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Archive for June, 2010

Are you part of a High Performing Team?

29 Jun

We often hear that high-performing teams happen by accident. “If you hire the right people, you feel it when you are on a high-performing team.” Does that sound familiar?

That is not our reality. We strongly believe that you can create high-performing teams by design but in order to do that there are three things that you need to know:

1. Where are you going?

    Does your team have a strong purpose and a clear mission of what it needs to achieve? The difference between a team and a group is that a team has a shared goal, and the team members are aligned and committed to get to that goal. However, they will not talk about the goal, or any issues they see in getting to that goal, unless there is sufficient amount of relationship and trust.

    2. How are you going to get there?

      How is your team working together, and are there clear accountabilities of who is doing what in order to achieve the goal? If there is no clear conversation about how you work together and being sincere about your accountabilities, team members will have to start guessing about what it is that you will or will not do.

      3. Where are you now?

        None of the first two distinctions will matter at all, unless you as team have a clear idea of where you are currently. Additionally, you are prepared to have an open conversation about what it is you need to do to achieve the mission. We have a simple high performing team survey that we use to get that conversation started. What is interesting about the results of that survey is that there often is a difference between how you think the team will answer and what they will actually answer.

        For a limited time, we offer our readers of our blog access to this high performing team survey that they can fill out with their team. If you are interested to take this survey with your team, contact me at kbogaert@strategic-momentum.com, and I will be happy to set you and your team up for a free survey that will take each team member 10 minutes to fill out anonymously.

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        Posted in Change, Conversational Dynamics, HR, Teamwork, Videos

         

        Authentic Listening – Empathetic Acknowledgement – Checking For Completion

        24 Jun

        This post deals with one of the most difficult parts of the listening process. That is, the ability to acknowledge empathetically the feelings of the speaker. This is an important aspect of listening since it emotionally connects the speaker to the listener. When you’re able to do this effectively the speaker gets, at a very deep level, that you’re listening, and that you understand. It’s a minimum intrusion into the speaker’s conversation.  It is always a short phrase like, “really scary” or “you’re hurting.”

        Acknowledging empathetically is a key listening skill that takes practice. Some listeners have the skill more naturally than others. Regardless of your skill level empathetic acknowledgement can be developed and enhanced with practice. I suggest it is worth the effort.

        Checking for completion is another important aspect of the listening process, since we tend to take a pause in the speaker’s conversation as our cue to speak. That is because many times as a listener, if we’re not careful, we are rehearsing our response, or we already have our response, and we are just waiting to get it out.

        In the listening process it is important to resist responding before you check to see if the speaker is complete by asking a simple question. The question could be “is that it,” or “are you finished,” or” is there anything else.” When the speaker responds with “yes that is it”, then you know you can go to the next phase of the listening process which I will cover in the next post.

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        Posted in Authentic Listening, Conversational Dynamics, Videos

         

        Every organization is perfectly designed to produce the results it is producing!

        17 Jun

        Every organization is a system, and as a system it is perfectly designed to produce the results it is producing! Is this true? We have been in front of executives who will disagree with this, at least initially. Often it is because they trip over the fact that it is perfectly designed. As a leader, this can be a hard message to hear, as the buck stops with you!

        Can you see that this sometimes is a hard message to deliver to executives? If you are not getting the results that you are looking for, and yet you have been working hard, does that mean that you have been doing it wrong?

        Now, let’s look at the good news. The good news is that once you accept this premise, and you see that it is a design, now you can start looking for what it is you can change in your design to significantly improve your results.

        As discussed at several topics here on our blog, you design your company system through the conversations that you are actively having as well as those that you have codified in employee manuals, procedures, plans. However, your design is also stuck in unspoken conversations that you should be having but you are not having. The classic example is of a company that wants to be innovative but does not reward risk taking.

        Once you recognize that, you can now also see that if you want to change your results, and therefore the design of your team or company, you just have to change your conversations.

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        Posted in Change, Conversational Dynamics, General, Leadership, Strategy, Videos

         

        Authentic Listening – Focus

        16 Jun

        Authentic conversations deal with interpersonal relationship and trust issues. They focus on restoring relationship and trust when breakdowns occur, to ensure ongoing alignment and commitment is present in the relationship. Developing authentic listening skills is a key element in successfully resolving interpersonal concerns. Authentic listening occurs when listeners respond to the speaker in ways, which indicate that they care about what the person is saying and give the person every opportunity to complete his or her train of thought. The idea is to let the speaker know without a doubt that you are focusing your attention on the speaker’s words and feelings with the specific intent to understand the point they are trying to make. To do this, the listener has to focus on all elements of the speaking map shown below. The listener has to make mental notes about what elements of the speaking map the speaker is disclosing, and what elements the speaker is not disclosing. You will see in importance of this in future posts.

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        Posted in Authentic Speaking, Videos

         

        Authentic Speaking Map™ Summary

        14 Jun

         

        This post summarizes the individual posts that discussed each step in the Authentic Speaking Model.  We work with moving our clients’ conversations from Inauthentic and Closed Conversations, to Open and Authentic Conversations.  Here is the full model:

        While this post discusses the Authentic Speaking Map in a linear fashion, the actual flow of the conversation may not be linear.  The speaker may start anywhere, and move to different steps as a speaker deems appropriate. However, in the design of any Authentic Conversation, I believe it is important to declare the concern that is creating the need for conversation and also your commitment to an outcome.  When declaring your commitment to the outcome, make sure it is not just about getting the concern resolved, but that it is also about the relationship.  Make sure you are committed to improving or enhancing the relationship in some manner.  Remember, ultimately, the relationship is as important as resolving the concern.

        Once you declare the concern and commitment, I suggest you move to the facts of the situation that are really relevant to the conversation, and then into the interpretation that you have given these facts.  When having an authentic conversation it is always a good practice to speak only for yourself.  In other words, speak only in “I” terms not in “you” terms.  When you speak in “You” terms you have a higher likelihood of being interpreted as accusatory.  Once this happens, you are likely to move quickly into a reactive conversation. 

        The next step would be to express your feelings as a result of your interpretation. After the expression of feelings, move to what you want to get out of the conversation for yourself, for the other person, and in business settings, many times, for the team and also for the company.

        After declaring your wants, move into the declaration of possibilities and opportunities. Nothing comes into existence that is not a possibility first.  Many times this step is difficult for people.  They have a hard time generating possibilities for themselves. When this happens, there is usually a predisposition to no possibilities because of their characterization of the situation, or the other person. Many times we have to do significant coaching during this step. Once you have an inventory of possibilities, you can look at the possibilities and determine which possibilities represent real opportunities; opportunities you should take action on, because they have a high likelihood of resolving the concern.  

        The final step is to determine the actions to be taken in order to resolve the concern.  This means that you have to be willing to make requests of the other person, as well as making offers to the other person. When these requests and offers are negotiated then is essentially a result of promises that assuming the promises are fulfilled will take care of that concern.

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        Posted in Authentic Speaking, Conversational Dynamics, Videos

         

        Authentic Speaking – Actions

        11 Jun

         

        The last Authentic Speaking Map™ step is the action step.  Nothing happens until action is taken to resolve the concern or issue that started the authentic conversation in the first place.  You will see, in future posts, how the authentic speaking steps combined with authentic listening can be used to resolve difficult interpersonal concerns or issues.  This can be accomplished without the typical difficulties people have without having a map and/or knowing the steps.

        In this last step, everyone in the conversation has to be willing to take actions in order to implement the opportunity or opportunities selected in the previous step.   This means that each party has to be willing to make requests and/or offers which, when negotiated, will result in promises to take corrective action.  To be effective, promises have to be made within the context of mutual respect and trust. 

         

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        Posted in Authentic Speaking, Conversational Dynamics, Videos

         

        Alignment Is A Critical Success Factor

        09 Jun

        Organizational alignment is a critical factor for success.  At the top level, successful companies continually have to align their strategy to the evolving political, business and marketing environment, and they have to align their capabilities to their strategy.   Igor Ansoff, the father of strategic management, studied the power of this alignment and found that aligned companies outperform their competitors in their industry.  His model looked like this:

         While misalignment impacts all aspects of the company, there is a significant negative economic impact when the company’s marketing and sales organizations are misaligned. 

        A 2005 Global Study of 1,400 marketers from 84 countries, sponsored by Math Marketing and MarketingProfs, showed that aligned companies outperformed unaligned companies as follows:

        ▪       5.4 % faster growth

        ▪       38 % more won proposals

        ▪       36 % fewer lost customers

        Just think about the potential positive economic impact when you create a fully engaged, fully empowered, fully aligned marketing and sales team committed to improving revenue growth significantly. 

        Take a look and check out your alignment score.

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        Posted in Leadership, Strategy, Teamwork

         
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