Are You Well Prepared for that Difficult Conversation?

Every day there are a variety of reasons we may be faced with difficult conversations and not sure how to manage them so they yield the results we want.

You had some tough feedback that you had to give to a coworker.

· An email that was out of line landed in your inbox and you had to go talk to the person and address it face to face. 

· You needed to address some sort of disagreement or conflict with your boss. 

· Someone on your team was making you crazy and you needed to hash it out rather than continue to sweep it aside.

What to do or say is not always clear and you run the risk of making things worse not better.  When you want to ensure you promote alignment and understanding, hit the pause button and visit imapMyTeam®. It’s the perfect tool when you need to make sure your response is effective in getting things back on track quickly.

These three imapMyTeam reports are the “go to” ones for taking the risk out of tough conversations: 

· Resolving Differences – look at yours to get prescriptive ideas on how to adapt

· What to Avoid – run this on the other person to know how to side-step hot  buttons

· How to Talk – run this on the other person to get proactive strategies for your approach

When you take the time to prepare mentally you can remain calm, increase the chances that the conversation will go smoothly and improve the ultimate solution. Sometimes the only thing that stands between you and a resolution is to fine tune your approach so that it doesn’t trigger a stress reaction in the other person.  

No more risky guesswork. This information will help you manage the conversation to avoid unproductive conflict. Use imapMyTeam to be prepared for the difficult conversations!

An imapMyTeam How To: Build a Team from Scratch

Business conditions sometimes drive the need to build a team from the ground up.  Be it for a new initiative, to attack a particular business problem – whatever the reason, imapMyTeam® will help the newly formed team quickly move up the productivity curve.

One benefit of the imapMyTeam site is the ability to create ‘what if’ team scenarios. In the My Teams section select the ‘create teams’ option. In the pop up window you will be prompted to name and describe the team. Then you will select the ‘create and add team members’ button to populate the team with names. 

When you open the Team Dynamics window to begin your evaluation of this team it will begin with the team overview to explain the grid characteristics. There are four other view options across the page, just below the banner/header. Those take you to interests, strengths, needs and stress views of the group so you can view any or all of those perspectives on the team.

From there, you can choose to continue to revise the group to get the characteristics you require.  You can choose to keep the team; you can also delete it if you wish.

Your evaluation should fall in line with what you are attempting to accomplish with this new team.

For example: If the project or team needs to focus on a narrow, well defined task, the interests section becomes the first important place to look. Analyze who meets the criteria to make sure you are putting people on the team who will love to do that type of work. Need broader interests? Make sure the team you are building has representation from all four quadrants in the team player grid. Need a task focus; look for red or yellow. Need a relationship focus; look to greens and blues.

Whatever the business challenge, imapMyTeam® is a tool that will allow you to search your entire workforce, consider who has the passions and strengths you believe are necessary to succeed in the endeavor and then see this depicted for you in a Team Player Grid.  Fast. Accurate. Easy. 

Master Golf to Master Pressure

This week’s premier event in golf, the Masters, played in Augusta, Georgia was yet again a great tournament to watch. The finish is usually filled with drama and suspense and this year gave us all of that and more. This year’s winner, Jordan Speith – Wait! This year’s winner is Danny Willett! And a worthy champion he is.

In golf as in business there is pressure to perform. When the consequences are small the pressure we experience as a result is also small. Whether you are battling for the Masters or a new major contract for your business – and others are counting on your performance - the stakes are raised, pressure to perform increases, stress magnifies, mistakes become more costly.

In roughly 25 minutes Jordan Spieth went from 7 under, comfortably leading the tournament and in line for his second green jacket in a row, to losing 6 strokes over 3 holes. Just that quickly he was out of the lead and never able to recover from a disastrous hole. That same meltdown to one degree or another happens every day in business offices across the country. They just aren’t televised nationally for everyone to see.

While Spieth imploded, Danny Willett quickly vaulted from playing for second place to the lead in one of the most prestigious golf events in the world. Pressure mounted on Danny as well. ‘Easy’ shots get harder. But Willett seemed to handle the rapid script change fairly well, at least externally; internally however you can bet he was battling an increased heart rate! It’s tough to play golf (or succeed in business) with your heart in your throat.

Golf is a great business tool and can teach us a lot about how to succeed both personally and professionally. Not only does golf help you build relationships quickly, the business similarities are endless. Changing conditions, the need to adapt to the unexpected, how strategies sometimes work but often you need to regroup midway. We saw that over the last four days for sure.


Use your imapMyTeam® reports to identify where you’re going to have the greatest difficulty managing your behavior in response to new conditions. Perhaps this weekend requires we all look at our Succeed Under Pressure report. Maybe the Stress of Change (changing conditions) too. 

Batter Up: 3 strikes and you’re out if you don’t learn these lessons from baseball

Sunday and Monday were huge days for many – so much so that some are lobbying that opening day of baseball become a national holiday. There are several lessons from 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 players he’s been given.”


Log in to imapMyTeam.com® today to ensure you are getting the most out of your working relationships.