The only way for the leader of a team to create a safe environment for his team members to be vulnerable is by stepping up and doing something that feels unsafe and uncomfortable first. By getting nak...
The most important principle that an executive must embrace is a desire to produce results. As obvious as this sounds, it is not universally practiced by the highest-ranking executives in many compani...
The most important challenge of building a team where people hold one another accountable is overcoming the understandable hesitance of human beings to give one another critical feedback.
The kind of trust that is necessary to build a great team is what I call vulnerability-based trust. This is what happens when members get to a point where they are completely comfortable being transpa...
The key to all of this, then, is to teach team members to get comfortable being exposed to one another, unafraid to honestly say things like I was wrong and I made a mistake and I need help and I’m no...
The idea is that your clients are looking for good suggestions, and they don’t mind sifting through some not-so-good ones as long as they’re offered with good intentions and with no ego attached.
Teams that are willing to commit publicly to specific results are more likely to work with a passionate, even desperate desire to achieve those results. Teams that say, We'll do our best, are subtly,...
Team leaders must give members a reason to care at the beginning of a meeting or discussion. They must raise the anxiety of the team about why the issues about to be discussed matter, and what could g...
Stop making the perfect enemy of the good.
Sounds crazy and counterintuitive, I know, but it is true.
So many people there are so concerned about being socially conscious and environmentally aware, but they don't give a second thought to how they treat the guy washing their car or cutting their grass.
Rather than coming together to make the best possible decision for the entire organization, they become lobbyers for their own constituents
Putting together an agenda before a staff meeting is like a marriage counselor deciding what issues she’s going to cover with a couple prior to meeting with them.
Peer pressure and the distaste for letting down a colleague will motivate a team player more than any fear of authoritative punishment or rebuke.
Our ability to engage in passionate, unfiltered debate about what we need to do to succeed will determine our future as much as any products we develop or partnerships we sign. It
No one on a cohesive team can say, Well, I did my job. Our failure isn’t my fault.
More than any policy or system, there is nothing like the fear of letting down respected teammates that motivates people to improve their performance.
Humble Only: The Pawn
Help people realize that when they fail to provide peers with constructive feedback they are letting them down personally. By holding back, we are hurting not only the team, but also our teammates the...
Firing someone is not necessarily a sign of accountability, but is often the last act of cowardice