The Hedgehog Effect by Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries has written over 35 books on the subject of leadership and the dynamics of both individuals and teams during periods of organisational change. A clinical professor of leadership development, he has been rated by The Financial Times and The Economist as one of the worlds leading leadership theorists and among the world’s top 50 leading management thinkers. More than this though, he has over 20 years of hands on experience of running CEO leadership team coaching programmes entitled ‘The Challenge of Leadership: Creating Effective Leaders’ and his book draws on many personal ‘real-life’ experiences.

Don’t let his academic standing put you off. His book is full of easy to understand concepts that I found really resonated with me from my days of working in medium to large corporations. If you are a CEO, senior manager or aspiring leader, this leadership book is a must read.

It provides real insights into the ‘human’ intricacies of working in teams; the dysfunctional overt and covert behaviour that can marginalise individuals and hinder team productivity. Manfred goes on to examine the benefits of leadership coaching and the positive impact this has had through his own experiences of building high performing teams.

He provides a wonderful story which for me sums up the culture that managers can create, without even realising it:

“A group of frogs was hopping contentedly through a swamp, doing whatever it is frogs do, when two of them fell into a deep hole. The other frogs gathered around to see what they could do to help their friends. When they saw how deep the hole was, they gave up. They told the two poor frogs in the hole that they should abandon hope and prepare themselves for death.
Unwilling to accept their fate, the two frogs tried with all their might to jump out of the hole. The frogs in the marsh kept calling down to them, insisting that their situation was hopeless and that the best they could do was save their energy and wait patiently for death. They did not hesitate to add that the frogs would not be in this unfortunate situation if they had been more careful, and listened to their elders.
But the two frogs continued jumping as high as they could. Gradually, they grew tired. Finally, one of the frogs took heed of his friends’ words. Spent and disheartened, he quietly accepted his fate, lay down at the bottom of the hole, and died as the others looked on in grief.
But the other frog was more persistent. He continued to jump with every ounce of energy he head, although his body was wracked with pain. Once again, the crowds of frogs, hanging over the hole, yelled at him to stop this nonsense, accept his fate, and just die. Undaunted, the weary frog jumped harder and harder and – wonder of wonders – finally leapt so high that he got out of the hole. Amazed, the other frogs celebrated his miraculous return to freedom and then, gathering around him asked, “Why did you carry on jumping when we told you to give up?”
The poor frog stared at them in astonishment. “But, my friends,” he said, “I am rather deaf. At that distance I could not read your lips. When I saw you waving and shouting, I thought you were encouraging me not to give up. That’s why I kept on trying.”

As the paradoxical tale illustrates, having your team-mates on your side, cheering you on, motivating and encouraging you, can be very powerful. This level of support may stimulate you to perform beyond expectations. Equally, where the opposite culture exists, team members are doomed to fail. Your future as leaders will rest on your ability to recognise the often invisible undercurrent of group dynamics within your organisation as these can either create a group effect that is more powerful than the sum of its parts, or quickly destroy the purpose and performance of the team. This book will enable you to explore team-based distributive leadership skills, enabling you to get the best from your people.

‘The Hedgehog Effect’ goes on to explore the need for the organisations of tomorrow to have executives who can deal with the advantages and disadvantages of teamwork and know how to be an effective member of a team themselves.

The book focuses heavily on self-awareness, culture and group dynamics. It is very well written and I found myself highlighting whole pages of ‘golden nuggets’ of practical tasks I could undertake as a coach, leader and team member with everyone I interact with. This is one of the most powerful, up-to-date leadership books I have read recently and one well work adding to the arsenal of tools to help you learn some of ‘the secrets of building high performance teams’. It will be well worth quoting from in forthcoming practical articles on coaching and team work.

If you like this article, subscribe here , LIKE us on facebook, leave a comment, or to get your own personal copy of The Hedgehog Effect to enable you to become a more effective leader, coach and team member. After all, I’ve told you about the frogs…wait till you read about the hedgehogs!

Working Cultures on a Local and Global Scale

Is Business Excellence a Question of Sport?

Business leaders need to take a good hard look at their key assets.

Sure, every individual has valuable contribution to make within an organisation. But it is the core team that makes the difference between corporate success and mediocrity. The core are the key strategic, mission-critical roles driving the organisation. The rest is just window dressing.

If you consider the dynamics of the world’s ultimate sporting teams, it is the spine of the team that spells great team success. With the England ’66 squad it was Banks, Moore, Charlton and Hurst. For the long unbeaten Australian cricket team, it was McGrath, Warne, Waugh, Gilchrist and Ponting. And then Vickery, Johnson, Dallaglio, Dawson and Wilkinson delivered in spectacular form as the legendary 2003 Rugby World Cup team.

History tells us that behind each of these sporting team triumphs was a beautifully crafted core in which not one player, but the entire critical backbone of the team was equally outstanding. A strong core team can also afford to support remaining players with lesser skills and experience without compromising overall performance.

And if you translate this sporting analogy into a business context?

It is about the effectiveness of the corporate core, working as an elite team driving the corporate direction, living and breathing its vision. But make no mistake -  organisations require more than competent, experienced individuals to fill these key roles. Business excellence demands that the calibre of the core team is best-in-class.

Without exceptional appointments in the core, organisational success is badly diluted. Surely this is never more important than in a challenged economic climate.

About the Author:

This is a guest post by Christina Sage, an ambassador for CMI, a leading source of management training in the UK

Do Unethical Businesses have Unhappy Employees?

I received an unpleasant phone call today. A man was calling from abroad to try and pull a cliche scam. Him, allegedly belonging to my ‘technical maintenance’ company, wanted to tell me that I had viruses on my computer that he could help with. About 20 seconds into his script, my brother arrived at the front door, and in a rather smug act I slammed the phone down without warning and went to greet my brother, without a care in the world. I did however pause on the stairs to imagine whether my dodgy cold caller was feeling the same.

I like to think that by now, I have a fairly good understanding of the world and the types of people whom inhabit it. But which category did my afternoon intruder fit into? Was he an evil career criminal? Or more likely; was he a poor and desperate individual, reluctantly tied into coming into ‘work’ each day to dupe unwitting westerners in order to take a tiny cut and feed his family? A bit of follow-up research into the matter indicates that the latter scenario is probably closer to the truth.

This got me thinking about unethical organisations, and the people who work within them. When I think about ‘unethical businesses’, my mind isn’t just fixed on the ‘Nigerian Scammers’ of today. A greater number of legitimate but questionable multinationals could also be considered unethical organisations. Their industries include:

Tobacco, Online-Pharmaceutical, Gambling, Animal Testing, Weapons & Military Systems. While these organisations cause harm to their customers or stakeholders, there are also industries classified as unethical from a wider religious or political standpoint, including Pornography and Lobbying, and could recently be said to include the Oil & Gas majors as well as Investment Banks.

These industries employ millions of people the world over,  but are these employees as happy as their equivalents in ethical organisations? Does an employees perception of their employers ethical standing affect their motivation and productivity? Do unethical employers in return, have to pay an ‘unethical premium’ to retain their staff?

The Labour Market

Research from PriceWaterhouseCoopers suggest that graduates prefer companies with a strong CSR commitment. Taken from the source:

‘The survey found that 71% of recent UK graduates would rather work for a business with strong ethical values, while an even bigger number, 76%, said they would actually consider leaving a firm because of its CSR policies – or lack of them.” The threatening statistics about employees proactively leaving a job in response to CSR policies is particularly striking. This is a big step up from the ‘choosiness’ displayed by job seekers.

And according to the Guardian, a BT survey found that for more than one-third of young professionals, working for a caring and responsible employer was more important even than the salary they earned.

It seems clear to me that when we apply the basic laws of economics to unethical job roles, in seems an inescapable reality that employers are having to offer higher salaries in order to compete in the labour market.

Maslows Hierachy

If we take Maslow’s famous ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ (Source), which provides a useful insight into the way motivation ‘works’, we can see that the lowest instance that ethicality of an employer seems to appear is perhaps ‘Sense of Connection’ which could apply to the resonance between an employee and the organisations values. It could also be relevant to the self-esteem level, as ‘achievement’ is subjective and will be affected by societies perception of an individuals employer. It goes without saying that self-actualisation is heavily inter-twined with morality and ethics, and therefore employer ethics will become a significant factor at this level.

So what does this mean for unethical employers? Well, the ‘Hierarchy’ represents the limiting factors of human happiness. The theory states that if one factor is unfulfilled, employees will struggle to move up the pyramid, and struggle to attain high levels of happiness and productivity. Maslow would therefore agree that if an employee feels at odds with his organisations or colleagues lack of ethics (Love and Belonging), or feels persecuted and disrespected due to his employer (Self Esteem), or believes his work to be in some way immoral (Self-actualisation), then the employee will be less happy at work. The knock-on effect for productivity is obvious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ethical Champion (The Co-operative)

The Co-operative Group has a very different legal structure to a standard corporation, which may sound rather strange to you, depending on which country you’re browsing from! A co-operative is a company owned by it’s members, who are typically its customers. On a large scale, this results in large organisations that have no external shareholders. The result is an ethical culture of sustainability. The Co-operative Group, based in the UK, is the worlds largest retail co-operative, with services spanning from food, to finances to funerals!

If unethical companies do have to pay a premium to retain good staff, then the ‘Angel’ companies such as The Co-operative must be witnessing the upside. I took a look at The Co-operative 2009 Annual report to see if I could interpret a measure of employee commitment and loyalty performance. Their annual employee survey, which is a good indicator of employee participation levels had an 85% response rate, which is extremely high (against personal experience). It seems that the positive and ethical companies are seeing rewards from their various CSR schemes, many of which directly involve employees.

Or of course, you could take advice from Jay Goltz, writing for the NY Times, when he said “The secret to having a happy workforce, [...] is firing the unhappy people”.

What Do You Think?

Do you work in one of the industries outlined above? How much does the morality of an organisation effect your loyalty and motivation? Leave a comment below!

 

Tips for Leading Multi-Cultural Teams

The modern manager understands the benefits that can be gained from team diversity, but managing a truly multicultural team is not a simple task. While many developed and developing countries are packed with organisation featuring a wide range of ethnicities, often these employees have all lived in the same country for many years and as such are not truly multicultural, as they share much of the same heritage and background.

Globalisation and the international consolidation of industry has led to large, international groups of companies becoming the norm, and with this – comes the really significant changes like language barriers, cultural differences and a plethora of new perspectives, as well as working styles. Whether you’re leading a cross-global project team, or work with internationally seconded employees, you’ll be familiar with the new challenges that these changes bring.

A Uniform Approach or a Tailored Style?

One of the first decisions you have to make as a leader or manager, is whether to use a consistent leadership style in your interactions with all people, or to effectively treat each culture differently. The latter method is simpler, and leaves your mind freer to deal with day to day tasks, however increases the risk of alienating individuals or committing a faux pas.

I believe the answer to this question lies in how many cultures you deal with on a day to day basis. Do you interact closely with a select few cultures, or are you engaged with a far wider number at a further distance?

An example of the latter would be a university lecturer who must teach a class with more nationalities than one could name. In this case, a universal approach to leadership styles seems reasonable. This is for two key reasons: The first is that ensuring one observes the often subtle manners and traditions of a particular culture requires a significant amount of effort, and attempting to do so for a class of 20 students would require more attention than in acceptable. Secondly, a relationship between lecturer and student is more distant, meaning the lecturer would often have to make a ‘best guess’ at the cultural background of the student before tailoring a response – a strategy that again would distract a lecturer from their teaching, and could result in offensive mistakes.

The opposite applies for intimate business relationships with different cultures, for example perhaps you are engaged in a consultancy project with a Japanese client, which means you have work closely with Japanese employees to produce your deliverables. In this case, developing a style of interaction suited for Japanese people is probably the most efficient and effective leadership method.

How to Develop a Uniform Leadership Style

A leadership style that ‘works’ across all cultures is one that is polite, respectful and sincere, as this will always be appreciated. Becoming a multicultural manager is about stripping back some of the traits that are actually culturally relevant to your home country, but not transferable to others.

Generally speaking, for British managers, this would involve:

• Refraining from using sarcasm, displaying cynicism,
• Not using  ‘edgy’ banter that may be taken the wrong way.
• Avoiding the use of colloquialisms unless you plan to put this in context for the listener. “As we would say in England, ‘The early bird catches the worm’.“‘
• Maintaining good body language, as this is more keenly observed by some cultures than others.

Developing a Tailored Leadership Style

In the case of the Japanese Consultancy Project, it would be worthwhile to research how westerners (or visitors from other countries) can best adapt to the often unforgiving Japanese traditions. (This site would be a good place to start). There are two levels of development of your behaviour to suit their culture; The first level is concerned with minimising faux pas, or social mistakes, which may instantly ruin the good rapport you have built up with them. The second level is about truly understanding how the other culture ‘works’, in order to sculpt your behaviour to go beyond the norm, to impress and inspire your multicultural teams.

The first level can be obtained by researching online or in books, guides written to help businessmen and travelers fit in with foreign cultures. The second level requires more forethought, and will be attained after you have built up a host of experiences with the culture in question.

Your Thoughts?

How do you set out in dealing with people from different cultures that you have never worked with before? How do you not only ‘get on’ with them, but lead them effectively? Leave your comments below!

[Infographic] What Would the British Do For Free Money?

The current financial situation in the UK is dire, there’s no denying that fact, so some extra cash should be very appealing, shouldn’t it? Well, what would you be prepared to do as a leader for free money? Research carried out by MoneySupermarket.com details how far members of the British public are prepared to go for £400.

When we asked the question, what would the British public do for £400? We had loads of suggestions, from licking a public pavement to being a crash test dummy. Considering some members of the public would be a crash test dummy for £400 we found it astonishing that (according to our research) half (50%) of the British public have never used a financial product that rewards them for their spending, not even a rewards credit card. I’m sure you would agree that using such a product would be a lot simpler and a lot less stressful that being a crash test dummy!

Take a look at the following infographic, and ask yourself would you be prepared to show your leadership skills and do one of the following for £400? Leave your responses in the comments section!

Analysis of the info-graphic above raises some pretty interesting questions. If British employees are disinclined to take advantage of these ‘free lunches’ in their personal finances, are they taking advantage of such opportunities in a business setting? As a leader, I would urge you to critically evaluate whether your subordinates are actually being as efficient as they can be in their roles. In times of austerity, is it important that a business squeezes the most value from each of it’s paid workers. If the average citizen doesn’t look for new efficiencies in the form of free lunches when they personally stand to gain from it, do you really think they’ll grab such opportunities under your leadership, when they stand to gain little as a consequence?

Leave your thoughts below!

Fierce Competition At Corporate Games

The dreamy City of Ventura, long associated with sun, sand and… corporate team building?

Each year, the City of Ventura, California USA plays host to the ‘Ventura Corporate Games’. From their website: “Corporate Games provides a valuable opportunity for companies and employees to work together to build team unity and morale, which has become very important with the challenges facing many businesses and employees in the last couple of years.”

It’s certainly an interesting spin on the office day out, and many companies, including sales outsourcing business Cydcor Inc have been seeing a fair measure of success in the games. While the sports arena is not often associated with the team building activities currently available in the UK, Cydcor‘s recent big win in Basketball in Ventura has certainly sent a clear signal to their employees.

The Ventura Corporate Games are open to businesses with betwen 51-150 employees, which ensures that a significant % of the workforce will be actively participating in the games. What strikes me instantly is ‘Why hasn’t this been done before?’. Firstly, we all appreciate that team sports are perhaps the most team-orientated activities in existence, and also that many companies already have football, basketball and rounders teams anyway. These games are a great fusion of work and adventure.

As Cydcor will have no doubt realised – you wont have a successful sports team without friction, and in the same way, most massively successful business projects encounter inter-personal issues at some point along the way. So perhaps a sporting environment allows individuals to come to peace with others in an environment where conflicting opinions are demonstrated much more openly and naturally. In this respect, I could see many previously dysfunctional work teams come back from Ventura with a far more harmonious vibe.

Let us just hope that the rising obesity figures in both the US and the UK don’t put a stop to the spread of these ingenious events.

Improve Team Morale With These 5 Easy Methods

Team morale is a massively important element of motivation and is also a key driver of productivity. If you can manage the morale of your team effectively, you can help them produce results in a way that will be as fulfilling for them as it is for you. Different team members with different personalities in different roles will respond to some morale-boosting tips better than others, so please don’t use this guide as a checklist. Be selective, and tailor your strategy to which you think your subordinate or team members would love.

1. Keep employees informed to tackle ‘them and us’ attitude

The retail industry (among many others) suffer from a ‘them and us’ culture, where employees increasingly see management as standing against them. This culture explains the high absenteeism, shocking employee turnover and extreme demoralisation that some retail giants (See: Walmart) suffer from. A communication defficiency between the organisational layers is the main cause of this problem. Elect to be up-front with employees, discussing problems and storms on the horizon as they’re discovered, and not after decisions have been made.

2. Explain the value and benefit to the business they’re creating

A workers morale is derived from the value they believe they’re creating. In this way, a director of a multinational corporation will have a serious morale surplus! However, a cashier at a fast food chain may not feel as well-endowed. Naturally, these grass-root positions in organisations still create plenty of value for the company though, and it pays to remind their occupants of this fact. A manager could, for example  let a cashier see how many sales they’ve put through the till that week. It will likely be an impressive figure reaching into four digits for a full-time employee, and may let them impress themselves!

3. Deliver proper training

When your employees are being trained, are they simply thrown in front of a TV and told to sit through a dull and dated video? Or do they get to be coached one-on-one by a consultant, and put through a personalised and well-tailored training programme? A thorough and professional training scheme will fill employees with a sense of empowerment and self-respect. The thought that a company is investing time and expenses into developing their skills will remarkably improve their morale. For existing employees, consider a 2-day training excursion to refresh competencies and update their knowledge with recent market/company changes.

Training schemes are often out of the control of operational manager, and are ‘slotted into’ the induction programme by senior HR managers. However, if you’re in a small company, you may have sizeable influence over the structure of these training programmes. When it comes to budgets and spending, hotel & travel costs will quickly become astronomical if you choose a distant venue. My advice is to hire a local venue that will take employees out of their workplace, but will not require overnight accomodation. This is the key to receive value for money on training programmes, and will allow you to spend more on top quality talent to train your staff!

4. Consider worker’s outside lives by being flexible

Employees flex their lifestyles to fit their jobs with mixed success. Some people, especially young, single professionals manage to get by fine. However those with many responsibilities, including looking after family simply loose a grip on a sensible balance between fun & meaningful activities, and their career. Employ these ‘common sense’ policies into effect today, to create a positive change:

• Allow reasonable personal calls to be made during working hours.
• Use your discretion in allowing employees to leave earlier or arrive later than normal, with the understanding that the hours will be made up later.
• Put money torwards a medical treatment for a parent’s sick child.

5. Treats and team building exercises

I’d describe treats and team building days as ‘expensive and reliable’. Whether you see them as reliable or not, will depend on what you expect to get from them. If you expect a white-water-rafting day to cohesively give your organisation a firm sense of direction, then you probably need to take your head out of the glossy brochure. If however, you would like to encourage positive behaviour you’ve seen recently, and allow a disjointed, new team a little room to gel as a productive unit, then you could be making a wise investment.

6. Suggestion schemes (for large companies with many employees per manager/shop)

The notion that suggestion boxes are somewhat impersonal is a catastrophic understatement. Suggestion boxes are completely impersonal, and don’t directly help the relationship between management and employees. The cloak of anonymity can encourage people to be reckless, hurtful and careless with what they say.

Question: Why did these old-fashioned boxes make it on my list?

Answer: Because they actually work.

Indeed, despite what I’ve said; suggestion boxes do their job rather well. They’re not there to let employees vent anger, or for managers to gleefully ignore. They’re there to take a poll of employee sentiment, feelings, and pick up some of their ideas. I want you to think about the revolutionary (pun intended) element of the 360 feedback exercise. The key element is that you also get feedback from those beneath you, and a suggestion box is a simple way to do this that has been around a long time before such buzz words were ever printed. You need to be disciplined to encourage the use of a suggestion box. You must not let positive comments fill your ego, nor let the angry or hateful words trash your whole strategy. Gather plenty of responses about the exact topic in question, (be sure to ask for constructive ideas alongside any comments) and sit down in a professional fashion and see what you can incorporate into the working environment.

Expert™ Tip: Don’t look up for support

The green flag from a board of directors to go crazy with employee entertainment and training budgets is an recurring fantasy, but don’t hope for it. Don’t resent those ‘fat cats’ for not even supporting a practical, cheap and (in your opinion) worthwhile training project. Instead, become a manager that others will respect. In the face of an old fashioned and top-heavy corporate culture, make your own success in building morale.

You don’t need permission from your boss to tell Jessica how well hard you know she worked last saturday. You don’t need a dual-sign off on a anniversary card to give to an intern graduate you recruited precisely 1 year ago. Morale comes from the heart, and no board member, no chairman and certainly no accountant can stop you in leading your team to new highs of morale.

To Your Success in Achieving Higher Morale!

Simon Oates ~ Leadership Expert

How To Give Good Feedback: 11 Simple Rules

Giving feedback isn’t just a great way to help employees around you perform better. If done properly, it will also make them feel better! Read the 12 simple rules below on how to provide good feedback to a team, employees or fellow workers.

Simple Rule 1: Give feedback the time it deserves. Great feedback isn’t shouted to an employee across the carpark at the end of the day. Try to dedicate time for the sole purpose of giving feedback, whether it’s just a minute or part of a formal meeting. Properly announce your intentions by asking, “I would like to give you some feedback on X, would that be OK?”.

Simple Rule 2: Be Honest. The purpose of giving feedback, (whether positive or constructive), is to align the persons perception of their behaviour with reality. If your idea of feedback is to spoon feed half-truths in an attempt to shift their behaviour to suit your ends, you may be only making things worse.

Simple Rule 3: Use the ‘compliment sandwich’ or more exotic varieties. A compliment sandwich is where you offer a compliment followed by a constructive point, and closed with a further positive feedback point. The theory is that this approach will help the conversation end on a positive note. However a word of warning to those dealing with savvy employees & especially middle management (who may use this technique themselves); don’t strictly stick to this exact recipe because it is a very transparent strategy. If an employee actively recognises you are using a compliment sandwich, they may choose to ignore the positive comments in the belief that the ‘true’ purpose of the conversation is for you to communicate the constructive point, and this may cause them to react defensively.

Simple Rule 4: Be Specific In Giving Feedback. Try to use phrases such as ‘You were effective when you…” or  “You could’ve been more effective when you…”. The focus on specific actions not only helps to avoid employees taking it personally, but also allows the feedback to be more actionable. Generic feedback such as ‘Good Job!’ won’t offer your collegue any useful advice on which elements of their performance created the greatest value, and therefore won’t provide the opportunity for them to make a note to repeat the positive behaviour; conversely it may encourage them to continue performing badly in some areas.

Simple Rule 5: Feedback doesn’t always require a constructive element. Some leaders can just go too far the other way, and almost impose a rule that they should include at least one piece of constructive feedback when giving pointers to employees. When the situation allows it, don’t hesistate in simply delivering a sincere list of compliments and really putting a smile on someones face!

Simple Rule 6: Sculpt feedback to suit the receiver. Some people are naturally better at receiving feedback than others. When you suspect feedback will be taken relatively personally, ensure you follow these 11 Simple Rules more carefully.

Simple Rule 7: Be as direct as possible in talking about how the feedback should be received.  Transparency is key in giving excellent feedback. If you are worried about the employee focusing excessively on one constructive point – be direct and tell them that you do not want them to do so.

Simple Rule 8: Focus on the behaviour, not the impression you had of it. The difference between an employees behaviour and intentions can be explained in the following example:

Imagine that a manager tells an employee that they have noticed the employee is ‘looking disorganised and disinterested lately’. This is actually a comment about the managers perception, or ‘impression’ of the employee rather than concrete behaviours. In reality, this impression may have been formed because of personal issues effecting the employee at home, or even because the manager had not been paying attention in the past week. This approach to feedback could leave the employee feeling alienated, and confused as to how the manager wishes to see improvement. If however, the manager had specifically referred to the employee answering the phone in a less positive manner than normal, then this is a behaviour that the employee and manager could have a clear discussion about. This would allow them to get to the bottom of the reasons behind it quickly and respectfully.

Simple Rule 9: Only Provide Constructive Feedback on Something the Employee can Change. If an employee cannot do a thing about your point of criticism, the feedback will only serve to hurt their feelings and cause resentment.

Simple Rule 10: Avoid sounding patronising by stopping short of giving advice. When giving feedback to employees, it is often easy (and advisable) to be vocal about how you think the employee could correct their undesirable behaviour. This isn’t always recommended in cases where the feedback recipient is ranked above you, or where they normally react very defensively to feedback. If you wish to avoid sounding condescending, then provide an observation about their behaviour and leave them to create the solution. If no action has been taken after an agreed period of time, then more direct measures could be taken.

Simple Rule 11: Ensure Feedback Is Timely. Managers often see feedback as a pointless and bureacratic annual exercise. I would like to stress that this is not proper feedback, this is merely a pencil pushing exercise that will indeed have little effect on behaviour. Good feedback is provided within hours or days of the behaviour being performed, and is discussed in person if possible.

At the end of the day, you don’t need to an official leadership training programme to teach you feedback skills. Leadership courses can impart these leadership skills, but you can find leadership advice on that topic and other leadership and management topics all and more on this blog!

How To Build a Powerful Team

Welcome to the second article in a teamwork series at Leadership-Expert.co.uk. Within this series, we aim to bring you up-to-date theory on the fundementals and advanced techniques relating to teamwork in the modern organisation.

2. How Can I Build a Powerful Team?

Having good team players is key to great teams. No matter what other fancy stuff we do in the name of team building, if your team members are not good team players, managing the team will be quite a struggle.

How can good team players be developed?

Team players are usually the people that are known for sharing and hard work. This alone will not be sufficient as people also want to see their career progress and be recognized.

Then how do you focus people towards the team goals?

Being a team player often involves doing the right thing by not always having your self benefit in mind. Again, in this age of fast forward on careers and achievement, I cannot see how most people will accept this line. The question of “what is in it for me?” must be answered.

Team goals and objectives must be set. There is no compromise for this because there is no need for the team if not for the project. Now, for the team members. They must have their personal development goals also set. In some organizations, employee development plan is part of the people development process. In fact, people placement into projects are very much influenced by the employee development plans. If this has already happened and the team members are in line for career progress through this team assignment, then half the battle is won.

If this is not how they were assigned, then the project manager or the team leader can discuss with the team members on what are their development and career progression goals. Many a time, it is possible that by contributing to the project success, the team members would also make progress. The fact that you even bothered to find out what are their personal development goals, you would already have created a positive impression with the team members. Just this alone could make a difference in your team building efforts.

There will be times when the project goals and the team members’ plans are not in a similar direction. First thing you must do is to decide whether skill-wise this person fits into the team requirements. If not, do yourself and the team a favor and get a replacement for this person. You might also be doing this person a favor.

However, if it is not a skill mismatch, then understand this person’s aspirations and see if it is possible to assign some activities that will achieve these. Again, it will be a win-win-win-win situation for you, the team, the team members and especially the project which after all is what it is all about. Just caring enough for the individual will make the person contribute more to the project.

If despite all this, the team members still think that this project or team is not where they want to be in, then there is one other suggestion. It is not always that we can choose exactly what we want to do. But then, it is not always that we know what are the possibilities in our lives. Maybe, this is the opportunity that will bring something different that could lead to new possibilities. Suggest that they look for new skills and experiences that will become part of their resume for the next job.

Remind them of Napoleon Hill’s ” Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”

This is not hype! How can it be hype if Napoleon Hill’s books are as popular now as they were years ago? But if the project or team leader thinks it is hype, then this is a difficult step for the leader.

As someone said ” I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care”. I think one of the secrets in team building is caring not only for the project but also for each of the team members.

This is an article from guest author from Regina Maniam

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