body language in her training sessions and DVDs. She delivers insights on human needs that catapult customer care and teamwork to refreshingly new heights. KateNasser.com to see footage, workshop outlines, and other blog posts.

The best teamwork in the workplace requires great people-skills. As a team member what you say and how you say it impacts productivity and teamwork today and tomorrow and down the road. Phrases that team members see as disrespectful (regardless of your intentions) can bury teamwork and your workplace relationship.

For all team members and leaders who like practical information for the best teamwork and people-skills, here’s a checklist of four phrases to bury and never use again!

Bury These Phrases for Best Teamwork

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1. “Whatever!” The current popularity of this phrase does not lessen its sting. You are basically saying to your team member: “your thoughts don’t matter to me”. This will leave scars that damage teamwork. It you disagree with a team member, then say I disagree. If you are frustrated because they are talking endlessly, then say “we are short on time today…”. Bury the phrase whatever and don’t ever dig it up!
   
   
2. “All you’ve done is ….” The culprit here is the word all. It packs whatever you are about to say with emotion — negative emotion. A colleague of mine was speaking with a networking contact who was a driver/driver personality type. The contact said to my colleague about her work “All you’ve done is invent a job for yourself.” The networking contact’s “all you’ve’ done is …” phrase is insulting and demeaning. On a team, this phrase could leave a scar between team members that never heals. Bury this phrase all you’ve done is … deep in the ground so it doesn’t ooze up during a flood!
   
   
3. “Don’t you think …?” Most of the time, people use this phrase to pressure someone into agreement. Much better to state what you believe (“I think”) and ask the team members what they think. “Don’t you think we should or …” is a passive aggressive way of expressing disagreement and often triggers resistance and emotion. To reach an end goal, put the issues on the table for the team members to directly discuss. Bury the phrase don’t you think … and replace it with what do you think?.
   
   
4. “I’m sorry you feel I have …”. This is one of the most common and is a most offensive phrase — whether you say it in the workplace or in your personal life. Said on a team, it is deadly. The culprit here are the words you feel. If someone has told you that you have offended, hurt, insulted … them, offer a simple direct apology I am sorry. If you want to go further, use and I am sorry for the impact this has had on you. Bury your fear of apologizing along with the phrase I’m sorry you feel I have …. You will be respected for your courage and your caring.
   
   

What other phrases would you bury?

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers transformational team building and customer relations sessions to corporations across many industries. For 20 years, her energy and experience has activated teamwork and service improvements in the toughest situations. See testimonials on this site.
BS Mathematics, Masters in Organizational Psychology.

Much is said and written about developing trust to build great teams and teamwork. Yet a twist on trust (or perhaps a twisted view of trust) destroys the best teamwork. My team building article today is short in length yet big in impact. Here’s the story, the lesson, and the call to action for leaders.

The Story

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A team leader and one of this team members were working on a project together.  The team leader is both analytic and conceptual. He has a great ability to see how things will fit together even during the early stages. As he  was communicating the various pieces of the project, his team member asked for the order of how the pieces would fit together. The team leader’s response was trust me.

The team member listened a while longer but got more and more lost.  This time he said to the the team leader: “I am lost. But if we could go over the order of how this fits together, it will bring me back on track .”  Once again, the team leader’s response was “Trust me. I am here for you. You are too nervous.”

Hiding his frustration from the team leader, the team member explained that it wasn’t a matter of trust. It was about how people learn and absorb information. Just because the team leader understood what he himself was saying didn’t mean that others understood him.

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The Lesson Questions do not automatically mean a lack of trust. It could simply mean a lack of understanding. Questions are also a sign of interest and teamwork. Do you or your team members misjudge questions as a sign of mistrust or lack of teamwork?


Call to Action! In this story it was the team leader who twisted trust as a substitute for good communication. Another time it could be a team member. Is this occurring on your teams? Do you have anyone substituting a call for trust for clear communication?
This twist on trust can destroy the best teamwork because confused people disengage. When the communicator isn’t clear and won’t clarify, other members of a team lose trust, respect, and interest in the team goals. Look around your team. Observe and listen. If this is happening, coach the trust twisters to improve their communication. The individuals, the team, and the business will benefit in the end.

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, has been doing team building and improving teamwork in companies for over 20 years. Her intuition, insight, and practical solutions to teamwork issues deliver tangible bottom line improvements to your business.

Some leaders see conflict as active teamwork that produces the best ideas. Other leaders see conflict as non-teamwork. It is likely that conflict will occur on teams. The key question is: What are the best ways for leaders to address conflict for the best teamwork results?

I asked leaders: How do you address conflict on and between teams to get great teamwork results regardless of the situation?

The responses I received:

1. The best way to address conflict to ensure teamwork results is: “Select individual team members for their great attitude and for their ability to work on diverse teams in difficult situations.”
   
2. “We deal with each conflict as it arises. I first ask the people to work it out. If they can’t, I step in and resolve the conflict.”
3. “I tell everyone to stay focused on the team goals and overlook the rest.”
   
4. “I am not a baby sitter. Team members are adults. I tell them to work it out between them.”
   
5. “I don’t like conflict.  I try to make peace as quickly as possible when I am confronted. I am not sure how to arbitrate disputes when it is between two other people.”

Try My Proven Practices to Address Team Conflict

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Distinguish between opposing views and opposing each other. The first can lead to a great result. The second goes nowhere. You will clearly see which is happening once you are aware.

Have each person present the other person’s view. This helps turn the conflict into a productive exchange of ideas. Teach this technique and moderate while they are learning.

Hold a team development session to assess each team member’s personality type and discuss how to interact for best teamwork results. A diverse team often produces better results because it has more outlooks and talents. Yet, if team members do not know or understand the dynamics of personality types, you get interpersonal conflict or cliques of similar types. Personality types impact teamwork. Understanding personality types helps to both prevent and resolve interpersonal conflict. The return on your investment of time and money is significant.

Ask yourself, what conditions are leading to this conflict? As a leader, have you been unclear about goals? Have you fallen short in handling organizational politics and put teams at odds with each other? Do you hide from conflict and hope it will just go away?

Instead, show everyone how to communicate honestly with respect and without brutality. Read more at … 4 Spring Training Exercises for Best Teamwork Results

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, consults and trains leaders and their teams on effective communication for best teamwork results. Her 20 years of real life experience has produced these proven results. Sign up for her free info-packed newsletter in the sidebar on this page. Contact her directly for a free phone consultation on your team challenge.

Every spring, baseball teams in America start training for the summer season. They all go through spring training every year to produce the best team results even though they already know each other and know how to play. It boosts their performance and teamwork. It also helps integrate new members onto the team.

I have never used sports analogies before in my articles and sessions on team building and people-skills (also known as soft skills). Yet this spring it creates a timely and very clear image.

Corporate teams are still reeling from seeing many of their colleagues get laid off and performing more work with fewer team members. Teams have also faced great demands to adapt to extreme change. It has unsettled them and they need help.

After 2009, the year of corporate difficulty, isn’t it time to boost your team’s spirit, performance, and teamwork?

Spring train your teams with these team building exercises:

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1. Respect. Simple human respect for each others’ talents and differences reinvigorates a team’s spirit. So run the respect around the table before a meeting as a spring training team building exercise! People are different. Respect and celebrate the differences to bring a tired team back to life.
   




2. Honesty not brutality. After a long winter or a tough year, everyone can use a breath of fresh spring air. The pet peeve exercise breathes new life into every team. Team members honestly state one pet peeve (an action or statement – not a person) that others should not do or say around them. You will be amazed at the far reaching results of this little spring training exercise.




3. Legends in the making. Legendary performance comes from turning pressure, challenges, and tough times into opportunities to learn and achieve. But you have to stop briefly and realize just how far you’ve come! Have your teams list everything they have accomplished in the last year or two so they can see how legendary their performance has been through the difficulties. Use that spirit to spring them forward.




4. Fun and humor. Humor that highlights the absurdities of life can refuel the human spirit. A little homework on the Web can find chuckles for everyone to share. Avoid humor that makes fun of any particular group of people. It can offend. Choose jokes or scenarios that every human would find funny.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, has delivered transformational team building and customer relations sessions to corporations across many industries for 20 years. Her energy and experience activate teamwork and service improvements in the toughest situations. BS Mathematics, Masters in Organizational Psychology.

Team success in a diverse workplace requires more than a common goal. Respecting the differences is key. Each team member must be willing to flex their style and adapt to others.  Once again people-skills, also known as soft skills, impact the tangible results in business.  In this case, the people-skill needed for team success is an individual willingness as well as the skill to embrace others’ styles and blend yours for the team’s success.

The underlying support for this is a basic respect for the differences. Engage your teams in a discussion on this topic. You may be surprised at what they say! Here’s a short inspirational video to help you get started:

1. Respect the differences
2. Learn to love the differences
3. Find the fit

Now picture an organization using this definition of teamwork: Growth and change within team members to achieve a common success.  It’s applicable to this century, is very clear — and it works. 

This definition of teamwork creates startling results when you use it with these precious gems.

RUBY. Passion for learning. When you create a learning (not training) culture, the team exercises its change muscles. Learning is change and one that most people welcome since it enhances their careers and no one can fail. 
The startling result is a stream of new contributions because all are involved in continuous improvement.

Creativity increases and critical thinking improves. Athletic teams regularly exercise for improved performance and theater troupes explore new ideas for this same reason. Unfortunately teams focused on production often get locked in daily routines. Create startling new results with a learning culture.

Action Item: Pick one topic related to business, teamwork, service, sales, or technology. Have each team member Google/Bing on the topic and collate those results online.  At a virtual team meeting, take 15 minutes for team members to identify aloud what info they can use and how.  Make this a weekly event and watch the teams create, collaborate, and flex to changing needs.

 

 

EMERALD. Leader with a confident ego. If you have a learning culture, the leader must feel confident even with constructive dissenters and creative strategic thinkers on the team. This confident leader is the emerald gem of teamwork reminding us all of The Wizard of Oz. Toward the end of the movie the curtain is drawn back to reveal there is no all-powerful wizard. He is instead a wise caring person.  His insights flow from there.

 

 

 

SAPPHIRE. Human bonding on diverse and distributed teams.  The evil of isolation due to distance or differences undermines the full potential of teams. Picture world-wide technology rollout teams who have never met, come from different cultures, and rotate team members. If no bonding is addressed, the teams will fall short of full success. Use video-based virtual meetings to introduce team members. Build understanding on topics of personality type, generational differences, cultural norms, learning style, and pet peeves!

 

 

 

DIAMOND. The I’s in Team. There are several I’s in teamwork – individual initiative and identity committed to the team. Respect and acknowledge individual talents contributed to the whole. It inspires greater contributions and willingness to share and teach. Some organizations call this the essential piece culture where each person knows how s/he contributes to the whole success.

 

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach, delivers team building workshops, distance bonding, and innovative solutions for startling team results.

Are you a natural collaborator or a natural competitor?  The immediate answer from many people is I can do both.  Sure but that isn’t the question.  Understanding your natural style can be of great help in your work life.  It can have substantially deeper impact on your broader everyday life as it frames how you see and react to various situations.

A few questions to ponder.

Do you a have a strong reaction to either word — collaboration or competition?  When you hear these words, what thoughts jump to your mind?  Which word makes you feel better?

Picture a highway where traffic is moving. You are in the far left lane.  Someone up ahead quite a bit signals they are moving into the left lane.  Do you generally speed up or stay at your speed? 

When someone jumps in and starts talking to you about something you are doing, what is your reaction?  Do you see their involvement as an intrusion and/or an attempt to direct you?  Or do you start out by assuming they are interested or collaborating?

If you were standing in the First Class/Elite line at a gate to board an airplane and someone came up and asked you “Are you in First Class?”, what would you think they were asking?  How would you respond?  I witnessed this.  To me it was clear that the passenger asking wanted to figure out if it was the First Class line.  The passenger that she asked, replied ”Yes, I can follow directions.”   She saw the question as a challenge to her competence rather than a need for help and collaboration.

How would you react to this recent tweet by @1paisley on Twitter?  “If U were arrested 4 being kind, would thr B enough evidence 2 convict U?” ~Author unknown.  My question here is not meant to suggest that competitors are unkind. Yet if you are turned off by this tweet, I propose that you are not a natural collaborator.

What difference does all this make?  Well both in work and in everyday life we encounter diverse people.  Relationships, teamwork, outcomes, and the possibility of success with other people depend on knowing yourself and understanding others.  

If you are a natural collaborator, realize that natural competitors may see your involvement as a competition or a challenge.  If you are a natural competitor, remember that natural collaborators may see you as uncooperative.  One key step for either type to use in bridging the gap — communicate your intention before your message.  Try it — it works!

Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

Great Teamwork: Competitive or Collaborative?

“Is great teamwork competitive or collaborative?”   This is the one question I still face after 20 years of team-building in corporations across diverse industries.  In today’s tough economy with great business challenges, the question is front and center once again.

It is popular right now to call for collaboration – in politics, in government, and in business.  Yet are your team members more frightened by the potential for job loss than they are inspired by success through collaboration? The old belief, knowledge is power, may be a hidden yet active virus affecting how far your teams go in collaboration.

Some tangible examples.  Which category on this list applies to you?

Sales Departments Your company wants to capture a new sector.  There is a learning curve involved.  Are your Sales Reps sharing knowledge learned with all the other reps to help the company reach its goal of capturing a new sector?  Or are they tempted to share less in a competitive team atmosphere to achieve individual sales goals?

Customer Service Solution Centers: Solution Centers and Help Desks are the front lines of service to customers and clients.  Customer satisfaction goes up the sooner the rep can accurately solve the problem.  When a rep receives a call s/he doesn’t know how to solve, do other reps freely offer their knowledge and creative problem solving?  Or do they focus on their own calls and follow-throughs to be ranked high in # of calls taken and closed?  Do you inspire knowledge sharing?

Project Teams: Years back in IT, I was on several project teams.  Many were collaborative because all the pieces had to fit together for the project to succeed.  Yet I recall two project teams where knowledge didn’t flow.  The reply instead was “Give that piece to me and I will do it.”  Those of us sharing knowledge spoke to our manager about this concern.  His response was: Well some people don’t like to share their knowledge.  His comment was a small revelation about his beliefs on teamwork.

As a leader, how can you assess whether your teams are more collaborative or competitive?

In your next team meeting, have team members discuss a current team issue which affects them individually and about which they have differing opinions. Have them come up with possible solutions.  Observe how they interact and what solutions they develop. It will give you insight on how they balance their individual needs vs. coming up with solutions that meet the team goal.  Are they more competitive or collaborative in their approach?  Would their solutions bring team success?  Did they meet your expectations for team collaboration or competition?

How can you unearth if the knowledge is power virus is alive on your teams?

Hold a “Food for Thought” symposium. In advance of this meeting, send out an invitation to each team member asking them to create a “menu” of 5 knowledge items they will share with the rest of the team. Purpose of the symposium: to strengthen everyone’s knowledge and performance.

• Item #1 should be a true “food” item they like to eat. For this item, they must outline what they like about the food, a very short history of that food, and how long they have eaten it. Have fun with this segment. It creates a positive environment and team interaction.
• Items #2-4 must be job related knowledge. Each team member takes turns presenting her/his menu and fielding questions.
  Observe the depth of knowledge team members share. Do some contribute only surface level knowledge? Or are most engaged in true knowledge sharing?

This Food for Thought symposium also builds awareness of who knows what for subsequent teamwork, can develop presentation skills, and connects a fun vibe to knowledge sharing.

You are welcome to share this info with other people, on other blogs, on other website, and in articles.  I ask only that you credit me as the source with URL link (www.smartpeopleskills.com) to continue sharing.

Discussion and Comments

So what is your philosophy of teamwork?  Teams use different approaches.  I would love to have your questions, comments, and perspectives here.  I encourage debate.  I ask only that it is civil.  Despite the online trend toward wild sometimes insulting exchanges, I think people can hear better when they are not insulted.

1. Does a competitive spirit between team members strengthen teamwork and morale?
2. Does individual competition between team members inspire them to work harder and smarter?
3. Would it be better to have a collaborative spirit to help each other rather than compete with each other on a team?
4. Are you seeing knowledge sharing on teams that are pressed to do more with less in this economy?

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach
Thanks for 20 years and counting …
MA Organizational Psychology
www.smartpeopleskills.com
908.595.1515