‘Leadership & Team Building’ Archive
How to Make Your Meetings Fun!
If you want people to be creative, innovative, and flexible, it helps to make your meetings fun. Here are three examples.
A QUIZ SHOW – Before I spoke at a small meeting for USA Today, the organizers conducted a “quiz show.” This was a great icebreaker and also served to educate their employees, using questions like: “Who writes the editorial column on page 13?” “What is our distribution in Cleveland?” “What was the headline on the Life Syle Section last Tuesday?” Small prizes like USA Today pens and note pads were awarded. This got the audience laughing while learning (and had the audience fully warmed up when I came on).
THE PRIORITIES GAME – Another time I was speaking at Levi Strauss. There were six tables, each with eight sales people. Each table received copies of the same thirteen examples of typical paperwork that crosses a salesperson’s desk each day. They then debated the priority for handling them. This was a great way to find out how the sales people thought and for management to teach them priorities. I was as amazed as management was at how many different opinions there were on handling the same thirteen items. Continue reading ‘How to Make Your Meetings Fun!’
The Opportunity of Adaptive Leadership
The Paradoxical Co-existence of Passionate Consistency and Meaningful Flexibility
Omar Khan has lived in Pakistan, Germany, the US, UK, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, Japan, Dubai, Singapore and Sri Lanka. His father was an Ambassador for Pakistan, and he was educated both at Oxford University and then Stanford Law School. He was one of the early pioneers of Transformational Learning in the US and worked with some of the original research team that developed Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).
He founded Sensei International, which focuses on improving the quality of business through leadership. Our vision is to make leadership ‘possibility’ REAL. Sensei operates in the Americas, the UK, Asia Pacific, South Asia and the Middle East. Sensei’s clients include 3M, Motorola, Unilever, Microsoft, The Ritz-Carlton, Singapore Airlines, Standard Chartered Bank, Johnson & Johnson, KLM, Nestle, Businessweek, American Express and many others.
Organizations face key challenges as they try to become truly global. One such challenge is the highly astute distinction consultants draw between “technical” and “adaptive.” Continue reading ‘The Opportunity of Adaptive Leadership’
“And What do YOU Do?” A Simple Booster That Adds to Productivity!
If we want to have strong, self-confident teams in our businesses, let’s ask, listen, and learn about each other’s accomplishments. You’ll be amazed at the talent all around you, some that even your colleagues may not acknowledge in themselves.
One of the best ways to feel connected with others in a company is to have good meetings, the kind where information is shared and people leave energized and ready for challenges. When I owned my hairstyling salon, I opened our regular staff meetings by asking everyone to share what they were most proud of in their personal and professional lives since the previous meeting. Too often, such e=vents go unacknowledged by us. The discipline of needing to report made everyone more aware. Continue reading ‘“And What do YOU Do?” A Simple Booster That Adds to Productivity!’
What’s Your Cat’s Name? a Team-Building Exercise
Games are an ancient and fun way to get people interacting, even in stressful situations. At one of my seminars, an attendee, Susan Peters of BorgWarner PTC Shared Services, shared this technique that she and her colleagues had found very valuable.
“After one of the sessions,” said Susan, “we spoke briefly about our company’s struggles while we are combining five divisions under one ‘happy roof’ with a shared services department acting as the building cheerleaders. In addition to the day-to-day payroll, our jobs are HR, IT, and finance, getting everyone to work together as a team.
“As a team-building exercise within the Shared Services area, we were all instructed to send three interesting facts about ourselves to the meeting organizer, Laurie Schamber, Manager of Organizational Learning. Her staff then took these facts and made up bingo cards, no two alike. When we got to the meeting, we were each handed a card and given twenty minutes to quiz the others in the room, trying to match the people to their squares on their card. Continue reading ‘What’s Your Cat’s Name? a Team-Building Exercise’
A Team Is More than a Group of People
When John Amatt led the 1982 Canadian team on a successful Mount Everest Expedition, only three people reached the summit. Many climbers who were part of the team, whose lifetime ambition was to stand on top of Everest, made the conscious choice to stay in the base camp. Why? Because they knew the effort was likely to fail if everyone tried to make it. They chose to forego their individual dreams in favor of helping the team succeed.
This wasn’t John Amatt’s first time to plan an Everest expedition. Ten years earlier, with one of his friends from Norway, he had gathered a team of world-class climbers from many different countries, for the challenge. But at the last minute, he backed out. Officially, it was to get married. “But that was just an excuse,” he said later. “I knew that, despite having the best climbers in the world, this expedition would not succeed. Everyone wanted to reach the top for their own glory or that of their country. No one seemed willing to make decisions for the good of the team.” Continue reading ‘A Team Is More than a Group of People’
Spotting the Leaders
This is a story my Fripp Associate David Palmer, PhD told at our recent speaking skills class. Hope it makes you think and act like a leader.
It was 1952. The Korean War had been going for three years…and the North Koreans were short of resources, especially soldiers.
Both sides continued to take POW’s, but it took money to build high-security prison camps…and a lot of soldiers to guard them. Continue reading ‘Spotting the Leaders’
How to Make Your Employees Look Good!
4 Questions to Help You Boost Your Company Image
You know everyone in your organization or department is a top professional, but how are they perceived by others? Do your employee’s actions, attitudes, dress, and communication skills really “sell” your image to the public, upper management, or others in your industry?
Here are four questions to ask yourself. Continue reading ‘How to Make Your Employees Look Good!’
Leadership Lessons from Everyday Heroes
Leaders get results through others. There are everyday heroes you’ve never heard of who may teach you almost as much as famous business writers. Why? Because these people have developed the ability to discover extraordinary employees — right under their noses.
Is there a gold mine of creativity, innovation, and leadership in your midst? Most companies do and don’t know it. You may have such a worker right now and not be aware of it.
Patty Lake, one of my “everyday heroes,” told me about a woman on her staff at Shell Services International who had worked in Payroll for over twenty-five years. Continue reading ‘Leadership Lessons from Everyday Heroes’
Leadership Lesson 3: “Why Did You Do It That Way?”
Joyce Ward is with Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activities, a Navy organization that fixes ships. “As a Business Performance Officer,” she told me, “I go out and work with the shops, focusing on teamwork.
“In 1994, I was working with my first team, our lifeboat repair shop. These rafts hang on the decks of ships and need to be inflated in an emergency. However, the failure rate in 1994 was 40%. After we asked some questions, we dropped the failure rate to 1% or less by the year 2000. How did we do this? Continue reading ‘Leadership Lesson 3: “Why Did You Do It That Way?”’
Leadership Lesson 2: “I’m Glad You Asked”
Pam Kranhold’s Quality Department at Delta Dental Plan of California is revolutionizing the way they do business for government and their customers.
“Over the last two years,” she told me, “we have changed our leadership from a very bland ‘government’ approach to an innovative vision-mission-value focus! It took a number of months to get the leaders to put all their thoughts on the same page and circulate them to the employees. Continue reading ‘Leadership Lesson 2: “I’m Glad You Asked”’
