Dozens of teamwork training professionals have contributed to the research behind a new white paper on team performance…
The new research is presented in detailed visual diagrams which expose the connections between poor team performance and the 4-parts of a team.
Get the white paper:
The only time management worksheets I recommend…
There are 3 time management worksheets that obsolete most other time management training worksheets in one fell swoop.
Effective management does not happen through learning new techniques or exploring the logical philosophies of time management training programs.
No. Good time management comes from practical applications worksheets that get straight to the heart of effective time management.
A free white paper titled Exposing Productivity Gaps In Teams (how to invisibly ‘force’ your team to maximize their use of time’ has been made available and touches on the significance of time management worksheets and there source.
If you want to know how to judge Time Management Training and criteria to assess the quality (or lack) of time management worksheets, then grab a copy of a new…
Also check out:
time management activities for adults (225), time management worksheets for adults (183), free printable time management games (78), time management worksheets (68), printable time management games (52)
Through the skills, interests, ambitions, friendships, and motivations of the people in your team, so shall you achieve your business mission.
“Many leaders have personal visions that never get translated into shared visions that galvanize an organization. What has been lacking is a discipline for translating individual vision into shared vision” – Peter Senge, pre 1996
I don’t claim to know all of them… I think management skills include business skills, project management skills, communication skills, leadership skills, and much much more.
Team building means strengthening an interdependent group of people for long-term effectiveness
Ken Blanchard uses the acronym PERFORM to explain the necessary characteristics of high performing teams.
Your role in management is to develop the skills necessary to facilitate PERFORM.
Any effective manager must pursue growth in these areas.
1. Your Team Must Be Clear
Peter F. Drucker, one of the worlds most revered management thinkers with Harvard Business Review saying ‘his writings are landmarks of the managerial profession’, says
“Effective Executives do not start with their tasks. They start with their time. And they do not start out with planning. They start by finding out where their time actually goes.”
Therefore, ask each member of your team to record their activities and time spent on those activities for 3 consecutive days. Then once that?s done, help them define each of their responsibilities, roles and opportunities for growth, in relation to your teams purpose and overall objectives.
This will help get control over what they are currently spending time on… and what they ought to be spending time on.
2. Your Team Must Be Organized
If you ask your team members to show you how they organize their projects, they will be encouraged to get better organized than they already are.
It is the accountability they have to be better organized coming from you as manager that can have a great effect on how well organized they become.
3. Your Team Must Be Motivated
Fortunately, this one is easy to achieve once your team is clear, and organized. The best way to motivate your team is to make them accountable to achieving what they are clear on, and organized for.
No not dreaded staff meetings. A simple lightening-fast review meeting with each individual of your team. Let them show you “how its coming?” for each project they are accountable for.
When you make regular reviews (what is the next step?) for your teams projects, you help them to remain accountable and on-top of their projects.
Tell people upfront that you are going to let them know how they are doing.
Read on: Effective Team Management.
From LinkedIn, someone asked:
I use role-play often in training sessions but almost always encounter resistance to the “role-play” exercise. Thoughts? Experiences with role-play? Ways to counter the resistance?
I don’t like doing role play myself.
From my perspective as an INTJ (myers briggs personality type), I’m known as a Rational Mastermind (introspective, intuitive, thinking, judging).
For people like me, I feel like role plays are 10% worthwhile, 90% self absorbed waste of time kids play.
Whilst other personality types will enjoy and value role play.
So ask the group what exercise they want to do, either a writing exercise or discussion, or alternatively a live role play. Split the group into 2 so they [have a choice of what to do].
Accommodate to different types.
See my teamwork training and team performance white paper.
Also check out the team management section.
Why is teamwork training vital?
Because no matter how social you are, or how professional you are, or how expert in your field, good teamwork is fraught with difficulty. An expert manager must be social, professional, and expert.
A team brings greater leverage, but on the flip side, problems in a team can have a compounding effect on poor performance for each individual team member. And managing a team comes with a web of factors to untangle and control. So just…
Differences in ideas, skills, motivations, even beliefs can constrain a team’s performance. A lack of resources and tools such as communication systems can slow a team down. Insufficient planning from a lack of open discussion can lead to conflicts and misunderstandings.
In fact, through primary research as well as my own experience over a decade of work in companies both large and small, I discovered a number of fundamental causes of poor teamwork.
They can be grouped under 4 categories:
Problems, problems, problems. Upper management wants to have it’s say, and often causes disruption for teamwork. Team managers themselves often lack the experience of successfully guiding team collaboration and performance. Thus teams do not have the cohesion of a purposefully aligned team, and there may even be specific problems with individual members of the team such as resistance to change, incompentence, or just plain old chronic laziness.
What kind of teamwork training is best partly depends on the situation and the team, but it’s easy enough to appreciate that the solution to teamwork training can be described with 3 components: Outcome, Constraints and Processes.
That might seem somewhat circular, and it is. That’s why it is an undeniably clear and precise protocol on which to base teamwork training for success. It’s easy to see how clarity of outcomes, managing constraints, and managing the throughput of activities will facilitate greater cohesion within the team.
This article is being developed on teamwork training.
Real Time Management and Business Trends
Business process management must use real time management systems ever more.
The computer revolution was a precursor to a much bigger picture of rapidly advancing new technologies.
The human genome project begun an even faster technology trend.
In fact, we are going ‘exponential’ in business trends.
And real time management suggests touching the cusp of the computer wave.
Business at the speed of thought, or something like that, said Bill Gates as his company was increasingly outcompeted by Apple.
But who knows which or who will take center stage just 5 years from now. We are in for a wild ride into a technological civilization.
And real time management is at the heart. To apply new knowledge at the speed of thought, as fast as computers can analyze.
The semantic web of cyberspace will use these business trends and real time management processing to provide us what we want, when we want it, and the quality of life, plus creativity opportunities of business, art and science, are going to get faster and faster.
Are you ready for ‘real time management’?
But first grab yourself a copy of my new Time 4 Business white paper for time management training.
If you manage a team, one of the most important considerations you make is how you should guide your team’s ongoing task management.
Tonight I spoke with the manager of a set of 3 cafe / hotel’s.
We discussed various elements of strength and weakness across the business, including location, clientele, pricing, etc.
But the key insight was about team task management.
Without successfully delegating, this manager was trying to do too much with not enough progress.
One of his initiatives was to produce several process check-lists for his staff to follow.
Do you think they do?
The manager quietly complained to me that he thinks his stuff simply take a pen and put a tick next to every box without reading the process step, without considering them, without caring about them.
And so it was that the very table that I sat at for dinner, wobbled. The manager told me that his staff new that they had to check for wobbling tables, and that they knew how to fix them via table positioning and some kind of cork-screw trick that I didn’t pay attention to.
We agreed that his own supervisory skills were too detail oriented, and that the ideal position for him would be to improve his own leadership skills by delegating authority, responsibility, and a heart-felt sense of care within his staff.
That desired level of effective team task management happens through open team building communication… not just task delegation.
We agreed that a good team leader must first aim to encourage self-responsibility within his team. That a more relationship oriented approach to team management would help improve performance with specific team task management.
Strategy exists at every level (as identified by Goldratt), both long-term and short-term, in every single decision and action of the organization.
It’s often a delicate topic…
Most managers can look very bad if they report to their own manager that they need team management training…
Why? What’s the problem? Are your direct reports running amok? Â Are you incapable of achieving your assigned objectives even with all the resource you have available?
Well truth be told, management teams really should be more open and enthusiastic about team management training — including for themselves, all the way up to the CEO.
A wise company Chairman once told me
“root cause analysis taken to it’s furthest point will almost always reveal that management is ultimately at the root cause of poor performance”.
If you recognise how important team management training is, but perhaps are not getting the necessary support from the [widget id="ad-continue-management"]Ad: continue-management[/widget]management team, and want to quietly introduce some methods that will maximise team performance amongst your peers as well as with your direct reports, pick up a copy of my introductory white paper on team management.
After more than a decade working in London UK, across a dozen industries, in many companies, including…
…investment banks like Merrill Lynch, construction companies like Jarvis Projects, financial service companies like Digital Look, communications companies like Vodafone, ad agencies, and many others…
…I have gradually developed and refined a staff management system that will make your job of team management far less stressful, much more effective — freeing you to tackle strategy of your department or of the business, rather than being constrained by poor personnel performance.
[widget id="ad-continue-management"]Ad: continue-management[/widget]Pick up a copy of the introductory white paper on staff management now.
