With the holiday celebrations now at an end, many of us are returning to our usual daily grind refreshed, rejuvenated and ready to dive into the tasks awaiting our attention. The start of a new year is also a time when many of us make resolutions of what we’d like to accomplish over the next 365 days, and possibly beyond.

Granted, it’s only natural that we’d be motivated right now to create these lists of goals, as the start of a new year often inspires that feeling of a new start; that the turning to a fresh page instills hope for new opportunities and bright possibilities for our future. The buoyant positivity around this time of the year can certainly be quite beneficial as it encourages us to take time for some personal self-reflection, pushing us to define goals of what we’d like to change in ourselves, and what areas of knowledge and understanding we’d like to develop a greater awareness of.

Of course, in order for us to truly reap the benefits of this exercise, we need to review the events of the previous year; of taking note of what we endured, learned and gained from those past experiences which can serve as the foundation that we build upon as we move forward.

Another point to consider when developing these lists of goals is how the focus doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to ourselves. Indeed, the start of a new year is a perfect opportunity for leaders to evaluate how they can help their employees with achieving their professional goals for this year.

Now, before the cynic within all of us dismisses such notions as being the result of an euphoric haze that often comes with celebrating the arrival of a new year, let us consider one of the lessons we learned over the course of the previous one. Namely, how Click here to continue reading »”4 New Year’s Resolutions To Help Your Organization Succeed This Year”

Have you ever had an employee come to you with an idea or proposal to address a particular situation to which you answered with one of the following replies?

“That’s a great idea, but let’s shop this around a bit first.”

“I agree that we need to change this, but I’m not sure now is the best time.”

“It’d be nice if we could offer this, but I don’t think we can afford to right now.”

All of these responses sound understanding and appreciative of the employee’s input. And yet, notice how the use of “but” in each reply serves to effectively stop any further discussion or deeper examination of the proposal beyond this initial encounter.

Granted, there are times when leaders need to hold back eager employees because the measures they are suggesting might not be the best in terms of addressing a given problem the organization is facing. Unfortunately, such responses can also inhibit your employees’ sense of creativity and with it, your organization’s ability to innovate if the motivation behind this resistance is based on factors other than ensuring the collective success of your team.

With this in mind, here are four questions leaders can ask themselves to find out if they are letting their ‘buts’ get in the way of helping their team to succeed and thrive. Click here to continue reading »”Is Your ‘But’ Getting In The Way Of Your Team’s Success?”

Imagine walking into work one day and your boss decides to divide you into teams of four with the following challenge – to build the largest structure you can using 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow, which has to be placed at the top of the structure. It’s an unusual assignment, to be sure, but it’s also the basis of a sociological experiment on teamwork called “The Marshmallow Challenge”.

In his TED talk “Build a tower, build a team”, Tom Wujec shares his findings from performing this challenge with a variety of different groups – recent business school graduates, lawyers, engineers, CEOs, and even kindergarten students. As you’ll see, his observations about how the various groups approached the challenge gave rise to some surprising, and at times humorous, results:

While Wujec shares some interesting points on the nature of how we collaborate and the process of design, there are some additional lessons we can learn from this challenge on how leaders can guide their teams to a successful outcome: Click here to continue reading »”What The Marshmallow Challenge Can Teach Us About Fostering Team Success”

As we slowly make our way through the remaining weeks of the year, many organizations are now shifting their focus to an exercise that is often met with disdain and apprehension – the annual performance review. Regardless of whether you’re on the receiving or giving end, most of us tend to view these feedback exercises as unconstructive or a waste of time, in large part because we approach the conversation from the wrong vantage point. Participating at a recent awards gala for one of the regional high schools helped to not only shed some light on this issue, but also on how leaders can make the act of giving feedback to others more instructive and beneficial.

I was invited by the school principal to give a speech and help present awards as part of a ceremony to recognize students who had maintained a high academic standing throughout the previous school year. Although I was honoured and delighted to take part, I have to admit that I did feel some hesitation because I wasn’t an active member of this community when these students achieved these accomplishments. As such, I felt that any recognition on my part of their efforts wouldn’t exactly carry much weight because of that lack of connection.

So I decided to take another approach to my involvement where I used my role in this ceremony to serve as a source of encouragement and support for how these students could build on and attain a similar achievement over the course of the current academic year.

Following the ceremony, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from both the parents and the students of how much they appreciated my participation, and in particular the ideas I had shared in my speech and in the brief comments made to every student as they came up on stage to accept their award.

What I began to realize is that Click here to continue reading »”Are You Following These 3 Rules For Giving Effective Feedback?”