Corporate Coxswain

The etymology of the word coxswain is interesting. The literal meaning is "boat servant." 

Yet many people first think of the coxswain as the person in charge of the boat, barking out instructions to the crew, not as a ‘servant.’

Sure the coxswain controls the boat’s steering, speed and timing during practice and races and makes sure the boat is tracking an efficient course to minimize the distance rowed. However they are also responsible to train, encourage and motivate the crew and they are held responsible for the safety of the crew.  A coxswain is there to serve the rowers of the boat.

Being in the boat, the coxswain has a feel for what the crew needs and a good view of technical errors. The coxswain needs to diagnose problems into appropriate corrective action. Quickly and efficiently.

As a leader, manager or coach, just like the coxswain, you need to have all of the people in the same boat rowing in the same direction. You need to steer a course that leads to success. You need to encourage, motivate and correct. Quickly and efficiently.

Hopefully everyone in your boat is rowing in the same direction. In business it doesn’t always feel that way. Rowing boats are designed for speed, not maneuverability, so steering requires effort. Businesses prefer speed too; maneuvering quickly to adjust to competition takes effort and its toll on the crew.

As one of your company’s corporate coxswains, you have a great tool to help maneuver the crew and keep them encouraged and motivated. You can even make sure they are “safe” by meeting their varied motivational needs.  This will keep your crew out of their stress reactions that will get them off course and swamp the team boat.

That tool is imapMyTeam®.

The reward for their effort? The winning crew at a regatta often throws their Coxswain into the water. For most coxswains, being thrown in is the perfect end to a perfect day.

Corporate coxswains and imapMyTeam® users will never get thrown in the water. You can decide if that is a good or bad thing.

‘Say It Ain’t So, Joe’ – The Onboarding ‘Scandal’

In 1919 the Chicago White Sox were involved in a scandal of throwing the World Series. Legend has it that after the Grand Jury testimony regarding Shoeless Joe Jackson’s involvement, a bewildered young boy grabbed Shoeless Joe’s sleeve and implored of him to ‘say it ain’t so, Joe.’

I had that same reaction to a recent article in Chief Learning Officer (CLO) magazine about onboarding. Say it ain’t so!

Companies that are spending months and months searching for talent – at great cost – are short changing onboarding training once the employee is hired. A recent study by Mindflash  revealed the following:

Average time spent on corporate onboarding, including necessary skills training:

1979      100 Hours

1995      10 Hours
2015      30 Minutes


The author of the CLO article believes companies should shift their strategy to recruit for attitude and train for skill. Why – because schools curriculum's cannot keep pace with the change of what businesses require. Business would be better suited to focus on getting the right soft skills and do their own skill training to business need.

The Association for Talent Development agrees. They believe business should prioritize soft skills, interactive or people skills, because a new hires attitude and willingness to manage their midset or themselves is a better predictor of long term performance success than hard skills.

Regardless of where you stand in this debate, imapMyTeam® is a tool that helps you keep focused on the necessity of soft skills to get work done and delivers that information to you on a “just in time” basis.  

For you to be able to effectively support an employee throughout the onboarding process you need to have a relationship first. Building trust makes it easier to be effective in teaching/developing that person. You will find imapMyTeam® is also an excellent onboarding and trust building tool you can use collaboratively with others.

Haven’t thought to use imapMyTeam in a while? Say it ain’t so! 

Are You Relationship Lean?

The core idea of lean is to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Simply stated; lean means creating more value for customers using fewer resources.  A lean organization understands customer value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste.

What does that have to do with your relationships? Everything.

The quality of the problem solving in a group is directly linked to the quality of the teamwork. Teamwork means being able to solve problems across functional boundaries – it’s the key to successful process improvement. In order to establish the right environment for process improvement, leaders must constantly develop teamwork by teaching individuals to work with their colleagues across functional silos.

One of the eight wastes in lean is underutilizing people’s skills and abilities – their talent. What you understand as an imapMyTeam® user is that to get the best performance from someone we need to tend to their motivational needs. Needs unmet cause a reactive behavior that we refer to as ‘stress.’

That stress behavior is a person’s ineffective style of dealing with relationships or tasks. When exhibiting this behavior people are less productive (and unhappy with themselves).

To foster teamwork, to get the best out of each individual, to avoid wasting their talent you need to pay attention to others needs. That will ‘lean’ the relationship and help you achieve your goals. imapMyTeam® reports are largely written for others’ needs. They give you a model of how to interact with another person in the most effective way possible. Relationship Lean!

Lean is not a tactic or a cost reduction program, but a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization – imapMyTeam® is a tool that adds value to that process.

Back to Business -Back to School -Be in the Zone!

 Labor Day Weekend has long been associated with our final fling with summer before turning our attention back to school and business.

With the holiday being so late this year the back to school part is in full force, but this weekend most of us probably squeezed out every last drop of summer we could. Now that we’re ready to put away the bathing suits and flip flops, it’s time to diagram our personal strategy for the 2015 stretch run.

Whether September brings us new challenges, or we’re looking for a strong finish to an existing project; or both- it’s time to get focused, get organized, and get busy.

Where to begin? Let’s face it, just getting refocused after summer can be challenging for many so, a great place to start is by rallying around what is easy for you. It’s time for you to get back into your personal optimal performance zone.

When you are working on the things you love and enjoy most, and you are able to use the strengths that come to you naturally, you’ll be on the way to doing your best work right out of the gate. The same thing is true for your direct reports.

For you and your team to ‘get focused, get organized, and get busy,’ use imapMyTeam to help you figure it out quickly.

Go to your “Team Player” report. Once you navigate there, go to the last page which is the summary. It recaps what you need, and when those needs are met, how you can leverage both your passions and strengths to be back in an optimal ‘performance zone’ in no time.