One of the benefits I garner through my work are opportunities to collaborate with different groups and individuals. Through these collaborations, I not only get the chance to learn and understand different perspectives, but to discover new ways to work with people who have different approaches to guide things forward.

Of course, as with anything in life, not all collaborations are created equal. Although I look forward to future collaborations with many of the people and groups I’ve worked with in the past, there are some collaborations that were not as satisfying or rewarding. Not so much in terms of how successful we were in attaining our objectives, but in how certain parties approached the collaboration process.

Interestingly, it’s a problem that my two oldest daughters also experience in high school where teachers assign them projects to collaborate on without providing any guidance or support on how to do this effectively. This no doubt mirrors our own educational experiences, where we were somehow expected to know how to collaborate with different partners in order to achieve a successful result.

Taken together, what this reveals is an uncomfortable truth about the nature of work: we understand the importance of collaboration, but most of us haven’t learned what that involves [Share on Twitter]. And in light of today’s rush to just get things done, leaders are not engendering a supportive environment for their employees to learn how they can successfully collaborate with different teams and departments in order to achieve their organization’s shared purpose.

As such, I’d like to share with you some of the lessons I’ve learned from my past collaborations, lessons I’ve shared with both my clients and my daughters on how we can learn to be successful in our present and future collaborations by gaining a better understanding of what it entails.

1. Clarify expectations in terms of involvement and contributions
When I look back at the various partnerships I’ve had with different groups and individuals, one trait that these collaborations shared in common was how there was this collective drive and enthusiasm to roll up our sleeves and dive into the work.

And yet, if I look at those collaborations which I enjoyed the most – those that have fuelled an interest in finding opportunities to collaborate in the future – there was something we did before we mapped out any plans or began assigning tasks.

Namely, before anything else was done, we made time to Click here to continue reading »

In recent years, there’s been a growing focus on the importance of emotional intelligence in today’s leadership. Of why those in leadership positions need to rely less on their technical competencies and knowledge, and more on how to go about building relationships with those under their care – both to better connect the overarching vision of the organization to the internal needs of their employees, as well as to ensure a clearer understanding of the realities found within their workplace.

To date, there have been numerous studies that have shown the growing expectations employees have on their leaders to demonstrate a greater proficiency in leading people over managing tasks. Indeed, findings like those from Google’s Project Oxygen have proven conclusively that the key to succeeding in leadership today is not in those hard skills of yesteryear, but in the so-called soft skills of empathy, compassion, and self-awareness.

Thanks to work being done to understand how our brain creates, consolidates, and retrieves memories of emotional events, we can further appreciate why this is becoming more and more critical to succeeding in today’s faster-paced, global environment.

Research into how memories are created and recalled have shown that there’s a clear difference to this process between regular memories and memories involving an emotional experience or response. Specifically, what researchers have found is that when emotions are tied to a particular memory, we have a stronger recollection of that event.

Consider, for example, when a major news event happens in our country – each of us can easily remember months and even years later where we were when we first heard the news. By comparison, few of us could remember what we ate for dinner on Tuesday two or three weeks ago.

However, while our emotions might help us to easily recall a past event or circumstance, research from the neuroscience field has also shown that this strengthening of our memories comes at the expense of Click here to continue reading »

In this guest piece by David Marquet, Retired U.S. Navy Captain, David chronicles his experiences and mistakes while in command of the submarine the USS Santa Fe to reveal how you can empower your employees and colleagues to think for themselves.

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We were in the final stages of a cat-and-mouse game with the enemy diesel submarine. The simulated war had escalated to the point where our submarine was authorized to sink it.

The enemy had picked this area deliberately. The shallow uneven bottom reduced the effectiveness of the torpedo, and to ensure a hit we would need a precise idea of the enemy’s location. The best way to do this would be to actually see it, which is why we were at periscope depth, looking for the enemy sub visually.

We had packed more than twenty men into the control room, a space roughly half the area of a typical Starbucks.

We carried the MK-48 ADCAP (advanced capability) torpedo. It is a devastating weapon against both surface ships and submarines. We launch the torpedo to intercept the target the way a hunter leads a duck.

In addition, the torpedo has its own sonar system, looking for the target for a precise intercept. The torpedo streams a wire behind it that stays connected to the submarine, allowing us to Click here to continue reading »

The following is a guest piece by Steven R. Shallenberger.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed, or “task saturated,” with phone calls, emails, interruptions, or competing responsibilities? How many of us spend our days frantically trying to get through our to-do lists but still never find time to do what really matters most? If this sounds all too familiar, you are not alone.

What if I could share a process and tool that could help eliminate those feelings and replace them with a sense of peace, happiness, and accomplishment? These tools will allow you to shift your focus from inaction to action and to significantly increase your productivity while minimizing your stress; you will be able to take control of your life by doing what matters most instead of just coming up with another busy to-do list.

Let’s get started.

Take Control of Your Life through Pre-Week Planning

Pre-week planning is a time management tool designed to help you accomplish things you may never thought possible, by focusing on Click here to continue reading »

One of the things I enjoy about sharing my writings and insights on leadership is the opportunity it creates to interact with my readers – to hear their stories and what they’ve learned along the way, as well as some of the challenges they are trying to overcome.

Recently, one challenge in particular caught my attention as it was brought forth by both a reader of my leadership blog and by an audience member at a talk I gave last week.  The challenge in question was what do you do if you have to lead a team in a toxic workplace setting? And how can you overcome this to effectively lead your employees?

Given the interest expressed by two different segments of my audience, I want to share some key steps leaders should employ to help cure toxic workplaces and replace them with a more healthy, productive work environment.

Granted, I can’t provide specific steps because every situation is different and comes with its own set of variables and constraints that leaders will have to work with. However, the following measures will nonetheless provide you with both the right perspective and framework to help cure toxic workplaces in your organization.

1. Identify and rally ‘change champions’ in your organization
Now before we can put into action measures to cure a toxic workplace, we need to first understand something about how our brain operates. Neuroscience has shown that our brains are hard-wired to avoid threats in our environment.

Consequently, not only is our brain focused more on looking out for danger than benefits, but the neural signals we get from our different senses are processed first through that lens of whether it’s a good or bad experience before our higher brain functions can help us to create a context for what we’re seeing, hearing, or feeling.

Now it’s important to note here that it’s not just dangerous or harmful events that our brain identifies as threats. Rather, it labels anything that creates ambiguity or uncertainty as a threat and consequently, something we should avoid. And all of this happens subconsciously which is why we may not be able to rationally explain why we fear something, only that we do.

In the case of making changes to your workplace environment, even though Click here to continue reading »