Posts Tagged ‘the great eight’
The Great Eight: Wrap Up
(This post was first published here on October 3, 2016.) I’ve served on a whole lot of teams in my life, some great, some not-so-great, and I can say without hesitation that the team I work with at Leading by DESIGN is the best, healthiest, most connected team I’ve worked on. I think the four…
Read MoreThe Great Eight: Chemistry
(This post was first published here on September 26, 2016.) Chemistry is the last of our eight characteristics of great teams. This is the most difficult of the eight characteristics to write about as it’s the one I understand the least. I believe we can teach you how to grow the other seven characteristics
Read MoreThe 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 MoreTrust
Trust is at the heart of building great teams. Without it, a cascade of negative things that hurt the team takes place: reluctance to have healthy conflict, unwillingness to make commitments, avoidance of accountability, and a failure to look at real results (Lencioni—The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team). In LEAD 365 we also learned another set…
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