- a recap of the 2010 Bright Ideas with Presenter Lisa Dunbar -
 
To round out our month on teaming, I thought I’d share some highlights from my presentation “The Road to Top Notch Teaming” from the Albany-Colonie Chamber of Commerce Bright Ideas Conference.
 
 
 
Choose the right vehicle to get you where you are going. Not unlike choosing what [...]

A special interview with Lisa Dunbar after her presentation: The Road To Top-Notch Teaming at the 2010 Bright Ideas Conference last week (view interview).
 

Last week I was speaking with a manager who shared that his team had been given a hard time recently when they asked for more resources to handle a high priority project.  The comments back, frankly, were not nice.  “Maybe your team shouldn’t be the one handling the project anyway.”  “You’re not taking anything from [...]

When management has made a clear statement that the organization will be team-based, then the individual has to have a serious self-talk to see if he/she wants to continue working for the organization. Fundamentally, in a team-based organization there is no choice and individuals need to recognize that fact. In an organization where management hasn’t [...]

Successful teams don’t leave success to chance. They plan for success. They are set up to succeed from the beginning. They spend 2/3 of their time planning what they will do and 1/3 of their time actually doing it. That includes spending time on process and relationship before task. Teaming 3.0 doesn’t involve some new [...]

Some organizations believe they can implement teams without changing the traditional hierarchical structure. Within months, the two structures inevitably clash. Typically the more entrenched structure survives and teamwork is reduced to a thing of the past. Managers have much greater difficulty adjusting to a team-based environment than hourly employees because they have to learn to [...]

There have been many articles and books written on why teams fail, including the very popular Five Dysfunctions of Teams.  For this blog, I’d like to go off the beaten path a bit and look at some of the less discussed reasons why teams fail – the other six dysfunctions of teams.
1. Wanting team-based results [...]

I conducted a team building workshop recently and as I was reviewing the four key elements for effective work teams with the group, notably (1) common goal and approach (2) shared roles and responsibilities (3) commitment to helpful team behaviors and (4) consensus decisions, it was easy to see the heads nodding when I spoke [...]