Thanks-Giving

“I can no other answer make, but, thanks, and thanks”

From William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

In what has become a Tuesday Tip Tradition, the tip of Thanksgiving week focuses on gratitude.

As we wish you and your coworkers a Thanksgiving filled with abundance and bright moments, it’s fitting to reflect on the things we are most grateful for at work. At the top of the gratitude list are the diverse talents of our coworkers. Each colleague brings something different to help make your team, and ultimately your organization, thrive. Without their passion, strengths and commitment to reach your team’s success you would flounder.

Studies have established that when people take time to identify specific positive attributes in others or their actions, and take time to acknowledge them in some way, they tend to:

• Have a relative absence of stress and depression
• Make progress toward important personal goals
• Report higher levels of determination and energy

Use imapMyTeam® to make it easy to find and document positive attributes of your team members. Consider their contributions and how they add to the team’s overall success. Perhaps write down a few notes to solidify your appreciation. The gratitude you offer will benefit you as well as your colleagues.

We are grateful for the readers of Tuesday Tips and users of imapMyTeam®; thank you for being a reader. Thank you to those of you who have reached out with compliments and suggestions. We appreciate each and every one of you – without you there would be no us.

We hope you enjoy some time away from the demands of work and your return from the holiday comes with a renewed attitude of gratitude!


Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Martian Lessons in Leadership

I recently saw the movie The Martian and in addition to enjoying it thoroughly I thought it was filled with several great lessons in leadership.

Matt Damon plays Mark Whatney an astronaut/botanist who is stranded on Mars. He is left behind for dead and what follows is not just a great story of man’s survival instincts but how people can band together for a common cause.

We see that cooperation and collaboration throughout the movie, not to mention innovation, problem solving and communication lessons.

For Mark to survive the harsh landscape of Mars he needs to think out of the box. He systematically puts in a plan to address each of the issues that he faces. Once he has that plan he quickly takes action on it. From your imapMyTeam® Team Player Grid we would say that is being blue [strategy] before being red [taking action/speed].

When astronaut Whatney finally establishes communication with NASA the first questions he asks are about the crew (his team) and their reaction to him being alive. When NASA tells him his crew is not aware that he is alive it sets up a series of humorous events that reinforce the importance of communication. The lesson? – Communicate the truth, even if it is harsh – your team and employees expect it from you.

The crew of the Hermes- at their own peril- makes hard decisions and personal sacrifices to get Mark home safely. If you build a team like the crew at Hermes, you can pretty much bet that they will be as committed to your mission as this crew was to saving Mark.

You too can develop the same collaboration, foster communication, recognize diversity and respect and use others strengths with regular use of imapMyTeam®. 

Why transition is so hard (and what you need to know)

  

I recently returned from a board meeting and on the drive home my head was spinning. I had just participated in what had to have been the longest executive session in the history of the board- all because one person is retiring and a key information system is changing.

The system change is progressing well from a technical standpoint; the retirement has been on the horizon for 18 months. How difficult could it be? Very difficult it turns out.

The administrative arm of this organization is in upheaval and people report they are “miserable”. Why? Because the people involved in the system conversion do not like how it is changing roles and relationships. Jobs will be eliminated. And, at the same time, the retirement is creating a shuffling of duties among the remaining people who do not want to accept these newly assigned tasks and responsibilities.

The previous paragraph hints to the source of why transition is hard.

Many change/transitional 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. 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 the organizational structure is flattened the loss could be your next promotion to the tier just flattened. There could be mourning for the loss of good friends and colleagues if there is a need to downsize. If there is a reorganization, 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 choose to do something differently.

People are highly reluctant to do things differently and make change – even when it is highly necessary unless there is some sort of personal ‘win’ involved in the change. Those ‘wins’ need to be in alignment with their internal motivational need.

How do you let go of the old way; navigate the tricky time between the old ways to the new ways efficiently – support the behavioral aspects of the transitions, not just the business aspects.

One way is to understand the stress people feel during these changes. imapMyTeam® provides great insight to the way changes cause stress when the methodology being used to manage the change is not meeting the person’s need.  It will also give you suggestions on how to manage your way through these times of transition so you have a higher likelihood of success.