Team & Culture Building
The Great Eight: Grace
(This post was first published here on September 19, 2016.) Grace is a unique aspect of great teams. It’s also something that is seldom talked about by experts in team performance. Do you remember what we meant we used the term “grace” at our offsite where we explored the eight characteristics of great teams? The definition we used…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: Knowing Yourself and Others
(This post was first published here on September 12, 2016.) If everyone were just more like me, the world would be a better place—or at least my organization would be—or at least my team would be. Besides being an entirely narcissistic statement, it would not be the case that if our teams simply had more uniformity,…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: Talent
(This post was first published here on September 6, 2016.) In order to be a great team, there are specific tasks that need to be done very well. The word “talent” describes what is required in order to achieve each of these tasks with excellence. Great teams have the right mix of people who have the…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: Trust
(This post was first published here on August 30, 2016.) As I write this post, there are 6,289 books on trust available under the Business and Money category on Amazon. What can we possibly add to all that wisdom? Maybe nothing. But please keep reading anyway. Trust is foundational to great teams, and so far—even in those…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: Communication
(This post was first published here on August 22, 2016.) Communication is truly one of the key characteristics of great teams. Effective communication is rarely identified as a strength in the teams I’ve had the privilege to observe over the past twenty years. In fact, when doing a cultural assessment, most of the teams I’ve worked…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: Commitment
(This post was first published here on August 15, 2016.) In Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, he lists five characteristics of a dysfunctional team. One of those five is “the lack of commitment.” When people have not had the opportunity to air their opinion or challenge others, they often do not have the…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: Common Goals
(This post was first published here on August 8, 2016.) Imagine you are running a race. All the runners gather together, stretching muscles, bouncing on the balls of their feet to warm up, drinking a last few sips of water, popping in their earbuds. The loudspeaker fires up to give the final warning, the starting gun…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: An Introduction
(This post was first published here on August 1, 2016.) Throughout our year together in LEAD 365, we focused on three “buckets” of leadership—three areas that great leaders need to focus on: Being a person worth following Creating clarity around purpose/mission, vision, and values Building a great team In our building a great team sessions,…
Read MoreAnatomy of a Value
I’ve been taking a deeper dive into the DoKnowBe Tree as of late—especially the relationship between beliefs and values. I’ve known for a long time that beliefs and values are intricately woven together. I suspect that values (those things that we hold as most important) come right out of our beliefs (those things we know to be true…
Read MoreThe Slacker in Your Midsts
Fellow leaders, One of the key teachings in the book Switch is that the more we can turn people problems into situational problems, the more likely we are to see successful change—even when change is hard. And the more we can look at others with the mindset of”that’s the situation they are in” versus “that’s just…
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