Team-building Tool Kit-25 Ways to Work Smarter Together in Disruptive Times
Empowerment + Engagement + Accountability=Results!
(Including 15 bonus links)

© Irene Becker, Just Coach It-The 3Q Edge™ | (IQ-EQ-SQ) Reach-Resonance-Results
3Q Leadership™ Blog- 41,000+ Social Media Followers & Growing!  

It was a pleasure to present on Effective Team-building at Project Management and Business Analyst World.  Given the importance of team-building and the growth of project based teams, I hope that this toolkit-a  of  team-building tips, REACH™, 3Q Edge™ and bonus links will be of service.

Project Manager or Leader?  Both! Here are 25 Team-building Tips for Working Smarter Together!

 

1. Have a clear mission. Start with the common anchor, the objectives and values you share.  Internalize them, mention them, and ignite them because they are the fuel for your greatest individual and collective potential.

 

2. Make sure that roles, responsibilities and accountability are clearly defined.  If you are working with an agile team/project team where roles change, this in itself is a new type of role that must be explained.  Clarity is king and buy-in from members is queen.

 

3. Develop a team charter.  Team members need a strong sense of belonging to the group that will build trust and commitment. This sense of commitment is reinforced when the team spends the time to develop team norms or relationship guidelines together.

4. Lead, don’t micro-manage. Make sure that all team members feel that they are a critical part of the team’s success. Make sure roles, responsibilities and accountability are clear, but do not micro manage. If process helps execution, use it.  Process used as a substitute for poor leadership, lack of trust will ultimately impede or undermine that potential of the team. Get the right people on your team, empower them, engage them; help them with their professional/personal development and hold them accountable.

 

Align & Motivate	Empathize
Delegate & Monitor	Plan & Control

 

 5. Develop your ability to use care-frontation. Don’t shove problems or conflicts under the rug where they can fester, brew and explode in overt or covert ways.  Conflict is a healthy sign.  Use it to build connection.  Remember conflict that his not expressed, festers, brews and ultimately destroys everything in its path. Use shared values and objectives to break down barriers and to also help team members build strong intrinsic motivation so that they focus forward when times are tough.

 

6. Ready to react? Stuck in stasis?  Worried about driving in reverse?  Ready to go into fight or flight?  R-E-A-C-H™ reset default patterns of thinking, communicating and doing that are no longer working for you.  Yes, brain science confirms that our brains are neuro-plastic (we can rewrite default patterns).  Bonus, every time you R-E-A-C-H™, you are also building your 3Q Edge™/Advantage.

 

Redirect focus	Don’t let your amygdala (reptilian brain-fight or flight response) hijack you!  Pause.  Depersonalize and refocus on your primary objective.
Empower confidence	Develop personal rituals that help you get empowered when times are tough.  Find ways to empower the confidence of team members because YOU cannot light a fire (yours or theirs) with wet wood. If you believe you can do it, you are arming yourself with an almost unstoppable weapon.
Actualize potential	Put your best effort forward and execute.  Enable your best self and best work.
Communicate effectively	Learn how to understand communication styles of others and how others perceive you so that you can speak/write in a way that opens their ears and send them a message that drives reach, resonance and results.
Harvest results	Celebrate all wins, big and small and make sure to recognize the people who helped to make the win a reality.  Success is a group activity.  Build your team and they will reach back and help YOU grow.

 

7. Give your team a safe place to share their thoughts by developing team rituals that further transparent communication.  Ask the right questions because developing your ability to not only ask the right questions, but ask them in a way that engages/empowers while also holding them accountable is critical.

 

8. Organize the team for excellent communication and execution by creating team rituals, regular meetings (face-face or virtually), team-building sessions as well as informal meetings that provide engagement, fuel focus and enthusiasm (lunch and learns, regular launches, social gatherings-fun time).  Never punish or castigate a team member for having a different opinion.  Open the door to different opinions they are the lifeblood of innovation and success.  If team membership changes during the project, or there are other important changes to deal with plan a short team building meeting to review forming and norming stages again (and/or to get the new team member up to speed).

 

9. Model failing forward.  Learn from successes and failures. Be honest with your team.  Do not try to buffer them from critical/difficult decisions.  Show them how to deal with challenges and turn them around.   If a team member is making the same mistake they over and over they are either not listening, not learning.  Find the root cause of repeated mistakes and fix it.

 

10. Turn default patterns around.  Yes, the human automatic default is negative (a vestige from our days in the cave surrounded by predators) Strive to bring out the best in yourself and others!  Science confirms that mirror neurons make our emotions contagious.  Prime your brain to be positive so that you not only empower others but turn of our brain’s default negative mechanism and be solution focused.

 

11.  Show team members how to move from conflict to connection. Every team has conflicts.  Develop your conflict resolution edge so that you can transform a problem into a vehicle for improved engagement, trust, and better teamwork.

 

12. Championing learning, training and mentoring.  Help team members develop skills that help them improve interpersonal relationships, communication with all stakeholders (internal/external), presentation skills, career related skills AND skills that speak to their own personal development.

 

13. Hold pre-meetings (face to face or virtual review of meeting agenda so that you know if there are any questions or issues).  Pre-meetings are necessary ingredients of successful project meetings. Prime team members for a positive meeting.  Set the stage for fruitful results with a pre-meeting.

 

14. Hang out with your team and also make sure there is fun time. Show them you are smart with heart. Sit with them and talk about their life/ambitions. Make sure that you humanize your relationship because you cannot lead heads without touching hearts. Let them know that you not only value their work and efforts, but enjoy them as people.

 

15. Model appreciation for efforts put forward and recognition for individual and collective achievements. One of the number one complaints of over 70% of USA employees is that they are not appreciated or recognized for their work.  Disengagement and presenteeism are rampant.  Nip them in the bud.

 

16. Be thoughtfully decisive. Take a stand that reflects 1.  Values   2.  Objectives   3.  The best course of action. “A leader always explains or fixes”. Explain your decisions to your team or go fix them.

 

17. Champion diversity.  Diversity of gender, race, skills and background makes a team stronger. Make sure to view each member as a unique and special component of the team with experiences, points of view, knowledge and experience to contribute.

 

18. Model leadership by creating an environment where team members are comfortable taking risks, communicating, advocating positions and taking action.  Do not punish, castigate or scoff at someone for disagreeing.

 

19. Model active listening.  Be a great listener and help team members improve their listening skills.  The most important part of communication is listening without judgment, without trying to guess what the other party is really trying to say or formulating your response while they are talking.

 

20. Expect and encourage creativity, innovation, and different viewpoints need to be expected and encouraged. Comments such as, “we already tried that and it didn’t work” and “what a dumb idea” should not be allowed or supported.

 

21.  Champion reflection and continuous improvement.  The team should regularly examine itself to improve processes, practices and interpersonal communication and interactions as well as an open discussion of team norms/practices that have become counter-productive in a changing environment.

 

22. Work on team procedures for identifying, analyzing and resolving team problems and conflicts.  Again, use challenges as a positive lever to build better processes, communication and solutions. When you are having team building challenges focus on interpersonal relationships first!

 

 Project Objectives:                                                             Team-Building Challenges:

1. Goals                                                                                  1.  Interpersonal Relationships

2.  Roles                                                                                 2.  Processes

3.  Processes                                                                          3.  Roles

4.  Interpersonal Relationships                                                4.  Goals

 

 

23.   Remember that trust is the glue that holds a great team together.  Shared values, objectives, honest communication, accountability and collaboration built trust and make it stick.  Frequent meetings, team rituals, social meetings (with and/or without family) community volunteer opportunities are all great ways to bond and share, wins and challenges are all opportunities to build trust.

 

24.  Identify toxic team members and get them off the team.  Make sure that you are not removing team members who have great potential and need coaching, training, mentoring but rather members who are NOT a fit for the team and who will not benefit from personal development initiatives.

 

25.  Teach your team members to take breaks every 90 minutes for blank time in order to recharge.  Even the tightest schedule can grow to fit in 5 minutes of blank time every 90 minutes.  Stress is one of the most critical threats we face from an individual, business and organizational perspective.  Help yourself and your team members find ways to recharge. Explore and select personal rituals you can do in a couple of minutes a day that help you recharge, refocus and repower!

 

More….YOU Betcha |  Seven Bonus Links

Ten Steps to Building Employee Engagement
How to Build Better Communication NOW!
3Q Leadership and R-E-A-C-H  Benefits
Three Toxic Team Members to Get Out of Your Ball Park
Is Your Potential Engaged or Derailed?  Cheat Sheet and Self Quiz
Ten Ways to Lead and Succeed in Times of Complexity and Change
Great Read Excerpts:  Full Steam Ahead by Ken Blanchard and Jesse Lyn Stoner
The Power of Communication by Helio Fred Garcia

 

 Are YOU Ready to…

Get re-inspired by what you can achieve at the speed of change/challenges? Recharge, refocus, repurpose, repower?
Build YOUR 3Q Leadership, Career, Business Development or Talent Optimization Edge?

5 ways to optimize your potential…AND a self-test to determine if your potential is engaged or derailed. (Including 10 Bonus Links)

© Irene Becker, Just Coach It-The 3Q Edge™ | (IQ-EQ-SQ) Reach-Resonance-Results
3Q Leadership™ Blog- 41,000+ Social Media Followers & Growing!  

 

1. Reach.  Use tools, strategies that help you redirect focus, and focus faster in the face of change, challenges and opportunities. Focus is the mother of success and creativity is its kissing cousin. Like money or nuclear power focus can be used to optimize or derail potential.  Simple tools, geared to your personality, your learning style, your career or organizational objectives can help you focus faster, better on what really counts while helping you learn, ideate, communicate and collaborate faster and better. Build reach, focus on what will help you learn, collaborate and succeed forward.
2. Empower. Ideation, communication and collaboration are the new anchors of success. Take control over your potential. Find a collaborative partner, an executive coach or advisor whose only agenda is your success; and whose skills and experience can help you not only get greater clarity around your potential while helping you also see the potential in people and ideas/opportunities around you. Develop new ways of thinking, communicating, doing and failing forward that will drive empowerment and engagement at the speed of change. Recognize that your power to learn and relearn is pivotal to your success and the success of those you lead. Teach-Learn-Do-Lead.
3. Actualize potential by seeing the forest for the trees. See the bottom line. Potential is optimized by our ability to feel that we are contributing.  Understanding your own purpose, and helping those you lead see the purpose in their work, their skills their abilities is critical to leading forward both in terms of employee engagement, stakeholder engagement and the csr initiatives that will continue to become more important to successful organizations and their footprint in the marketplace and community. Remember that purpose = profit
4. Communicate more effectively across competitive lines, cultural lines and in the face of conflict or challenges in communication and career. Put your money where your mouth is.  Your verbal, written and digital/social communication counts.  Learn how to best position your words in a way that empowers, engages others.  Start developing communication skills that will help you optimize your potential and the potential of others. Develop the communication skills and marketing collaterals that can help you move past career transition or other blips in the road, faster and better.  Use your self talk, your thoughts, your words to build better relationships, improved collaboration with yourself, your direct reports, colleagues, bosses, vendors, and stakeholders.  Use YOUR words to communicate, collaborate and LEAD forward
5. Harvest your potential and the potential of others.  See your challenges, strengths, wins and failures with new eyes that optimize and catalyze your potential. Let go of anger, frustration, reactivity or stasis.  Embrace your ability to harvest the best in yourself and others.  Communicate, collaborate and LEAD forward by developing 3Q strengths that drive reach, resonance and results at a speed of change. Learn to use not only your strengths but challenges and failures to build three key strengths that you can actualize under stress:  Q1 IQ (Intellectual capacity-Ideation)  Q2 Emotional Intelligence (Perceiving, Reasoning, Understanding and Managing Emotions | Self Awareness and Awareness of Others) Q3 Spiritual Quotient- The alignment with and to your highest values, purpose and power. )

 

Quick Self-Test: Is Your Potential Derailed or Engaged?

Derailed

Engaged

Easily fatigued or exhausted? Working   in a messy or disorganized space or fashion? Disinterested   or frustrated by our job? Easily   stressed, angered or in a constant internal state of strife? Frustrated   with your direct reports, and stymied by teambuilding problems, turf wars or   passive aggressive behaviors that derail team dynamics and results? Stuck   in a negative rut, seeing no way to improve your performance or the   performance of others? Easily   confused or frustrated by the actions of others? Focused   on who is against you rather than how you can build collaboration,   cooperation and results? Frantically   putting out fires and reacting to emergencies? Disengaged   unable to think of ways to drive greater engagement and productivity?

Energized, motivated? Working   in a neat organized space and with a modus operandi that maximizes results? Engaged,   empowered and challenged by your work? Using   challenges and strengths to learn, lead and communicate better and faster? Helping   those you lead optimize, humanize and monetize results by finding new ways to   improve ideation, learning, communicating, collaborating…doing. Constantly   looking for ways to use both strengths and challenges to improve the way you   learn, communicate and collaborate? Focused,   energized and ready to meet goals and objectives? Developing   the reach and resonance you need to succeed through verbal/inter-personal,   written/ digital -social communication? Responding,   rather than reacting to challenges using them to develop new ways of   thinking, communicating and doing that help prevent emergency situations? Do   you have good ideas for increasing engagement and productivity; ideas you   will build upon, use and execute?

If you answered yes to one or more of the derailment questions it is time to optimize your potential! Go back to the five steps, and find the most important step you can actualize now. The importance and imperative to see your strengths and challenges with new eyes that can help YOU optimize YOUR potential is real, doable and critical!

 

More on optimizing your potential in disruptive times?  YOU Betcha!

Remove the Wall to Your Greatest Potential
The Empowerment Compendium
The Purpose Equation
How to Build Better Communication NOW!
From Now to HOW:  Building Social, Virtual and Cross Generational Communication
Ten Ways to Lead and Succeed in Times of Complexity and Change

More?  Yes!
I Will NOT Be Broken-The Call to Build a Better Future (Intro to my forthcoming book)
Extraordinary Women  (Extraordinary Women TV-Shannon Skinner)
From Pain to Gain in Life and Career (The Best People We Know Radio Show-Deb Scott)
Against All Odds:  A True Story of Courage, Hope and Success 

 

Enough?  Almost!  If you are in Toronto, I hope you will join me for the following events.  If you are in London and NYC…stay tuned, coming to you later this year!

Effective Teambuilding in One Hour |  Project World,  June 10^th  Metro Convention Centre

3Q Leadership | Canadian Institute of Management Symposium, June 13, Sheraton Four Points

 

 Are YOU Ready to…

Get re-inspired by what you can achieve at the speed of change/challenges? Recharge, refocus, repurpose, repower?
Build YOUR 3Q Leadership, Career, Business Development or Talent Optimization Edge?

Guts, Gusto, Integrity | 3 qualities you need to succeed as a leader
New Edition: Over 350 bonus leadership links and one excellent podcast!

© Irene Becker, Just Coach It-The 3Q Edge™ | (IQ-EQ-SQ) Reach-Resonance-Results
3Q Leadership™ Blog- 41,000+ Social Media Followers & Growing!  

 

 This post was originally published on Salesforce.com (without the new bonus links)  

After a 20+ year career that encompassed being the first woman CEO of a steel company in Canada and working in the USA, France, England and with clients across the globe, I developed a model for individual success in challenging times that I call the 3Q Leadership Model  correlated with guts, gusto and integrity.

The model reflects my learning after some incredibly challenging career and life events that took me from the mountain of success to starting again from ground zero.  The challenge became: how do you optimize strengths while also learning to use changes, challenges, stressors (even failures) to build critical strengths to help you grow at the speed of change today?

Here are three qualities you need to succeed as a leader, three qualities that speak to 3Q Leadership™.

Quality One:  Guts

Stay focused, positive and in a state of mind that drives ideation, innovation, communication, collaboration (the sticky stuff of 21^st century business development success) by developing or evolving your own mantra. Use these three words in your self-talk, with your team and colleagues.  Imprint them in your mind so that when you face a new challenge and want to look at it in the same old way you do an automatic reset.

It takes guts to look at a situation with new eyes, but if you do not, you will be sucked into old ways of thinking, communicating and doing that may not take you forward.  It takes guts to decide to be relentlessly solution focused and to look at every problem as the conduit to a brilliant solution.  It takes guts to wait for the automatic fight or flight stress reaction to pass, so that you can focus on using the problem in a way that takes you forward.  The caveat remains, that each gutsy move, each time you circumvent fight or flight and think in a new way, you are developing improved focus, strategic thought, ideation, and upping your ability to learn and re-learn.

Quality Two:  Gusto

Do you have what it takes to develop business in a disruptive economy?  Business development is all about relationship building.  The heart of the client relationship, the heart of all the relationships that will help you succeed is made up of the gusto, the desire to build, repair and grow human relationships of trust and understanding. Relationships start with you; you are the MVP (most valuable player) in the sandbox.  Business development 101 tells us that the client relationship is the most important linchpin for success, and while this remains true, building the client relationship means developing a communication style that evokes reach and resonance with your team members and your clients. It means learning to hone your words, your body language your presentation skills to fit each person you are communicating with.

Start building a new set of soft skills by searching for what other people really want (rather than what you think they need to hear).  Come to the center of the table by finding the common denominator (values, objectives) that you share and can build upon.  Gusto is healthy.  Positive communication is contagious and will help you build a community of purpose (like-minded people with shared values), objectives, your success team of constituents, colleagues, clients, social and digital networks. Learning to communicate with gusto across social, digital, cross-generational or cross-culture boundaries is a skill you must and can grow and develop.

Quality Three: Integrity

Do you want to build new and better strategies that will help you play in a sandbox of quicksand that can just as easily pull you down and put you out? The secret to success is timeless; create value for others.  Creating value for others means offering a service or product that does exactly that.  It does not mean over selling, up selling, trying to manipulate.  It does mean understanding what your client/prospect needs, how he/she needs the information to be presented for it to resonate, and having a focus on building a relationship that will continue to grow and evolve and be a model of service, integrity, and value that will help you gain and keep traction in the sandbox.

Business development means having a mind-set, skill-set, and follow-up processes that fill your suspect and prospect pipeline while nurturing and growing relationships with existing clients).

Get bold. Build your 3Q Edge™. Move forward by learning to use your strengths and challenges to actualize:

 

1. Q1-Guts: Improved ideation, strategic focus, the ability to learn-relearn and fail forward
2. Q2-Gusto: Emotional intelligence, communication, collaboration, risk tolerance, resiliency
3. Q3-Integrity: Integrity of purpose, communication and action that can start a contagion that will take you forward faster, smarter and better!

 

More on developing 3Q Leadership™skills that GROW at the speed of change?  YOU Betcha!

Actualize YOUR Greatest Potential NOW! Cheat Sheet of Practical, Powerful 3Q Tips
Restore Your Roar
From Pain to Gain:  Ten 21st Century Leadership Lessons Learned
The Thriving Organization:  Ten Steps Out of Jurassic Park
The DNA of Business Success in Disruptive Times
The Individual and Organizational Imperative to Do Good in the World
Sneak Peak:  Intro to my forthcoming book!

More?  Yes!
Over 300 articles on Great Leadership and 3Q Leadership
PodCast::  Expanding Your Leadership Capacity (Interview by JoAnn Corley)

Enough?  Almost!  If you are in Toronto, I hope you will join me for the following events.  If you are in London and NYC…stay tuned, coming to you later this year!

Effective Teambuilding in One Hour |  Project World,  June 10^th  Metro Convention Centre
3Q Leadership | Canadian Institute of Management Symposium, June 13, Sheraton Four Points

About Irene

 Irene Becker helps smart people communicate, lead & succeed forward smarter, faster happier by building 3Q skills that GROW at the speed of change/challenges. Executive Coach, Consultant, Trainer, Speaker and Writer, Irene is a trailblazer whose unique R-E-A-C-H™ methodology and 3Q Edge™ focus have helped forward-thinking people and organizations in Canada, USA and Europe develop communication, leadership and career skills that grow at the speed of change and challenges.  First female CEO of a steel company in Canada, Irene Becker has a track record of accomplishments in business and in the community at large.  Her first book, I Will NOT Be Broken-The Call To Build a Better Future debuts later this year.

Guts, Gusto, Integrity 

Irene Becker | Just Coach It | The 3Q  Edge™