Thriving in a Fast Paced Environment

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.
--Brian Tracy

ImapMyTeam.com can help you gain balance and perspective in many ways. Here are three important ones:

Know Your Teammates

In keeping with the car analogy introduced in our opening quote, working on a pit crew is a fast-paced work environment. Auto races are won or lost in in a matter of seconds. Pit crews succeed through teamwork. If one member of the crew lags behind, the dynamic of the entire group is affected. Use imapMyTeam to learn as much as you can about your own ‘crew’ – your teammates and your manager – also make sure roles and responsibilities are clearly understood to keep the team operating smoothly no matter how fast the pace becomes.

Know Yourself

When you operate out of your stress behavior you could ‘breakdown’ in a fast-paced environment, and be prone to mistakes. Recognize what is being asked of you and use imapMyTeam to establish a mental plan to better understand how to leverage your strengths to help you succeed and communicate your needs and stressors to people who support you.

Take a ‘breather’ to get recharged

As fast and hard as a pit crew needs to work, there is some down time during or before and after races. You have downtime in your business too. Use that time wisely to regroup, relax, and refocus to prepare for the next ‘race’. Everyone does this a bit differently so you could consult your ‘What you should do to Reenergize’ report in imapMyTeam for tips.

When the pace accelerates, remember to take time to tune up so you don’t just survive, you thrive

Getting from One Trapeze to Another

It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place between that we fear. It is like being between two trapezes. It’s like Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold onto. 
--- Marilyn Ferguson, American Futurist

Many change efforts fail because people focus on the situational business issues of the change and forget to manage the strong behavioral issues that emerge due to the change. There is a lot of behavioral angst involved in change because change means loss. That is why navigating the transition is the hardest part.

Before you begin something new you have to end what used to be. Before we learn a new way, we need to unlearn the old way. If we are flattening the organization the loss could be your next promotion. You could be mourning the loss of friends if we have to downsize. If we are reorganizing, relationships are jumbled; people you used to trust and rely on may not work with you any longer.

Changes of any sort, even those fully justified by economics, market conditions and the like, finally succeed, or fail on the basis of whether the people affected do something differently.

How do you let go of the old way; navigate the tricky time between the old trapeze to the new trapeze, and come out happily doing the new?

imapMyTeam.com supports you each step of the way in these transitions.

To communicate benefits of the change effectively there is the‘Strategies to Properly Position Change’ report. That report helps you frame your conversation with others in a way that the benefit of the transition to the new is made in a way that is appealing.

To help you manage some of the loss change triggers you need to concern yourself with your motivational needs. The ‘Embrace Change’report helps you understand where you may feel uncomfortable with moving from old to the new. It can help you communicate that to others.

Along the transition journey you are bound to feel stress. All change, no matter how well planned creates unintended consequences and stress is primary among those consequences. Your stress is not so much a function of the events, but a function of the view you take of the events. The ‘When Change Stresses You’ report will help you to understand how your behavior is likely to change when the transition is out of sync with your view. It also gives you a practical approach to counteract that stress so you can get back on track.

imapMyTeam and these three essential reports go a long way to manage key behavioral aspects of changing trapezes.

The ‘New’ Golden Rule

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Treat people the way you want to be treated. The ‘old’ Golden Rule makes a lot of sense.

You want to treat people with respect so they respect you. You are not rude to people because you don’t want to be treated rudely. It is civility. We largely expect it and are surprised when it is absent.

The core of "getting along" is about the rules, understandings and societal norms that, when shared, provide the foundation for stable relationships. We learn about what polite behavior and manners mean in the workplace [and our communities]. You might say that these rules provide a sense of order and civility fosters feelings of well-being and positive relationships.

Even though we largely practice this civility we still don’t get along very well all the time. Our interactions with others, despite our best intentions sometimes lead to unintentional slights or maybe escalate to a full blown misunderstanding or at worst perceived as intentionally antagonistic.

imapMyTeam helps you go past the ’old’ golden Rule to the ‘New’ Golden Rule:

Treat people the way they NEED to be treated.

That works far better than treating people the way YOU want to be treated.

Yes, we still want you to practice civility, but we want you to consider a new level of understanding that is based on what people need and expect from you when you interact with them.

The imapMyTeam.com reports you access on others are mostly written to that person’s motivational needs. Those motivational needs set the individual’s expectations for the situation and interaction they are in. Those needs can be very different – even opposite on occasion – than the behavior the person outwardly exhibits.

Using imapMyTeam report suggestions when you are interacting with your colleagues– the new Golden Rule – will make sure you do get along far better with everyone than you might have ever imagined.

Batter Up: 3 strikes and you’re out if you don’t learn these lessons from baseball Monday was a huge day for many – so much so that some are lobbying that opening day of baseball become a national holiday. There is much about baseball that can be applied to business – here are three to consider: 1. Have the right person in the right place. You can have nine great shortstops but maybe a terrible team if none can play another position. Teams can’t get overloaded and neither can your business team. Do you have the right balance of players that cover all of the bases? Blindspots can cost the team wins [success]. Which leads to: 2. Good teams are never accidental. Teams that win [succeed] use the best possible combinations of people they can get. The ‘best skill’ player sometimes doesn’t help the team if they don’t fit the overall team chemistry. If given two players who have similar skills but one excels at interacting with their teammates, guess which one the team will choose to keep? Adding a person only for his or her skills sometimes backfires…think about baseball teams that acquire a player at a trading deadline that looks great on paper but ends up hurting the overall team performance. However, you lose if you choose to stand pat because: 3. You cannot remain static. Your competitors are constantly learning and adapting [probably in part from your strategy] and changing their ways to be more competitive. You can never stop adjusting and evolving. You need to be in a constant evaluation mode yourself. What are my strengths, weaknesses and how do I self-manage them. And, to close, we have to add one of our favorite quotes from Chuck Tanner who managed in the majors for over 17 years. “I don’t think a manager should be judged by whether he wins the pennant, but by whether he gets the most out of the twenty-five men he’s been given.” Are you getting the most out of your work relationships? If not, go to imapMyTeam

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What does a good day at work look like?

Over the years many studies have been conducted to examine the key to motivating people to do their best work.

The good news is that most, if not all of the studies agree that the essential ingredient to motivation turns out to be largely within your control. The roles of money, incentive systems and other ‘tangible’ ways of recognizing people is less important than the support employees receive from their managers and the people they work with.

What does a good day at work look like? It is clearly on the days when employees can see they’re making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles - their motivation and their drive to succeed is at its peak.

On days when they feel like they are spinning their wheels, or encountering roadblocks - their moods and motivation are lowest.

How can you best support the people you work with? What is a roadblock to someone? How can I communicate what feels like support to me?

All of those questions and more can be answered with imapMyTeam®. Login to your page at www.imapmyteam.com and run the Coaching Tips Report for people that work for you or with you. 

If you do not manage anyone, invite your manager to run your report for you and use it as an opportunity to have a discussion with him or her. You will both come away with a better understanding of what it means to have a good day at work in the context of the program you are working.

Who is our new teammate?

Most ‘teams’ have a training camp or off season to give the new and existing members a chance to know each other and get ready to perform as a cohesive unit.

For example:

• Major league baseball is currently in the middle of its spring training.

· Any orchestra will practice and coach new musicians before their performance season starts.

· Broadway curtains don’t rise until the new actors and actresses get to rehearse their roles and understand who stands in for what role should someone be unable to perform.

• And in business we...well we don’t do any of that.

In business new teammates are showing up and the pressure for that team to perform in the midst of a teammate transition doesn’t go away. That change can impact everyone. But there is no practice, no rehearsal. Just dig-in, learn fast, and be productive. Wow!

One fundamental issue of new members joining an existing team is trust. Trust can and is built in a number of ways, most of which take time. Time is scarce and in our fast paced work environment people almost always react this way- “We/I don’t have time for that, I’m/we’re too busy”.

The “Trust” reports you’ll find at www.imapMyTeam.com will help. For the individual joining a new team, check out the “How You Encourage Trust In Others” report to gain focus on how you naturally encourage and build trust with others. If you have a new addition to your team, make it a point to visit the “Peers” section in the upper right hand corner of your imapMyTeam home page. There you can see several reports for your newest team member. The “How You Can Build Trust With Them” report will provide some quick insight to help you quickly gain their support and confidence.

Investing just a little bit of individual and team time to accelerate strong relationships thorough key imapMyTeam reports is a great way to welcome new team members and ensure team effectiveness. It will take some time to do that, but it will pay you back dividends later because you will really understand that new teammate better and faster if you do.

Same Goal, Two Approaches

Severe winter does not want to yield to spring in my part of the country and that can make it more challenging to get my daily workout in.

My wife and I wear Fitbits and our goal is a minimum of 10,000 steps a day. Because winter is restricting much of the outdoor walking we would normally do, there is more demand to use the treadmill. Just today I was waiting for her to finish so I could start and I noticed her settings. She set a faster speed than I usually walk, while I set the incline steeper. She manually controls the speed and incline. I use one of the pre-programmed routes and modify it as I go.

Two people, same 10,000 step goal, two very different ways to achieve the same thing. Both approaches work because at the end of the day we end up hitting our goal.

Work can be a lot like this. We are trying to reach common organizational goals, but individuals have a preferred path to get there that is personal. It can be hard to remember the basic imapMyTeam principle that states “The best way of doing things may not be your way”. However, it’s still important to consider if the unique paths are complimentary or contradictory. One path leads to success, the other to conflict.

www.imapMyTeam can help you with both.

“Team Player Strengths” describes positive traits that come naturally to you. We suggest you and a key teammate both print this report and talk about where you are similar or different. When different, ask your selves this question: how have those differences contributed to a better solution to the things we are working on in common?

If your differences end up causing you and a teammate conflict, you can refer to the “Resolving Differences” report in the center pane of imapMyTeam. This report will help you understand why working through a disagreement can be so difficult and also provides some helpful suggestions to get you back on a productive track.