Teams and teamwork

Brainstorming Exercises

Brainstorming is one of those simple tools that is poorly understood, and even more poorly used. By using some simple Brainstorming Exercises, you can reap the maximum benefit from this simple concept. Below, we talk about the following aspects of Brainstorming Exercises:

When (and when not) to use brainstorming exercises
Where Brainstorming Exercises fit in
Types of Brainstorming Exercises:
- At a flipchart
- The Affinity Diagram
- The Delphi Method
- The Stepladder technique
3 things to remember about Brainstorming Exercises

When to Use Brainstorming Exercises:

Brainstorming Exercises are not something to do on a whim. There are specific circumstances that best lend themselves to Brainstorming Exercises:

When you want to generate a number of ideas quickly.
When you want to engage a group or team in problem solving.
When you need to be innovative and creative.

When Not to Use Brainstorming Exercises:

Brainstorming Exercises are not to be used in all cases. In particular, you should not use them:

When you already know the answer or solution you will use. Never string people along giving them they illusion they have input, when they really don’t.
When you’re not looking for options or feedback. In some cases, a manager will not want to solicit her team for feedback.
If you or your organization is too conservative to do anything differently. If all of their ideas are going to be shot down, you are better off not asking your team for ideas.

Where Brainstorming Exercises fits in

Brainstorming is one piece of the process of generating ideas and implementing them:

Frame the question. Ensure you have a clear idea of the question your asking or problem you are trying to solve.
Brainstorm ideas and options. Use some of the options here to generate ideas.
Evaluate ideas and options. After brainstorming, you will want re-engage your more critical brain.
Move to Action. All the ideas you generate in a brainstorm are useless unless you do something about them.

Brainstorming Exercises

At a flipchart

Start with a specific question. Ensure that your group all has a common understanding of the question or problem statement.
Use green-light thinking only. There should be no evaluation or criticism at this point.
Use more than one scribe to get ideas happening in rapid succession.
Tell everyone to start their sentence with “Yes, and…” , and go around the group in sequence.
Once you have run out of ideas to write down, you can go back and begin to evaluate and condense your ideas.

Affinity Diagram

Start with a specific question. Ensure that your group all has a common understanding of the question or problem statement.
Have everyone write his/her ideas on a Post-It note.
Assign two people to put the Post-Its into categories.
Get two more people to edit the categories yet again
If there are a large number of ideas, you may want to refine the categories several times.

Delphi Method

Start with a clear question. Ensure that your group has a common understanding of the question or problem statement.
Have people write down their ideas anonymously, and send them to a facilitator, or collector of ideas that is viewed as neutral.
This is normally done outside of a meeting.
Schedule a meeting and present all the ideas generated to the participants.
Evaluate and condense ideas.

Stepladder technique

Provide a clear question to all members of the group. Ensure that your group all has a common understanding of the question or problem statement.
Have two members meet to discuss their individual ideas one on one.
Introduce a third member who presents her ideas to the first two. The first two member would then discuss their ideas with the newcomer.
Add group members one at a time. This can be done over the course of several meetings.
Once all group members have contributed, evaluate and condense ideas.

3 Things to Remember About Brainstorming Exercises

Brainstorming isn’t a free-for-all. To get the benefit from brainstorming, you should put some structure around it.
There are variations that may be more appropriate to your situation.
Beware of the extroverts, and encourage the introverts. Extroverts are very comfortable throwing ideas around and verbalizing their ideas. Introverts have as much to contribute, but need to be drawn out.

Cross Cultural Conflict

A few years ago, I did a project with a company that was a joint venture between a British Company, an American Company, and a Canadian one. It was in the Utility sector, so you would assume that very similar parent companies, from very similar countries would have no problem integrating their cultures. This was an excellent example of why one should never assume.

The United States and Canada are both former colonies of the UK, and all three countries share a language (with respect to the one-third of Canadians who are French speakers). How different could they be?

On Managing Conflict:

Americans argue hard for their viewpoint, and ultimately get along at the end of the day
The British are much more reserved and polite, but will express dissent.
Canadians avoid conflict at all costs – often to their detriment

On Working Hours:

Americans work 12 hours a day, and rarely take more than a few days off in a row
The British work hard on a daily basis. They also have 8 weeks vacation (holiday) per year, and take a minimum of two weeks off at a time.
Canadians are about half way in between the two, unless there’s a hockey game on TV, in which case they go home early.

On Dealing with Governments (we were constantly moving people between the three countries)

The American Government was a nightmare to work with. They constantly change immigration rules, and won’t provide any reasons or justifications for doing so.
The British Government was consistent, although highly bureaucratic and cumbersome in its process.
The Canadian Government was consistent with its expressed goal of making it easy for skilled people to enter and work in that country.

On Language

Americans speak “Microsoft English” – the easiest and most identifiable form of the language.
The British contingent from England spelled some things differently, but otherwise communicated well. The Scottish contingent constantly baffled all the rest of us with their use of the language.
The Canadians sounded like the Americans; spelled like the British; and threw in some French spellings just to throw everyone else off.

On the Metric System

The United States is the only country in the world that still uses the outdated and cumbersome Imperial Measurement system.
The British were very frustrated when they hopped in their Audis and BMWs that the speed limit was 65mph, rather than 110 kph.
The Canadians were baffled that 32 degrees was miserably cold, rather than miserably hot.

On “Entitlement Mentality”

Americans don’t feel much entitlement, but rather feel the individual is responsible for his/her own circumstances.
The British have some Entitlement Mentality – particularly when it came to the private American health care system. (“I have to pay for this!?!?”)
The Canadians had a bad case of entitlement mentality. Perhaps it was because most of the people working there had been government employees before the utility was privatized.

In the end, we managed to make this company work, but don’t ever underestimate cross-cultural issues even in seemingly similar cultures.

Encouraging Conflict

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So why would anyone want to encourage conflict? Below we talk about the following aspects of Encouraging Conflict:

Why Encouraging Conflict is Good
Warning Signs that your team doesn’t have enough conflict
Steps to Encouraging Conflict
Three Things to Remember about Encouraging Conflict

Why Encouraging Conflict is Good

Teams that don’t have enough conflict run the risk of sub-optimizing their performance.

Conflict often extracts the best ideas. Discussion that involves respectful disagreement yields results and insights that would not otherwise surface.
By Encouraging Conflict crucial topics get addressed and real solutions are discussed and determined.
Encouraging Conflict stifles the “pocket veto” and backroom politics. It ensures that disagreement and dissent occur within the meeting, rather than outside it.

Warning Signs that Your Team Doesn’t Have Enough Conflict

Your meetings are BORING. If everyone always agrees, then you may need to do a better job of Encouraging Conflict.
Back-channel politics and personal attacks thrive. Without Encouraging Conflict, the meeting ends, and then the real discussion takes place without all the players at the table.
Your team avoids controversial topics even when they are critical to team success.
Silence is viewed as agreement … and many team members remain silent. If your team meetings are very quiet, you may need to Encouraging Conflict.

Steps to Encouraging Conflict

Create a safe environment by starting with Team Trust. If there is a low level of trust amongst team members, you will not be about to Encouraging Conflict.
Seek out alternative viewpoints by asking for them.
As the leader, hold back on your opinions for a time, and encourage hearing from others.
Assign a meeting role of “devils advocate”. By having a person assigned to disagree, more issues will be put on the table.

Three Things to Remember About Encouraging Conflict:

Although we have advocated that some conflict can be productive, not all conflict is, so be careful not to over do it.
Build your team with diversity in mind. If you select people for your team that always agree with you, it will be very difficult to Encouraging Conflict.
Attack the problem, not the solution or even the idea. Make sure conflict is never personal.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Encouraging Conflict (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

Firing People is Underrated as a Motivational Tool

Firing people is really under rated as a motivation tool – hear me out.

It’s not about punishment and intimidation – those things only work for short periods of time. AND — as soon as you turn your back, people go back to what they were doing before. It’s also not very nice.

Rather – by removing a consistent poor performer, you do that person’s peers (the rest of your team) a tremendous service. If there are six people working on a team, and I am consistently not pulling my weight, then the impact of my non-performance is far more tangible on my peers than it would be to my boss.

This lesson was delivered home to me back when I had a real job as a manager – one that required me to occasionally fire people. One member of our team constantly called in sick on short notice – a behavior that significantly, and negatively impacted his co-workers. A bunch of us ended up working late because this person had called in sick, and we decided to go for a beer after work.\

We walked in to a local pub about 9pm, and saw our absent co-worker dancing on top of speaker. It was quite obvious he’d been there for some time. Apparently this fellow wasn’t very smart either – he chose to go partying at a place a block from work.

It was an easy decision to fire him, but what happened next surprised me. Several of his peers thanked me getting rid of the guy, and one even challenged me on what took me so long!

I’m not suggesting you fire the bottom 10% of performers every month. I am suggesting you provide crystal-clear expectations, do everything you can to help people be successful, and when the occasional person chooses to consistently betray his team and not perform, that you do not hesitate to remove that person.

Channel your “inner-Trump”. Your team will thank you for it.

Team Motivation Activities

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It’s not about silly games, but rather Team Motivation Activities should be about how you manage your business and lead your people. Below we talk about 5 Team Motivation Activities that can make a difference with your team.

This topic was inspired by a question from Matt, a Wily Manager member:

“Hey Wily Manager Team,

Thank you very much for the podcasts. I know how to motivate one person at a time, but my question would be, how do you motivate a whole team that has no career aspirations and hardly any motivation to achieve their goals.”

Well, Matt – thanks for your question on Team Motivation Activities, and here’s some food for thought.

5 Team Motivation Activities

Figure out what makes your people tick
Set and communicate clear expectations
Administer consistent reinforcement and consequences
Promote healthy competition
As a last resort, change out team members

These five team motivation activities may not be as much fun as a day-long high-ropes course, but they are much less expensive, and these activities have tangible outcomes.

Figure Out What Makes Them Tick

Your very first team motivation activity is to recognize that every person is different. You need to determine why your team members may not be motivated.

Remember that everyone’s behavior makes sense to her. You need to ask, “why would people behave or react in this way?”
How has the team historically been led? If people have not been adequately led, they may have no historical incentive to go above and beyond.
What has been reinforced and rewarded? If people have no career aspirations and are generally lazy, then this is what has historically been reinforced.
Has poor performance been dealt with? If problem performers have not been addressed, then people will withdraw their discretionary effort.

Create Clear Expectations

Before a manager can bemoan his people’s inability to get things done, he needs to ensure those people have been provided with clear expectations.

Is there initiative overload? Is effort diffused by dozens of different issues all demanding your people’s attention? If this is the case, they end up doing all of these things poorly.
Overwhelmed by HQ? If you work in a large bureaucracy, it is quite possible for multiple (and sometimes competing) directions are coming from head office. Much like initiative overload, it diffuses people’s energy and ensures nothing will be done well.
Are there 4 – 7 key team goals for the year? If there are 50 or 60 goals, your team will become frustrated and give up. The most motivated teams are those who can rally around a limited number of achievable goals.
Is there one overarching objective or a clear vision? For example: “Be top 5 sales team in the country in 2012?”

Consistent Reinforcement and Consequences

Managers need to reinforce the behaviors they want to see, and respond appropriately to behaviors and performance that does not meet their expectations. Unfortunately, many leaders believe that reinforcement and rewards are the responsibility of the HR group.

Look beyond variable compensation (or any other HR initiative).
Consistently reward desired performance in a way meaningful to the recipient.
Deal with poor performance swiftly and decisively

Promote Healthy Competition

Don’t pit people against each other, but encourage healthy competition:
- Reward top performers on a regular basis
- Public accountability where appropriate

Change Out Team Members

In some cases, when everything else has been tried, a manager must make the decision to terminate an employee’s employment.

You need to give everyone every opportunity to be successful.
When people choose not to be successful, make changes

BEWARE: If you go overboard (and fire too many people), it will be obvious to all, that the problem is you, and NOT your people.

Three Things to Remember about Team Motivation Activities

Treat people as individuals – all of your efforts must be motivating in the eyes of the recipient – not you as the manager.
Be consistent — you need to reward people regularly, and deal with poor performance consistently, without bias, and quickly.
Don’t abdicate leadership to HR or anyone else. As a manager, it is your job to lead your people, not HR’s. Use HR as a resource where you can to better lead your people.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Team Motivation Activities (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

Building Trust In Teams

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Why Should You Care About Building Trust in Teams

High Trust teams focus their energies on important issues and business deliverables.
Focus on the important issues minimizes attention paid to organizational politics and other impediments to getting things done.
High trust teams deliver better solutions.
Building Trust in Teams leads to higher employee satisfaction and retention

Signs Your Team is Suffering From a Lack of Trust

Team members hide their weaknesses and mistakes.
Team members don’t ask for help.
They won’t provide constructive feedback.
Jump to negative conclusions about the intentions or competence of others.
Hold grudges and are generally uncooperative.
Dread meetings and find reasons to avoid spending time together.

Steps to Building Trust in Teams

Leadershipis the key to Building Trust in Teams. As the leader, there are three necessary ingredients when you are Building Trust in Teams:
- Competency – As the leader you must have minimum level of competence in the discipline your team is working in.
- Intention – The leader must take the time and effort to lead.
- Relationships – Business is a contact sport, and relationships with team members is critical. This does not mean that the leader has to be best friends with each of her people, but it does mean she needs to make an effort to
Clear Focus. Teams with a high level of trust are those that have a simple, well understood goal that team members coalesce around, and work hard to achieve.
Mutual Accountability. Building Trust in Teams means that individual accountability is in place. The strongest teams are made up of individual members that don’t want to let each other down.

3 Things to Remember About Building Trust in Teams

They have to trust you first. As the leader you need to earn trust in your people.
Recognize the signs of mistrust and deal with them. If you suspect there are trust issues amongst your team, you need to act quickly.
Building Trust in Teams requires clear expectations for the team and team members.

How to Destroy Trust and Alienate People

There are certain things I trust. I trust the sun to rise in the morning. I trust the lady who does my dry cleaning to always wish me a “more-nice day”. I trust that Justin Beiber is past his 15 minutes. I also trust that the word “trust” is a loaded word.

Often, people think that the only way to lose or violate trust is to do something very clearly wrong or dishonest. It is actually much easier than that to destroy trust. Trust is quite simply, managing expectations in others, and then delivering on those expectations.

This is how it goes horribly wrong for politicians – large segments of the population demand that politicians lie to them during a campaign. Any political candidate that dare speak an uncomfortable truth, will be marginalized immediately. Then once elected, the disconnect between the expectations that have been set, and those that are delivered becomes patently obvious, and the public feels betrayed.

Just so you don’t end up being viewed like a politician, here are five ways to quickly destroy trust:

Say one thing and do another. Much like the politician above, this is the fastest way to ensure that no one will trust you.

Try to please all the people all the time. Life is a series of trade-offs – particularly for people in positions of leadership. As a leader, there should be some contingent of your followers that should be marginally pissed-off at all times – because it is impossible to keep everybody happy.

Pander to your audience. Targeting whomever you are communicating to is a good idea. However, if you find yourself targeting to such a degree that your message is fundamentally different amongst different stakeholders, you’re going to alienate someone (if not everyone).

Fail to tackle difficult issues. Every leader bears the burden of dealing with difficult issues. They will not magically disappear or solve themselves – in fact, an issue ignored is most often one that grows out of control.

Under-value giving credit, and over-value assigning blame. Leaders need to be humble – give away credit when things go well, and step up and accept more than your share of blame when things go poorly. You gain a whole bunch of trust by doing so.

How to Set Goals and Objectives

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Below we discuss the following aspects of How to Set Goals and Objectives:

Goals and Objectives in the larger context of Performance Management
Why managers should bother with Goals and Objectives
Three Steps on how to Set Goals and Objectives

How to Set Goals and Objectives in the Larger Context of Managing Performance:

Every organization should have an infrastructure for managing employee performance. Below is a simple model that shows how to Set Goals and Objectives in a broader context:

Goals Versus Objectives:

There are many different definitions of “Goals” and “Objectives”. Here is how we delineate the two:

Goals are higher level than objectives
Goals have longer time frames than objectives
Objectives are more specific than goals
Several objectives may contribute toward a single goal.

Why Bother to Set Goals and Objectives

To Set Goals and Objectives closes the gap between Strategy and Execution. Goals and objectives are needed to translate high-level strategies into more manageable behaviours that need to occur on a daily basis.
Without well-written goals and objectives, evaluating performance becomes unnecessarily more difficult. Goals and objectives translate into tangible actions that are observable and often measureable.
Setting Goals and Objectives drives focus and alignment through the organization. When Goals and Objectives are clear, and cascade through an organization, alignment is assured.
By setting Goals and Objectives, you help define and drive performance.
Goals and Objectives clarify the employee’s priorities and allow them to allocate their time and resources effectively.

Cascading Goals and Objectives

When you set Goals and Objectives, you need to ensure alignment between different levels of the organization. Starting at the most basic functions of a company, the Goals and Objectives must contribute or “roll up” to the Goals and Objectives of the next level up in the organization. In situations where there are many layers, this alignment must be carried on until the very highest level of the organization.

Three Steps to Set Goals and Objectives:

Align the organization’s and team goals. Regardless of where you are in an organization’s hierarchy, you need to look above you, and ensure that you understand those higher-level goals, and ensure your goals will contribute to those.
Draft your goals and objectives. After you’ve looked up the hierarchy, sit down with your team and draft your team objectives, and personal goals and objectives accordingly.
Meet to discuss and finalize. You need to meet with your boss to discuss and finalize your Goals and Objectives. You then need to meet with your team to ensure that all Goals and Objectives are fully aligned.

Drafting Clear Goals and Objectives

The SMART acronym is instructional when refining Goals and Objectives:

Specific: Well written Goals and Objectives state a clear end result. The objective names the end result, output or intent, so there is no room for misinterpretation. When writing Goals and Objectives, use concise verbs, such as:
- “to establish,”
- “to increase,”
- “to reduce”
Measurable:Your Goals and Objectives must be quantifiable in some way. Some general categories and examples associated with measuring objectives include:
- Quantity number of units produced, items processed, calls taken, contacts made, etc.
- Quality number of specs met, percentage error rates, percent waste rates, number of complaints received, accuracy of reports, etc.
- Cost dollars spent, percentage within budget, dollars spent on overtime, etc.
- Time in Use percentage of target dates met, number of deadlines met, number of units shipped on time, etc.
Attainable: there must be a reasonable chance that the objective can be achieved; some people suggest an 80% probability is effective as a motivator. If you set Goals and Objectives that are too much of a stretch, people won’t take them seriously.
Relevant: Goals and Objectives must be related directly to the individual’s sphere of influence and key job accountabilities.
Timebound: states a time frame, target dates, and/or milestones during the year that are expected to be met.

If you struggle with writing performance objectives, here is a formula to get you started:

I will ( action )
so that ( outcome ).
by ( date )

For example:

I will work with my team to develop performance objectives so that 100% of my direct reports will have documented objectives by January 31.

3 Things to Remember About How to Set Goals and Objectives:

Involve your team when establishing Goals and Objectives. These should not be done in isolation.
Meet often to discuss progress. Do not allow the setting of Goals and Objectives to become an academic exercise that is visited only once per year.
Include Business/Operational and Leadership objectives. Most people establish their business or operational Goals and Objectives, and fail to define Leadership ones. If you are a leader of other people you need to set Goals and Objectives that pertain to that function. For example:

a) The number and quality of one on one meetings

b) % compliance on performance appraisals

c) measure of employee development activity

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about How to Set Goals and Objectives (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

How to Make Sure People Don’t Care

There is so much stuff out there telling managers what they should do to be more effective, and how they can be better leaders of their people. This week, I thought I’d take a different approach, and suggest to managers how they might make sure that none of their people care.

It seems that many leaders will read an article or attend a seminar and them come back to the office and do the same thing they were doing before. They then find themselves stressed-out and miserable, as they can never seem to get a grip on their jobs or on leading their people. It seems something is lost in the transfer between reading or hearing something, and applying it to our own circumstances.

As for the people those managers are leading: they all start out with a different level of giving a crap, and they are then pushed towards the mean (or average) of “giving-a-crap-edness” of the culture around them. The great managers push that average line up, and inspire people to come along for the ride. Bad leaders, push the line down, and tacitly encourage people to give a crap about far fewer things, and at far lower a level.

So here are some things bad leaders do to ensure no one cares:

Enable unnecessary bureaucracy. This is why many public sector organizations suffer with poor morale.
Not dealing with performance issues. I’m not going to work all that hard for you if I know my peer is doing nothing, and not getting called on it.
Not administering consequences. People need to know that both good and poor performance will be recognized and “rewarded” as such.
Micro-managing. If you are going to redo all my work anyway, I’m not going to put much effort into it.
Playing favorites. OK… maybe a meritocracy only exists in a University Professor’s textbook, but you’ve got to at least try to give the appearance of fairness.
Reinforce a blame culture. People’s best work comes from taking risks, which they will not do, if they get crucified every time a small error is made.

There are lots of other ones, too, but leaders should start with these ones, and determine to what degree they do these things. The further away you are from these things, the more likely you are to be pushing that mean line of discretionary effort upwards.

Improve Morale — Discipline People

So if I read all the management literature correctly, then to improve employee morale, I should hire a concierge, allow people to bring their pets to work, and every day at 3.00pm we should join hands in a circle and sing campfire songs. Personally, I can’t think of anything that would make me start looking for alternative employment faster.

So what does impact morale, and should managers care?

First of all, they should care – just not about concierges and employee sing-alongs. Morale is a key driver of attendance and retention both of which have a clear and immediate impact on costs. Morale also creates and maintains employee discretionary effort — which has a clear and immediate impact on productivity, quality and safety. Besides all of that, it’s just way more fun to work at a place where people are engaged.

There are several ways for leaders to impact morale. Perhaps one of the most important is a consistent, fair, and well thought out progressive discipline process. Yep, that’s right… I’m suggesting that progressive discipline and higher employee morale are highly correlated. Here’s why:

When one member of a team consistently doesn’t pull his weight, it is rarely the boss that feels the impact of this. Most often it is that laggard’s peers. By addressing one person’s poor performance, others are both relieved and validated. They are relieved that the discipline will either lead to the person beginning to pull their weight, or that the person will be replaced by someone who will. They are validated by the demonstration that their effort is superior to that of the person receiving the discipline.

The most highly effective workplaces have predictable and clear consequences for both good and poor performance, so it is not good enough for a leader simply to focus on discipline. However, many managers put off uncomfortable discussions about poor performance using the excuse that any intervention will harm morale. In fact, the opposite it true.

Oh No. Now you’ve got to go do it.

Go ahead… discipline someone for poor performance, and improve your team’s morale.

Brainstorming Exercises

Cross Cultural Conflict

Encouraging Conflict

Firing People is Underrated as a Motivational Tool

Team Motivation Activities

Building Trust In Teams

How to Destroy Trust and Alienate People

How to Set Goals and Objectives

How to Make Sure People Don’t Care

Improve Morale — Discipline People

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