A National Re-Charge!

With the end of summer quickly approaching, the upcoming Labor Day holiday is the perfect time for some recreation and re-charging. We are taking this opportunity to ‘mash-up’ imapMyTeam, a special anniversary, and the end of summer.

It just so happens that The National Parks Service had its 100^th birthday last Thursday August 25.  It was on that date in 1916 the NPS was officially founded when President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill into law to create the service to oversee many of the already established and growing number of protected areas.

Our National Parks Service offer us the opportunity to get away to relax, learn, discover and re-charge in a wide variety of interesting places. As part of the celebration the NPS has been running an initiative called “Find Your Park” encouraging everyone of all ages to find the national park that suits them for both inspiration and recreation.

How might a National Park inspire you to recharge as they have suggested in their campaign?

Experiment. Take your Re-Energize report from imapMyTeam and read all of the statements and consider how they would apply to a national park trip. What activities would you undertake that are in alignment with your report? What conditions for recharging are met?

If hitting a National Park is part of your plan, No problem. This exercise works as well if you are going to the beach or planning a Labor Day ‘staycation’ that takes you no further than your backyard grill.

If you are re-charging with family or friends remember that we all have very different ways of renewing our physical and social energy. One person’s chill is often very different from another!

However you spend the holiday, there are a couple of things to remember: down-time is not a luxury; it’s a vital requirement of mental, emotional and physical health. Also, the ability to know when to recharge your personal batteries is an essential element of staying on a winning pace.  You’ll want to be ready to face the challenges of finishing strong in 2016

The Re-Energize report in imapMyTeam will help you make the most of your time away no matter the venue. 

Blind to our own Blindness

My 2015 vehicle with just less than 9000 miles has a ‘glitch’.  My dashboard has started to go out from time to time. Visible one moment, black – or is it blank? – the next. No rhyme or reason. Sometimes ‘short’ sometimes ‘long’ it’s off, it’s on, and it’s off again!

This ranges from a being a small nuisance to highly annoying to me.

Yesterday I ran a few errands in my neighborhood without information. No problem. Later in the day I went to a friend’s BBQ – drove a 60 mile round trip with the dashboard being more off than on – I’m annoyed.

Now imagine me driving across the country without my dashboard working. How would I know when I was going to run out of gas or if any of the other trouble lights were signaling to me? Tire pressure/Oil levels/ Engine temperature and the like. I could be speeding and have no idea.

Would you run your business without a working dashboard? I doubt it. You need to know how you are performing and use that information to make necessary adjustments.

Relationships need a dashboard too – and you have it right in front of you. imapMyTeam®. While there is no “data” on the imap dashboard, it does call attention to, among other things, individual and team blind spots. Without accurate information and perspective we are as blind to those blind spots as I am to my vehicle speed.

I’m going to have to take my vehicle in for maintenance – when was the last time you took your relationships or team for some preventive maintenance?

I have a suggestion. Use the attached ‘Dream Team’ exercise to check to see if the team has all the blind spots covered – it will help you make the long distance drive you need to succeed. After all, your business success is a long term endeavor that deserves all the visibility you can get.

Delta Knows: Relationships Matter

When things fall apart, damage is done and the answers are not easy, sometimes all you have for survival is the strength of your relationships. Relationships matter.

Last week was not a good week for Delta Air Lines Inc. Despite a $150 million investment in system upgrades this year alone, a new chief information officer and a leadership team for information technology and infrastructure, Delta’s main computer system failed in the pre-dawn hours Monday morning. Result: 2100 flights cancelled over a three day period; travelers stretched well beyond “thank you for your patience.”

When individuals and teams perform according to expectations, it’s natural for others to have confidence in and be willing to extend trust to them. When there is a failure to perform, commitments are unmet or people do not do what they say they are going to do, trust can suffer. So it’s critical to recognize the way we perform on a daily basis can either build trust or blow it up.

All companies in every industry work hard to build loyalty and trust with their customers. Yet sometimes things go wrong; sometimes BIG things go wrong, and the loyalty and trust of customers is tested. If you were one of the Delta passengers impacted by this meltdown of services, perhaps your loyalty was compromised.

When failure strikes, it creates moments of truth for individuals and organizations. Each personal interaction between affected parties becomes critical in restoring the relationship and rebuilding trust.
Many imapMyTeam users do have customers or strategic partners as part of their larger imapMyTeam network. The relationships forged via this collaboration tool have helped them through some rough patches in the past and will do so again in the future.

Create your own relationship capital because you never know when your own ‘Delta Day’ may occur. If – or when - it does, you’ll be rewarded for having invested in relationships all along rather than playing catch-up afterwards.


Even if it is not practical for your organization to link to key partners with imapMyTeam as others have done, using the resources available to you will help you better understand how to invest in building loyalty with those you interact with on a regular basis. Build Relationships to survive the inevitable “Delta” moments

They Didn’t Get To the Podium Alone

The Opening Ceremonies of the Summer Olympic Games in Brazil were held last night.  As I watched country by country march into the stadium proudly representing their respective nations, I missed something; perhaps it will come later during the actual competition.

Backstories of many of the athletes were abundant. Mostly about what they did, where they came from. Perhaps the odds they defied – maybe a bit about their family from time to time. I didn’t hear a word about their coaches.

Although the coaches of these various athletes don’t throw a javelin, put a shot, sprint on the track, head one soccer ball, dive into a pool, those coaches produce influential contributions to their athletes’ success.  While I didn’t hear about too many of the coaches, the athletes will be depending on their real-time feedback and advice throughout the “Games” to give them the edge they need to win the Gold Medal.

I suspect any athlete marching onto that stadium would quickly give credit to the coaches who got them there. Of course most were blessed with athletic ability – the coach molded that gift and improved upon it, both mentally and physically.

These gifted athletes did not get there alone.
Organizations working to develop world-class leaders should pay notice to that.
Similarly to the athletes, gifted leaders do not get there alone.  Coaching is such an important and integral element of success that it is has to be considered a requirement for success.

imapMyTeam is your desktop coach. It is there to help you hone your skills and improve your performance so you too can stand on the podium and receive your organization’s equivalent of the Gold Medal.

Unlike an athlete that is trying to improve on a singular performance in a well-defined competition, the leaders reading this Tuesday Tip are trying to improve their responsiveness in a wider variety of situations and WITH a wide variety of different people.

It is not about total change – it is about adapting and creating greater range; being able to stretch ones-self to succeed.  The Coaching Conversations report in imapMyTeam will help guide you through those important coaching opportunities.

Grab the Gold Medal by tapping the insights of imapMyTeam and having frequent conversations with your coach about your performance.

‘StressBuster’

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” 

                                                                                               ~~ William James

Stress behaviors will look different depending on who we’re talking about.  For some, they look like rigidity, others it’s anxiety, and there are those where it’s visible pushiness while some will suck it all in and feel the pain privately.  The common denominator of all stress behaviors, no matter what they look like, is that they are a reaction to not getting something that we need.

When you shift into your stress behavior, you lose your power to choose how you want to manage a situation and run the risk of creating damage.  Full blown stress behaviors are counter-productive and they limit our ability to succeed. The stress initially begins by impacting our own ability to cope and quickly spreads to those around us. These unchecked stress behaviors are costly and can have significant organizational consequences such as:

·         alienated employees

·         interpersonal conflict

·         shift in focus from team to personal wins

·         a cycle of poor decision making

·         wasted time and resources

Stop the free-fall!

The quickest way to halt this free fall into stress reactions and avoid their damaging consequences is a StressBuster; a simple technique to help you regain self-control.  It uses the strengths that are opposite of the stress to create balance and control.

We have attached a one page pdf to this email that gives you two charts.  The first one describes stress behaviors and the second gives ideas of what to do should they occur.  To find out which quadrant you should be paying attention to, go to imapMyTeam and see what color your circle and square are located in.  This indicates what your needs are and how you will react if they’re not met.

Open the PDF and look at that same color quadrant for a description of how you may react. 

Now here’s the tricky part…..Your StressBuster comes from the diagonally opposite quadrant to where your circle and square are located.  Choose these behaviors when the stress reaction occurs to make sure that you don’t cause damage to yourself, other people or the work you’re responsible to deliver.