by Liz Clark | Aug 10, 2015 | Business Matters, Team Building
My last post covered 5 signs you’re on a losing team. Well, I don’t know anyone who wants to be on a losing team. The opposite of a losing team is a winning team. Many refer to these as “High-Performance teams.” Working on a high-performance team, or a team that consistently outperforms expectations, is an incredible experience. Achieving results is not the only awesome thing about working on a high-performance team. There is something fantastic about actually enjoying the team you work with. The work gets done, but you actually want to be there. You’re excited to work with these people. So, how do you know if you’re on a winning team? Here are 5 Signs You’re on a Winning Team: Feel It: People are Authentically Valued – when you join a high-performance team, you are welcomed. You may not understand exactly what you’re going to be doing, but you’ll know you are a part of a team. People treat each other with respect. When people have conflict or disagreement, people are ultimately valued over ego, hierarchy or “cliques.” See It: Culture of Clarity – high-performance teams have a lot of clarity about what they are working to achieve (vision) and why they are working to achieve it (motive). The details of how things get done (strategy) may change from time to time, but there are a set of very clear outcomes that the team understands it is working toward those outcomes together. Hear It: Speak The Same Language – building on the culture of clarity, high-performance teams are not just “engaged,” they are highly invested in working toward the same desired outcome. They speak... read more
by Liz Clark | Aug 2, 2015 | Business Matters, Pursuits, Team Building
Remember that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach when your teacher announced a new group project? Whether the teacher chose the groups or you got to choose didn’t matter – no one liked group projects. I liked to work alone because I was the nerd kid who ended up doing most of the work for the entire group. I always thought the other kids must love group projects. But, no. They hated them, too. We didn’t realize it, but “group work” is an educational theory to help students develop something beyond learning the subject matter at hand – skills like teamwork and leadership. You know, to “prepare for real life.” I’m not sure if that worked as well as the theory postulated it would. But, it is true that teams are an inevitable part of real life: at work, in business, sports, church, with friends and family – every project has the potential to need a team. We may still be groaning and rolling our eyes on the inside at the idea of having to work as a team, but “resistance is futile:” we cannot simply avoid “group work” forever. As a business consultant (and as a human!), I’ve worked with many teams over the years, and it is truly awful to be on a losing team. But, it’s also incredibly amazing to be part of a high-performance team. How do you know the difference? One way is to measure is results: is the team achieving what it was meant to achieve? But, any quick study in human behavior will tell you: achievement is only one measure of success. You can scare, manipulate, bribe (read: “incentivize”) people into “delivering results” – that doesn’t necessarily... read more
by Liz Clark | Jul 13, 2015 | Uncategorized
My great-grandfather died long before I was born, but my grandmother remembered him fondly. He was a hard-working man. He worked with type setting for many years. It was honest, hard work and he developed a reputation for his excellent quality. As time marched on, industrial innovation marched in: big machines that did all kinds of fancy new things faster and “more efficiently” than my highly-skilled great-grandfather. The machines were quite impressive – and not at all something that he understood. My grandmother said he tried. He worked to try to understand these new machines at first. But he couldn’t adapt. He began working less and drinking more and – years later – became very ill and passed away well before his time. My grandmother said she believed he really died of a broken heart. She watched her father change from a big, joyful man who carried himself with pride and a twinkle in his eye – to a shell of a man who lost the will to live. Why the heck am I sharing such a sad story? I see this same dynamic play out in our modern world. Technology is hurdling forward at an unfathomable pace. My children make me feel older every day as they navigate technology and try to explain it to me with words that I’m pretty sure they made up. I’ve been feeling strangely akin to my great-grandfather these days. I’ve built a successful “brick-and-mortar” business. Now I am expanding and building an online platform. Some days, I look at this big machine called the internet and I think – “Wow, that’s impressive. But... read more
