Team Accountability – Workshop 4 (Behaviors and ROE)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Team Accountability is provided by Mr. Teschner MBA BA Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 12 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
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Learning Provider Profile
Mr. Teschner is a transformational Leadership Coach and Trainer and Founder & CEO of VMax Group. VMax Group is a St Louis-based Leadership Development company specializing in teaching accountable leadership and high-performing teamwork to businesses across the globe. VMax Group has centered much of its signature training around the proper practice of Accountability. Real Accountability—positive, forward-focused Accountability centered around the process of taking Absolute Ownership for the outcomes the team achieves—is something Mr. Teschner and his team lived during their collective time as member of high-performance military teams. Now they’ve made it their mission to teach what they know to those who need to learn it.
A decorated graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Air University, and the National War College, Mr. Teschner is also both a Distinguished Graduate and former F-15 Instructor at the USAF Weapons School – the Air Force version of “TOP GUN”. It was there that he honed his craft of teaching accountable leadership to the top practitioners in the world. Additionally, Mr. Teschner was privileged to command an operational F-22 “Raptor” squadron, flying America’s most advanced air supremacy platform. Mr. Teschner was ultimately honored to be promoted to the rank of full Colonel but retired early as a result of a battle with colon-rectal cancer. Mr. Teschner has over 20 years of hands-on leadership experience in High-Performance, High-Reliability Organizations and brings all of that experience with him wherever he speaks, teaches or coaches.
Mr. Teschner has a special way of connecting with his audiences, blending high-impact stories of fighter aviation and personal humility to achieve the intended outcome. In addition, his story of his personal fight with cancer serves as the launch pad for talks about humility, growth, motivation, and constant improvement. Mr. Teschner is the author of the #1 bestselling book, Debrief to Win: How High-Performing Leaders Practice Accountable Leadership, and released his newest bestselling book Aiming Higher: A Journey Through Military Aviation Leadership, a book co-authored with 4 other former Air Force pilots, in May of 2022. His next book, Building Resilience, is due out in the Spring of 2023.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
This is the introduction to behavioral norms centered around the 6 DTW core values. Outcome: the team understands how to adopt the DTW core values. Tools: ZoneFive. Desired Learning Objectives: We understand the 6 Debrief to Win Core Values. We understand the power of Ritual in building Psychological Safety. We understand how to apply the 6 Core Values in Debriefs. We understand how to measure and track behaviors in teams.
Objectives
01. Understanding Failure: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Setting Behavioral Norms: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Living the Behavioral Norms: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Debrief to Win Core Values: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Measuring Behaviors: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
Strategies
01. Understanding Failure: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Setting Behavioral Norms: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Living the Behavioral Norms: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Debrief to Win Core Values: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Measuring Behaviors: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
Tasks
01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Understanding Failure.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Embracing Behavioral Norms.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Setting Behavioral Norms.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Living the Behavioral Norms.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Debrief to Win Core Values.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Measuring Behaviors.
Introduction
Why Are Core Values Important? (And How To Get Your Team Excited About Them)
Sure, all organizational leaders recognize the significance of core values as the guiding light that unites a team with a shared sense of purpose in order to achieve common goals. However, defining values is one thing. The process of deeply ingraining them into the culture in order to drive desired business outcomes is substantially different.
Simply described, organizational culture is the aggregate effect of how team members think and behave, their shared values, and how they respond to internal and external stimuli. A firm culture, and its accompanying set of guiding principles (core values), are either deliberately formed and cultivated from the start, or grow spontaneously over time as a result of the beliefs and experiences of those on the team.
Leaders and managers must rely on the organization’s values to drive performance, especially during times of change. The values of an organization should serve as the foundation for why the company exists, how behavioral norms are formed, and how decisions are made to attain goals and meet the vision. They must be genuine and somewhat detailed in order to connect with the team.
This is true for both organizations and people’s personal life. In fact, 63 percent of consumers say they want to buy products and services from firms whose mission aligns with their values and beliefs. They will even go out of their way to avoid organizations that do not share their values, demonstrating that a company’s principles have both internal and exterior ramifications.
Why Are Core Values Important?
It takes considerably more than a basic list of guiding principles for an organization’s core values to truly matter. They should ideally explain how you and your team members (1) work, (2) behave, and (3) interact on a daily basis. They should be backed up by accountability measures and easily integrated into performance management systems.
Steve Grau is the founder and CEO of Royal Ambulance, which was just named one of the 2021 Best Small and Medium Companies to Work For by Glassdoor. It was not an easy task.
“Your values and mission are what ultimately drive your team’s performance,” he stated. “When your core values are truly ingrained in your way of doing business, every decision will be made with those values in mind. This helps align every decision with your brand and what it hopes to accomplish. It creates accountability to yourself and others – and customers will see that in every interaction you have with them.”
Furthermore, proper alignment of values with strategy, mission, and goals has a direct and measurable impact on scalability and profit. In fact, one study discovered that brands with a strong sense of purpose gained in value by 175% over a 12-year period, much exceeding the comparable 86 percent median growth rate.
Isn’t that fantastic? However, never underestimate the difficulty of values-based leadership and decision making when it comes to people decisions, customer decisions, and even revenue-generating activities.
Creating Strong Values
It is simple to generate a list of generic corporate-sounding values, such as “customer service” or “environmental effect.” But, all too frequently, the ambiguity of these statements renders them basically useless to the organization and its members.
Consider what you value in your own life. If one of your basic beliefs is to prioritize your family, you won’t just mention “family” and leave it at that. You’ll be particular and intentional in putting that value into action, whether it’s through doing housework or scheduling monthly daddy-daughter dates. Values are meaningless unless they are linked to measurable actions and behaviors.
Specificity is also important in focusing on strong, practical values for your company. It’s one thing to argue that customer service is a fundamental value. It’s one thing to state, as Royal Ambulance does, that you’ll relieve a medical patient’s concern by giving customized attention and sensitive treatment.
The specifications direct actions and efforts that are deliberate in their support of the organization’s objective.
How to Get Your Team to Support Your Values
As previously said, core values should serve as the backbone of your corporate culture; but, for this to occur, the entire team (or, more realistically, the majority) must connect with them. One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to set the tone for making stated principles a part of everyday life in the organization. Both on and off the battlefield, to put it mildly.
In meetings and interactions, reminding team members of key principles is a good place to start. However, living by the key values will make these reminders much more powerful. And in a high-performing team, this obligation is shared by everyone, not just the leaders.
Recognizing positive examples of employees who have displayed the principles is one of the most effective methods to push your team to live them. Rewarding desired behavior usually results in more of it. Sharing publicly how team members have put core values into action can inspire the rest of your staff to do the same, which is why rewards and recognition programs must be based on much more than subject matter expertise and goal attainment.
The Component of Talent
Of course, ensuring buy-in from your team begins with hiring the proper people in the first place. Buy-in starts with personnel acquisition and onboarding. In my experience, hiring and promoting based solely on “performance” – but those who do not connect with the culture – never works out, costing important time, energy, emotion, and resources.
While people’ attitudes and views may change over time, your company’s basic values should remain strong and consistent. They should reflect concepts that will stand the test of time, even if the market changes dramatically. By staying loyal to your fundamental beliefs and enlisting the support of your whole team, you will establish a powerful presence in your industry, manage change more successfully, and possibly even crush your competitors.
Make Your Values Meaningful
Consider the following set of corporate values: Respect. Communication. Excellence and integrity. Don’t they sound fairly good? Strong, succinct, and meaningful. Perhaps they are similar to your own company’s values, which you spent so much time creating, debating, and amending. If this is the case, you should be concerned. These are Enron’s corporate values, as stated in the company’s annual report for 2000. And, as history has demonstrated, they are not meaningful; they are meaningless.
Although Enron is an extreme example, it is far from the only firm with a hollow set of ideals. Most values statements are dull, toothless, or simply deceptive. And, far from being innocuous, as some CEOs believe, they are frequently quite harmful. Empty values declarations foster cynicism and disillusionment among employees, alienate customers, and damage executive confidence.
Case Study
Do you want proof? Here’s what happened at a recent financial services industry management conference. The CEO began by emphasizing the importance of a new set of corporate values—teamwork, quality, and innovation—at the company. He then played a sophisticated video for the audience, which included dozens of top executives from around the world, that highlighted each word with stock footage of world-class sports, swelling music, and photos of employees waving awkwardly at the camera. The whole thing reeked of dishonesty. When the CEO happily asked the crowd whether they wanted to watch it again, he was welcomed with a resounding “No!” It was brutally obvious that his credibility had been shattered.
Given the danger, why do CEOs invest so much time and effort in drafting values statements in the first place? Because they believe they are obligated to. At least, that’s how they’ve felt since Jim Collins and Jerry Porras released Built to Last in 1994. The book argued that many of the best organizations followed a set of principles known as core values, prompting managers to go to off-site meetings to conjure up some core values of their own. The values craze infiltrated corporate America like chicken pox through a kindergarten class. Today, 80% of the Fortune 100 openly proclaim their values—values that all too frequently represent little more than a drive to be trendy or, worse, politically correct.
Value debasement is a travesty, not only because the accompanying cynicism poisons the cultural well, but also because it squanders a golden opportunity. Values can distinguish a company from its competitors by establishing its identity and acting as a rallying point for personnel. But developing strong values and sticking to them takes genuine bravery. Indeed, an organization adopting a values campaign must first accept that values, when properly practiced, cause pain. Some employees are made to feel like outcasts. They limit an organization’s strategic and operational independence and constrain its people’s behavior. They expose executives to harsh criticism for even minor infractions. And they necessitate constant care.
If you are unwilling to bear the suffering that real values entail, don’t bother creating a values statement. You’ll be OK without one. However, if you have the strength to persevere, you might gain some valuable lessons from the few organizations that have adopted genuine corporate values. These companies all followed four key imperatives in defining and implementing their values, whether they sprang directly from the vision and character of its founders or were established later through formal processes.
Recognize the Different Types of Values
Too often, executives confuse other values for core values. Employees are perplexed by the resulting jumble, and management appears out of touch.
Companies should therefore develop some basic definitions to guarantee that people understand what they’re talking about and what they’re attempting to achieve. It’s useful to categorize values into four groups.
The deeply embedded beliefs that influence all of a company’s operations are known as core values, and they serve as the cultural cornerstones of the organization. Collins and Porras define core values as inherent and sacred; they must never be compromised for convenience or short-term economic advantage. Core principles frequently reflect the founders’ values—for example, Hewlett-famed Packard’s “HP Way” is an example. They are the source of a company’s uniqueness, and they must be protected at all costs.
Aspirational values are those that a firm requires in order to prosper in the future but does not already have. For example, a corporation may need to create a new value to support a new strategy or to fulfill the needs of a changing market or industry. For example, the CEO who stated his company’s core value was a sense of urgency was replacing an aspirational value for a basic one.
Aspirational values must be properly handled to avoid diluting the basic principles. One company emphasized dedication and hard effort; its employees were renowned to work late into the evenings and on weekends. The executive team felt compelled at one time to include “work-life balance” as an aspirational objective, but they finally decided against it because doing so might confuse employees about what was most important to the organization.
Permission-to-play values merely reflect the bare minimum of social and behavioral standards expected of any employee. They don’t differ much amongst companies, especially those in the same region or industry, which means they never really help identify a company from its competition.
When a particular CEO insisted that integrity was a key value of his organization, he mixed core values with permission-to-play values. “Because we refuse to recruit persons who misrepresent themselves on their résumés or provide misleading information regarding previous employment experience,” he explained. While his claim was undeniably correct, most firms had practices that were comparable. Unless his organization is ready to take extremely stringent measures to demonstrate that it has a higher standard of integrity than most companies, integrity should be considered a permission-to-play value rather than a core value.
Accidental values emerge spontaneously and take root throughout time without being promoted by leadership. They frequently represent the similar interests or characteristics of the personnel of the organization. Accidental values can be beneficial to a firm, such as when they foster an inclusive environment. They can, however, be negative factors that preclude fresh prospects. Managers must always distinguish between fundamental values and incidental values, as confusion in this area can be fatal.
Case Study
Sak Elliot Lucca, a fashion garment brand, first struggled to identify its incidental values from its essential principles. Located in San Francisco’s edgy South of Market district, its early employees were single adults who partied on weeknights and wore a disproportionate quantity of black clothes; as a result, the company was unwittingly imbued with these employees’ values—trendy, youthful, and stylish.
However, as the company evolved, executives realized two things: there would be no way to fully staff the company if only young, hip, “Sak-looking” employees were hired. And elderly, married workers who could make significant contributions may be neglected unwittingly. As a result, the company worked hard to ensure that employees understood that recruiting just trendy people had nothing to do with Sak’s basic principles of trust (being honest and credible), action (making independent decisions), and ownership (treating the company as if one were a founder). Even “unhip” candidates should be considered if they embrace the company’s basic principles. The Sak is now a very varied company that has expanded its product portfolio to appeal to a far larger consumer.
The Five Characteristics of a Cohesive Team
b>The Ultimate Competitive Advantage is Cohesive Teams
Because it is so powerful and rare, teamwork is the ultimate sustained competitive advantage. Organizational health is driven by cohesive teams. They work together. They are creative. They deliver. They follow through. Customers are wowed by them. They outperform opponents while being more enjoyable to ride!
Creating a Cohesive Team
Creating a team climate that encourages positive emotional experiences allows a team to collaborate and perform better. To leverage their collective skills and focus their individual efforts, high-performance teams rely on a shared goal, vision, and values. They define roles, responsibilities, and anticipated behaviors, as well as a framework for decision-making and conflict resolution. Most significantly, they commit to creating a trusting workplace.
The Five Characteristics of a Cohesive Team
Patrick Lencioni, a pioneer of the organizational health movement, created a model based on his New York Times best-selling book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team called the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team (TM). Building Trust, Mastering Conflict, Achieving Commitment, Embracing Accountability, and Focusing on Results are all behaviors in his widely used paradigm.
1. Building Trust
Trust is the basis of a cohesive team. A truly integrated team cannot exist without authentic and vulnerable trust. To be truly candid with one another, team members must feel safe. They must be unafraid to say things like “I was wrong,” “I made a mistake,” “I need help,” “I’m not sure,” “You’re better than I am at that,” and “I’m sorry” when the situation calls for it; otherwise, they will waste time and energy thinking about what to say and wondering about the true intentions of their peers. “The key ingredient to building trust is not time. It is courage.” – Patrick Lencioni
2. Mastering Conflict
When there is trust, team members can participate in constructive conflict with one another. Only team members who trust one another will feel safe engaging in unvarnished, passionate debate about team-important problems and decisions. Teams that have mastered conflict are able to draw on the abilities of all team members, bring all ideas to the table, and weigh all perspectives and viewpoints when making decisions.
3. Achieving Commitment
When team members can express their thoughts and debate ideas, they are more likely to buy-in with genuine support and attain true commitment rather than simply nodding assent and moving on. People will be more willing to accept a choice if they know their colleagues have no qualms about disagreeing with one another and have heard every available opinion and perspective.
4. Embracing Accountability
Team members that work well together hold one another accountable. They put themselves in the uncomfortable position of telling someone what he or she needs to hear. They communicate openly and honestly with one another. They remind one another when they fail to meet agreed-upon performance goals. They trust and respect one another, which allows them to overcome the most difficult challenge of forming a team in which people hold one another accountable – overcoming the reasonable reluctance of individuals to provide critical feedback to one another.
5. Focusing on Results
The only way to ensure that a team stays focused on collective results is for team members to hold one another accountable for what they need to do. True cohesive teams are obsessive about the overall organizational results. They are intolerant of activities and behaviors that benefit individuals but do not benefit the common good. As a result, team members are willing to make compromises in order to drive their teams’ collective results.
How to Use Teamwork to Gain the Ultimate Competitive Advantage
Bringing everyone’s personalities and preferences together to establish a cohesive, effective team requires effort, but the result can be enormous—for individuals, teams, and organizations.
The goal of Lencioni’s associated evaluations and tailored seminars is to assist people in forming truly cohesive and productive teams that generate outcomes. They concentrate on current teams that are putting the model into action. Participants not only acquire an understanding of the model and how the team is currently functioning (based on the evaluation), but they also gain real ideas for where the team should focus its work moving forward.
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: Understanding Failure
How Can Organizations Learn from Failures?
Failure is a typical occurrence in business as well as in everyday life. Nobody sets out to fail, but knowing that failure will happen allows organizations to lessen the consequences and learn valuable lessons. Failure, in fact, can provide learning opportunities and serve to drive organizational progress.
In fact, research shows that organizations learn more efficiently from mistakes than from victories. The challenge is how organizations may learn from their failures and use them to improve future results and performance.
Learning from failures, as Professor Amy Edmondson argues, necessitates contextual awareness. The significance of a failure can be influenced by factors such as industry, job function, and organizational culture. For example, in R&D, large failure rates are not only expected, but can also be beneficial because they might indicate what does not work and, thus, what to do next to succeed.
Identifying smaller failures before it is too late can also help to avoid major ones later. For example, rigorously testing new products to identify faults and weak areas can assist businesses in identifying issues prior to product launch. Failure earlier in the process gives organizations more time to address problems and avoid undesirable results such as damaged client relationships or unfavorable brand image.
Understanding failure necessitates a thorough inquiry process. Only by determining the nature of the failure can organizations decide how to respond. Because the causes of failure may be multiple and located in the actions/processes of more than one department, it is critical to investigate beyond the location of the failure and get to the bottom of what happened.
However, in order to properly handle a failure, it must first be detected. People may not always speak up when a failure occurs, which can be detrimental to failure management. One reason for this could be a lack of psychological security in the workplace. Leaders can encourage staff to speak out right away by communicating the significance of transparency and emphasizing that it is never about assigning blame, but rather about improving collective accountability, learning, and organizational improvement. This can assist to reassure employees that their colleagues will not criticize them or blame them for acknowledging failure.
Aside from studying failures when they occur, there are great chances to learn from the mistakes of others, including earlier failures in the company as well as relevant ones that may have occurred in other organizations and industries. This can be tackled by encouraging openness and sharing about failures. Some suggestions include including failure discussions in mentoring programs and having executives be open about their past failures. In either case, by having experienced leaders share tales about their failures and, more importantly, what they learned from them, employees can learn from the mistakes of others without making the same mistakes themselves.
Finally, these are just a few of the proactive steps leaders and organizations can take to better understand mistakes and transform them into opportunities to improve performance.
Chapter 2: Embracing Behavioral Norms
‘Social norms’ regulate how we behave in both personal and professional circumstances.
Personal conventions include saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ looking the other person in the eyes when speaking to them, and not interrupting them when they speak. We learn these conventions at a young age and tend to follow them unconsciously throughout our lives.
While these norms apply in professional situations, they are not the only ones that must be followed. In fact, for teams to function well, particular behaviors must be agreed upon so that team members understand what is required of them and what they may anticipate from one another.
They also aid in decision making and issue solving.
But how do teams decide on these guidelines? And how can they incorporate these team behaviors into their day-to-day work so that they become second nature?
In this course manual, we’ll go into team norms in further depth, discuss the relationship between team behaviors and team performance, and present instances of workplace team standards.
What Exactly Are Team Norms?
Team norms are defined as“A set of agreements about how [team] members will work with each other and how the group will work overall. These agreed-upon behaviors allow the team to increase its collective [team] performance through healthy debate and clarity of purpose and roles” by the Harvard Business Review.
Team norms are guidelines established by the team for how team members will interact, communicate, and behave, such as during meetings.
They result in more effective decision making, clear expectations for how all team members interact and perform in the team, and better onboarding of new team members.
Team norms are crucial because they clearly define the expected behaviors for all members of a team, preventing conflicts and misunderstandings.
The Relationship Between Team Behaviors And Group Performance
Van den Bossche investigated how teams create shared beliefs in a collaborative learning setting in a 2006 study and discovered that team learning increases a team’s perceived performance.
This was reinforced by research by van Emmerik et al, which found that team learning behavior was positively related to team efficacy.
In essence, agreeing on a set of team behaviors or “norms” establishes healthy limits for team relationships, and explicitly outlining these anticipated behaviors can benefit the entire team.
However, properly defined norms increase performance in more than just in-person teams. Team norms are also important for virtual or hybrid teams.
Why?
Because it can take longer to create confidence when everyone works remotely.
Overall project performance, team happiness, effectiveness, and team cohesion all improve when trust is high.
Chapter 3: Setting the Behavioral Norms
Have you ever been on an executive team where everything just fell into place? You all shared a single purpose, communication was easy, and everyone was eager to work long hours for a last push. Looking back, you wish you could recreate and pass on the same secret sauce to every team, especially the ones with which you struggle. You’ve seen them. The groups where everything is more difficult, where you revisit decisions, move slowly, are unsure of the path, and fear politics.
While many factors influence the best and worst teams, one practice has consistently aided my clients: having a set of agreed-upon group norms and, more crucially, a set of actual procedures to follow those norms.
Group norms are a collection of agreements regarding how members will interact with one another and how the group will function as a whole. Through healthy debate and clarity of purpose and roles, these agreed-upon behaviors enable the team to improve its collective performance.
A set of norms that an executive team regularly adheres to allows team members to be clearer about each other’s goals, promotes trust, saves time, reduces backbiting and politics, and establishes a clear operational compass for the rest of the business. When employees see their senior leaders acting in deliberate, transparent, and consistent ways, they are inspired to follow suit and adopt similar norms.
Follow these five steps to develop and implement your own executive team norms:
1. Determine effective norms based on your previous experience. Consider a successful team and then identify one to three norms that contributed to their achievement. When executives to do this, they frequently comment that maintaining a constant rhythm of communication or being completely present in conversations has helped things go smoothly.
2. Break the norms down into behaviors. Convert your abstract list of norms into quantitative behaviors. One standard, for example, could be to encourage equitable participation in meetings. As a group, consider what equal participation in meetings entails. For major topics, you might go around the room and ask input from everyone, beginning with the person who has spoken the least in that day’s meeting.
3. Commit to three or fewer norms. Determine what you want to work on first. It’s fine to start with just one norm, but never more than three at a once. Concentrating on fewer norms boosts your chances of remembering and applying them on a regular basis.
4. Develop a recurrent plan. Too often, senior teams spend time during an offsite developing well-thought-out norms, only to fail to implement them in the boardroom on Monday morning. Make a plan with owners and time frames for how you will carry out each norm.
5. Establish a mutual responsibility mechanism. Discuss how you will hold each other accountable if you do not follow the agreed-upon norms. What will you do if there is still no progress after multiple check-ins? What will you do if all but one of you go through with it? What are some more scenarios in which things could halt or go off the tracks, and how will you hold each other accountable? One team, for example, prohibited the use of electronic devices during executive team meetings. If they were distracted by their phone, they had to deposit $5 in the “norm bucket.” The staff went out for drinks at the conclusion of the year and donated the remaining funds to charity. Creating a framework to police a new conduct made it more comfortable — and even fun — to call each other out in this scenario.
Chapter 4: Living the Behavioral Norms
How to Work as a Team: What Are the Ground Rules?
What are they, and why should we be concerned about them?
Developing Engagement Rules
The word “rules of engagement” is commonly used in military jargon, but what exactly does it mean? Rules of engagement are a set of rules, orders, or procedures put in place to ensure that everyone understands what is expected, what to do in particular situations, and how to solve any difficulties that develop. In IE, we consider norms of engagement as approaches to collaborate more effectively.
We will not all operate the same way in the same conditions, just as we do not all like the same type of ice cream (mint chocolate chip! ), nor will we all like the same sets of rules or procedures. We can’t have twenty different rules for the same situation, but we can have a set of rules that govern how we like to work with others and what helps us do our best at work.
What to Do First
It’s vital to realize that not everyone feels comfortable discussing things in public. Before holding a comprehensive discussion on this issue, gauge your team’s enthusiasm in interacting with it.
Start big and then get little once you’ve gotten to know the forum. Talking about what’s going well is a fantastic approach to start any conversation about working effectively together. Beginning on a positive note allows people to approach the process with optimism and enthusiasm. Discuss major issues, and once you’ve determined which ones are most important to your team, you may devote more time to each.
You Can Use These Tools
Consider holding a “values” discussion. Understanding what motivates you and your teammates might help you understand the motivations of your teammates.
Another tool you might use is a series of questions that everyone answers according to their level of comfort.
Summary
There is no right or wrong method to collaborate as long as everyone’s voice and opinion is heard. The purpose of rules of engagement is to improve one’s ability to work independently and collaboratively. A cohesive team produces a better work atmosphere and greater results!
Chapter 5: Learning the Debrief to Win Core Values
This chapter focuses on a deep dive into the 6 Debrief to Win Core Values, what they are, and why we need them. They are as follows:
1. Understanding Vulnerability
2. Understanding Collaboration
3. Understanding Empathy
4. Understanding Self-Awareness, as a Component of Emotional Intelligence
5. Understanding Humility
6. Understanding Ownership
5.1. Understanding Vulnerability
Everybody has an opinion about the term “vulnerability.” Some believe it is a sign of weakness, while others believe it is wearing your heart on your sleeve, and still others believe they are incapable of feeling vulnerable at all. However, exhibiting vulnerability is not a sign of weakness; rather, it is a sign of power, especially at work.
However, vulnerability is not a quality that leaders are eager to adopt. Why? Because the prospect of being exposed may be terrifying, regardless of one’s position in an organization. Being vulnerable can feel like the polar opposite of leadership for corporate leaders. They may believe that leaders should not seek assistance or admit faults. Consider what you’d expect from an employee who was overburdened with projects or made a costly blunder in that instance. Worse, he or she was subjected to workplace harassment or abuse. Wouldn’t you want them to ask for assistance, come forward with the mishap, or express their difficulties?
5.2. Understanding Collaboration
Collaboration, defined as the cooperation of two or more teams or individuals, is extremely valuable in the workplace. It dramatically increases productivity and creativity, which are two of the most important success factors in company today.
The value of collaboration in business, however, extends beyond corporate success and increased financial returns. It also has an effect on the well-being of teams and individuals that operate in collaborative contexts.
Employees in collaborative cultures are more engaged in their roles, more ambitious in their personal and professional ambitions, and more invested in the broader corporate goals. Other useful remarks on the need of teamwork in business include:
• It saves time: Interprofessional collaboration saves time spent on task completion and project delivery. Employees that collaborate can work faster since they divide labor and concentrate among themselves.
• Enhances work quality: Business collaboration improves work quality by allowing team members to share, audit, combine, and improve ideas, plans, and strategies in order to achieve high-quality results.
• Generates new ideas: When open collaboration is ingrained into a company’s culture, collaborative exercises such as brainstorming become a natural element of business operations such as product launches and development. This encourages employees to share new ideas and external feedback, which helps the firm generate more useful ideas.
• Attracts and retains top talent: Collaboration attracts and retains top professional talent. It also has an impact on talent retention since happy employees are more likely to refer the organization to top talent in their networks.
5.3. Understanding Empathy
Technology, which speeds up procedures and blurs the lines between work and personal time, is mostly to blame for shifting workplace relations and an ever-increasing demand for empathy. The global pandemic has forced many knowledge workers to work from home rather than in an office among coworkers; what was previously a privilege, and frequently regarded to be an entitlement, has now become a duty. And the lines between work and everything else have never been more blurred. Work has become less linear and predictable; we are dealing with more fluid, iterative projects, which increases the need for good collaboration, which begins with a sense of safety and acceptance. Our family rely on us, as do our clients and coworkers; how do we make sense in a world that is constantly changing?
The value of empathy in the workplace has never been greater.
When leaders and managers listen with empathy, they are listening for more than just the dialogue; they are listening to comprehend what the person is thinking or feeling without any preconceived notions or expectations of the outcome. When someone is compassionate, the person speaking feels respected. When people feel valued, they feel safe and important, allowing them to be themselves and perform to their full capacity. Individuals who can empathize with coworkers establish a culture of trust, respect, and loyalty. As exhausting as it may have become, turn on the video camera and interact with your colleagues, employees… and perhaps even a family member or friend. Empathy requires the ability to connect and listen.
5.4. Understanding Self-Awareness, as a Component of Emotional Intelligence
It is commonly stated that self-awareness is a valuable skill for leaders, managers, human resource professionals, and just about anyone in the workplace. This isn’t just common sense; there’s a lot of evidence to back it up.
Self awareness in the workplace, as a major component of emotional intelligence, is all about gaining a better understanding of our feelings, emotions, and mental health.
All of these variables influence how we think, feel, and act at work on a regular basis. Employees who are self-aware are individuals who:
• know what they want
• Understand their own strengths and weaknesses
• having command over how they present themselves
Every employee will have areas where they shine and others where they may require assistance. The good news for companies is that self-awareness can be improved over time through training, which is why so many organizations include it in their learning and staff career development strategies.
Why is self-awareness crucial in work?
High emotional intelligence is an extremely valuable skill to have at work, especially if you manage a team or interact with others on a regular basis.
Once we understand ourselves, we can begin to comprehend how we vary from others; once we grasp these distinctions, we can begin to understand how we can work more effectively with others. In our poll, 98% of respondents thought it was critical to understand why people behave the way they do.
5.5. Understanding Humility
According to a survey of more than 100 small- to medium-sized computer companies published in the Journal of Management, “when a more modest CEO leads a firm, its top management team (TMT) is more likely to interact, share information, collaboratively make decisions, and hold a common vision.” As a result, you’ll have more success.
Similarly, research at the University of South Australia produced comparable results. According to a study of 120 work teams, humble leaders boost team performance and effectiveness. “Team leaders must recognize the true impact of humility as it may have a big impact on the well-being and productivity of their team,” said Chad Chiu, Ph.D., of the university’s Center for Workplace Excellence. Accept it, and you will thrive.”
What Are The Advantages Of Being Humble In Work?
There are various advantages of bringing humility to the workplace, including:
More creativity
One trait of a modest person is that they are open to, and frequently naturally seek, the opinions and ideas of others. This allows you to learn more and discover fresh viewpoints, and it may result in the workplace becoming a more inventive environment for everyone who works there. Innovation frequently contributes to economic success, especially when employees develop their ideas to meet shared company goals.
Enhanced productivity
Workplace humility is also likely to lead to higher productivity because employees and other staff members want to do better, collaborate more, and generate high-quality work, whether centered on a product or service. Humble people are also more willing to seek resources and assist others in completing their duties.
Increased employee satisfaction
A humble working environment also helps to job happiness. Leaders who exhibit humility by soliciting employee feedback, accepting suggestions for improving customer and client service, and recognizing team members who have made a difference can make an employee feel empowered and valued. Employees are more satisfied with their role and the organization they represent when they have positive feelings about their leadership and the company where they work.
Employee devotion
When humility is ingrained in a company’s culture, it may result in lower employee turnover. Employee loyalty increases when you have members of your team that value the opportunity to feel like they are a vital part of the organization and that their work and ideas matter to the company’s success. Employees that are satisfied at work are more likely to stay with the firm for a longer period of time, and they may even refer other high-quality prospects in their network to the company’s available positions.
Superior concepts
Employees that feel empowered by their leaders are more likely to express their thoughts in the workplace, which can lead to better ideas for the company. This also enhances the likelihood of creative ideas that will assist a company in meeting its objectives and becoming regarded as an industry leader. Furthermore, when leaders listen, employees frequently follow suit, supporting and elaborating on one other’s ideas.
Professional partnerships that are stronger
Because employees and managers alike recognize the strengths of individuals they work with, humility frequently leads to collaboration. You can better respect your coworkers’ experiences, education, and skill set, which can assist build your professional connections into ones that boost production for the firm and make the work environment enjoyable.
5.6. Understanding Ownership
A high level of trust in the workplace is required for a company to perform at its best. There is a general consensus that the individuals around you are acting with honor and honesty. A culture of ownership and accountability rooted in your company’s culture and principles, on the other hand, may be a more sophisticated nurturer of trust.
Without this ownership culture, as well as personnel that believe in taking ownership and accountability, projects will continue to be delayed or fail entirely.
This course manual brings together several ideas that will assist teams and managers in creating a culture of ownership, self-reliance, and better performance throughout their organization.
What Does It Mean To Take Responsibility At Work?
Taking the initiative is the essence of ownership. It is the realization that taking action is your responsibility, not someone else’s. It is the fundamental idea that you, as an individual, are responsible for delivering an outcome, even when others play a part.
Taking ownership of a project does not always imply that you are in charge of it. It doesn’t imply you shouldn’t place your faith in others. What this means is that you should care about the outcome as much as you would if you were the organization’s owner. You should feel obligated to the organization’s results and act on issues as needed to accomplish those results.
Sometimes you don’t have the time or resources to accomplish a task, or what you need is somewhere else in the business. In these scenarios, taking ownership entails communicating your idea to someone with the ability to carry it through rather than exploiting circumstances to explain inaction.
Taking ownership entails making a commitment. It communicates to others that you can be trusted to achieve what is required.
What Is The Distinction Between Taking Responsibility And Being Accountable?
Being accountable entails accepting responsibility for a result. Ownership is the initiative, and responsibility is the execution.
It implies that you will deliver as promised, while adhering to any deadlines or budget limits imposed on you. It also implies that you are forthcoming when, as is occasionally the case, you are unable to provide. Being accountable for a project is being open and communicative when you are eventually unable to achieve what was promised. By accepting responsibility for both failure and success, you demonstrate an understanding of the impact you’ve had on teammates. This, in turn, usually earns you your teammates’ respect, even if you weren’t able to deliver. So you can see why responsibility and trust are so inextricably intertwined.
Being accountable shows others that you can be relied on to do what you say you will do. This is the purest expression of integrity.
Chapter 6: Measuring Behaviors
Employees perform better when they have objectives to strive for and achieve. Measuring employee behavior assists in calibrating those goals by offering information into where someone is doing well and might be stretched, as well as places where they are not currently a strength. Employees, not managers or companies, should define their own goals based on behavior feedback, self-reflection, and business needs. And the key to achieving this correctly is to have employees match their goals with those of the team and the organization.
Goal-setting is a discussion about what the firm needs and how the employee can help.
When goals are developed without employee input or behavior data, they may be overly ambitious or overly simple. People can become burnt out when their goals are overly lofty and out of reach, resulting in decreased self-efficacy, increased turnover, and unethical behavior.
When employees have goals that are too easy, the organization is not utilizing their full potential. Employees, on the other hand, will rapidly get disengaged, bored, or even trapped if they are unable to grow by stretching themselves. The risks of this condition are well understood by now: reduced production, less creativity, and a higher likelihood of turnover. Even if an ambitious objective is not met, employees may have matured significantly in the course of attempting to attain it. It is critical to convey whether the goal is intended to be a stretch goal and how success is measured.
Managers who routinely assess employee behavior and speak with employees about their projects, goals, and development are less likely to encounter burnt-out or disengaged individuals and more likely to have people who accomplish the team and corporate goals.
Assess The Behavior
Whatever the behavior is, the first step towards changing it is to measure it. The measurement should be objective and quantifiable if at all possible. Making the metric objective rather than subjective reduces the potential of a disagreement over the result.
As an example, suppose you’re trying to convince your employees to turn in their time sheets on time. The obvious metric is whether or not time sheets were submitted on time. The answer is simple: yes or no. They were either there or they weren’t. As a result, there should be no room for argument. Objective measurements are preferred.
Second, if at all practicable, the measures should be quantified. If 20 of 25 time sheets are submitted on time, the on-time rate is 80%. Tracking and plotting quantifiable measures throughout time is possible. Trends are simple to spot. Problems are clear, as are improvements. Subjective measures can also be quantified. Assume you want your phone to be answered by a pleasant voice. The pleasantness of a voice is obviously subjective, but let’s pretend there is a substantial difference.
What matters is that the measure can be quantified. So, if the phone was answered with a nice voice 43 times out of 50, the success rate was 86 percent.
Take Note Of The Outcomes
It’s excellent to monitor behavior, which is the first step, but measurement is insufficient on its own. Nothing will change if you measure findings but then put them in a drawer and don’t pay attention to them.
What you measure and pay attention to is frequently what you receive. If you want time sheets turned in on time, monitor performance and show that you care about the results. Put them up. Declare them at company meetings. You must ensure that everyone in the firm understands how essential this is to you.
Curriculum
Team Accountability – Workshop 4 – Behaviors and ROE
- Understanding Failure
- Embracing Behavioral Norms
- Setting Behavioral Norms
- Living the Behavioral Norms
- Debrief to Win Core Values
- 5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
- 5.2 Understanding Collaboration
- 5.3 Understanding Empathy
- 5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
- 5.5 Understanding Humility
- 5.6 Understanding Ownership
- Measuring Behaviors
Distance Learning
Introduction
Welcome to Appleton Greene and thank you for enrolling on the Team Accountability corporate training program. You will be learning through our unique facilitation via distance-learning method, which will enable you to practically implement everything that you learn academically. The methods and materials used in your program have been designed and developed to ensure that you derive the maximum benefits and enjoyment possible. We hope that you find the program challenging and fun to do. However, if you have never been a distance-learner before, you may be experiencing some trepidation at the task before you. So we will get you started by giving you some basic information and guidance on how you can make the best use of the modules, how you should manage the materials and what you should be doing as you work through them. This guide is designed to point you in the right direction and help you to become an effective distance-learner. Take a few hours or so to study this guide and your guide to tutorial support for students, while making notes, before you start to study in earnest.
Study environment
You will need to locate a quiet and private place to study, preferably a room where you can easily be isolated from external disturbances or distractions. Make sure the room is well-lit and incorporates a relaxed, pleasant feel. If you can spoil yourself within your study environment, you will have much more of a chance to ensure that you are always in the right frame of mind when you do devote time to study. For example, a nice fire, the ability to play soft soothing background music, soft but effective lighting, perhaps a nice view if possible and a good size desk with a comfortable chair. Make sure that your family know when you are studying and understand your study rules. Your study environment is very important. The ideal situation, if at all possible, is to have a separate study, which can be devoted to you. If this is not possible then you will need to pay a lot more attention to developing and managing your study schedule, because it will affect other people as well as yourself. The better your study environment, the more productive you will be.
Study tools & rules
Try and make sure that your study tools are sufficient and in good working order. You will need to have access to a computer, scanner and printer, with access to the internet. You will need a very comfortable chair, which supports your lower back, and you will need a good filing system. It can be very frustrating if you are spending valuable study time trying to fix study tools that are unreliable, or unsuitable for the task. Make sure that your study tools are up to date. You will also need to consider some study rules. Some of these rules will apply to you and will be intended to help you to be more disciplined about when and how you study. This distance-learning guide will help you and after you have read it you can put some thought into what your study rules should be. You will also need to negotiate some study rules for your family, friends or anyone who lives with you. They too will need to be disciplined in order to ensure that they can support you while you study. It is important to ensure that your family and friends are an integral part of your study team. Having their support and encouragement can prove to be a crucial contribution to your successful completion of the program. Involve them in as much as you can.
Successful distance-learning
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes or workshops, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. But unlike traditional internal training courses, it is the student’s responsibility, with a distance-learning program, to ensure that they manage their own study contribution. This requires strong self-discipline and self-motivation skills and there must be a clear will to succeed. Those students who are used to managing themselves, are good at managing others and who enjoy working in isolation, are more likely to be good distance-learners. It is also important to be aware of the main reasons why you are studying and of the main objectives that you are hoping to achieve as a result. You will need to remind yourself of these objectives at times when you need to motivate yourself. Never lose sight of your long-term goals and your short-term objectives. There is nobody available here to pamper you, or to look after you, or to spoon-feed you with information, so you will need to find ways to encourage and appreciate yourself while you are studying. Make sure that you chart your study progress, so that you can be sure of your achievements and re-evaluate your goals and objectives regularly.
Self-assessment
Appleton Greene training programs are in all cases post-graduate programs. Consequently, you should already have obtained a business-related degree and be an experienced learner. You should therefore already be aware of your study strengths and weaknesses. For example, which time of the day are you at your most productive? Are you a lark or an owl? What study methods do you respond to the most? Are you a consistent learner? How do you discipline yourself? How do you ensure that you enjoy yourself while studying? It is important to understand yourself as a learner and so some self-assessment early on will be necessary if you are to apply yourself correctly. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself as a student. List your internal strengths and weaknesses as a student and your external opportunities and threats. This will help you later on when you are creating a study plan. You can then incorporate features within your study plan that can ensure that you are playing to your strengths, while compensating for your weaknesses. You can also ensure that you make the most of your opportunities, while avoiding the potential threats to your success.
Accepting responsibility as a student
Training programs invariably require a significant investment, both in terms of what they cost and in the time that you need to contribute to study and the responsibility for successful completion of training programs rests entirely with the student. This is never more apparent than when a student is learning via distance-learning. Accepting responsibility as a student is an important step towards ensuring that you can successfully complete your training program. It is easy to instantly blame other people or factors when things go wrong. But the fact of the matter is that if a failure is your failure, then you have the power to do something about it, it is entirely in your own hands. If it is always someone else’s failure, then you are powerless to do anything about it. All students study in entirely different ways, this is because we are all individuals and what is right for one student, is not necessarily right for another. In order to succeed, you will have to accept personal responsibility for finding a way to plan, implement and manage a personal study plan that works for you. If you do not succeed, you only have yourself to blame.
Planning
By far the most critical contribution to stress, is the feeling of not being in control. In the absence of planning we tend to be reactive and can stumble from pillar to post in the hope that things will turn out fine in the end. Invariably they don’t! In order to be in control, we need to have firm ideas about how and when we want to do things. We also need to consider as many possible eventualities as we can, so that we are prepared for them when they happen. Prescriptive Change, is far easier to manage and control, than Emergent Change. The same is true with distance-learning. It is much easier and much more enjoyable, if you feel that you are in control and that things are going to plan. Even when things do go wrong, you are prepared for them and can act accordingly without any unnecessary stress. It is important therefore that you do take time to plan your studies properly.
Management
Once you have developed a clear study plan, it is of equal importance to ensure that you manage the implementation of it. Most of us usually enjoy planning, but it is usually during implementation when things go wrong. Targets are not met and we do not understand why. Sometimes we do not even know if targets are being met. It is not enough for us to conclude that the study plan just failed. If it is failing, you will need to understand what you can do about it. Similarly if your study plan is succeeding, it is still important to understand why, so that you can improve upon your success. You therefore need to have guidelines for self-assessment so that you can be consistent with performance improvement throughout the program. If you manage things correctly, then your performance should constantly improve throughout the program.
Study objectives & tasks
The first place to start is developing your program objectives. These should feature your reasons for undertaking the training program in order of priority. Keep them succinct and to the point in order to avoid confusion. Do not just write the first things that come into your head because they are likely to be too similar to each other. Make a list of possible departmental headings, such as: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing and Production. Then brainstorm for ideas by listing as many things that you want to achieve under each heading and later re-arrange these things in order of priority. Finally, select the top item from each department heading and choose these as your program objectives. Try and restrict yourself to five because it will enable you to focus clearly. It is likely that the other things that you listed will be achieved if each of the top objectives are achieved. If this does not prove to be the case, then simply work through the process again.
Study forecast
As a guide, the Appleton Greene Team Accountability corporate training program should take 12-18 months to complete, depending upon your availability and current commitments. The reason why there is such a variance in time estimates is because every student is an individual, with differing productivity levels and different commitments. These differentiations are then exaggerated by the fact that this is a distance-learning program, which incorporates the practical integration of academic theory as an as a part of the training program. Consequently all of the project studies are real, which means that important decisions and compromises need to be made. You will want to get things right and will need to be patient with your expectations in order to ensure that they are. We would always recommend that you are prudent with your own task and time forecasts, but you still need to develop them and have a clear indication of what are realistic expectations in your case. With reference to your time planning: consider the time that you can realistically dedicate towards study with the program every week; calculate how long it should take you to complete the program, using the guidelines featured here; then break the program down into logical modules and allocate a suitable proportion of time to each of them, these will be your milestones; you can create a time plan by using a spreadsheet on your computer, or a personal organizer such as MS Outlook, you could also use a financial forecasting software; break your time forecasts down into manageable chunks of time, the more specific you can be, the more productive and accurate your time management will be; finally, use formulas where possible to do your time calculations for you, because this will help later on when your forecasts need to change in line with actual performance. With reference to your task planning: refer to your list of tasks that need to be undertaken in order to achieve your program objectives; with reference to your time plan, calculate when each task should be implemented; remember that you are not estimating when your objectives will be achieved, but when you will need to focus upon implementing the corresponding tasks; you also need to ensure that each task is implemented in conjunction with the associated training modules which are relevant; then break each single task down into a list of specific to do’s, say approximately ten to do’s for each task and enter these into your study plan; once again you could use MS Outlook to incorporate both your time and task planning and this could constitute your study plan; you could also use a project management software like MS Project. You should now have a clear and realistic forecast detailing when you can expect to be able to do something about undertaking the tasks to achieve your program objectives.
Performance management
It is one thing to develop your study forecast, it is quite another to monitor your progress. Ultimately it is less important whether you achieve your original study forecast and more important that you update it so that it constantly remains realistic in line with your performance. As you begin to work through the program, you will begin to have more of an idea about your own personal performance and productivity levels as a distance-learner. Once you have completed your first study module, you should re-evaluate your study forecast for both time and tasks, so that they reflect your actual performance level achieved. In order to achieve this you must first time yourself while training by using an alarm clock. Set the alarm for hourly intervals and make a note of how far you have come within that time. You can then make a note of your actual performance on your study plan and then compare your performance against your forecast. Then consider the reasons that have contributed towards your performance level, whether they are positive or negative and make a considered adjustment to your future forecasts as a result. Given time, you should start achieving your forecasts regularly.
With reference to time management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual time taken in your study plan; consider your successes with time-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; consider your failures with time-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to time planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your time expectations. You need to be consistent with your time management, otherwise you will never complete your studies. This will either be because you are not contributing enough time to your studies, or you will become less efficient with the time that you do allocate to your studies. Remember, if you are not in control of your studies, they can just become yet another cause of stress for you.
With reference to your task management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual tasks that you have undertaken in your study plan; consider your successes with task-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case; take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; consider your failures with task-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to task planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your task expectations. You need to be consistent with your task management, otherwise you will never know whether you are achieving your program objectives or not.
Keeping in touch
You will have access to qualified and experienced professors and tutors who are responsible for providing tutorial support for your particular training program. So don’t be shy about letting them know how you are getting on. We keep electronic records of all tutorial support emails so that professors and tutors can review previous correspondence before considering an individual response. It also means that there is a record of all communications between you and your professors and tutors and this helps to avoid any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation. If you have a problem relating to the program, share it with them via email. It is likely that they have come across the same problem before and are usually able to make helpful suggestions and steer you in the right direction. To learn more about when and how to use tutorial support, please refer to the Tutorial Support section of this student information guide. This will help you to ensure that you are making the most of tutorial support that is available to you and will ultimately contribute towards your success and enjoyment with your training program.
Work colleagues and family
You should certainly discuss your program study progress with your colleagues, friends and your family. Appleton Greene training programs are very practical. They require you to seek information from other people, to plan, develop and implement processes with other people and to achieve feedback from other people in relation to viability and productivity. You will therefore have plenty of opportunities to test your ideas and enlist the views of others. People tend to be sympathetic towards distance-learners, so don’t bottle it all up in yourself. Get out there and share it! It is also likely that your family and colleagues are going to benefit from your labors with the program, so they are likely to be much more interested in being involved than you might think. Be bold about delegating work to those who might benefit themselves. This is a great way to achieve understanding and commitment from people who you may later rely upon for process implementation. Share your experiences with your friends and family.
Making it relevant
The key to successful learning is to make it relevant to your own individual circumstances. At all times you should be trying to make bridges between the content of the program and your own situation. Whether you achieve this through quiet reflection or through interactive discussion with your colleagues, client partners or your family, remember that it is the most important and rewarding aspect of translating your studies into real self-improvement. You should be clear about how you want the program to benefit you. This involves setting clear study objectives in relation to the content of the course in terms of understanding, concepts, completing research or reviewing activities and relating the content of the modules to your own situation. Your objectives may understandably change as you work through the program, in which case you should enter the revised objectives on your study plan so that you have a permanent reminder of what you are trying to achieve, when and why.
Distance-learning check-list
Prepare your study environment, your study tools and rules.
Undertake detailed self-assessment in terms of your ability as a learner.
Create a format for your study plan.
Consider your study objectives and tasks.
Create a study forecast.
Assess your study performance.
Re-evaluate your study forecast.
Be consistent when managing your study plan.
Use your Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) for tutorial support.
Make sure you keep in touch with those around you.
Tutorial Support
Programs
Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. They are implemented over a sustainable period of time and professional support is consistently provided by qualified learning providers and specialist consultants.
Support available
You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicate with them as much as possible. In all cases tutorial support is provided online because we can then keep a record of all communications to ensure that tutorial support remains consistent. You would also be forwarding your work to the tutorial support unit for evaluation and assessment. You will receive individual feedback on all of the work that you undertake on a one-to-one basis, together with specific recommendations for anything that may need to be changed in order to achieve a pass with merit or a pass with distinction and you then have as many opportunities as you may need to re-submit project studies until they meet with the required standard. Consequently the only reason that you should really fail (CLP) is if you do not do the work. It makes no difference to us whether a student takes 12 months or 18 months to complete the program, what matters is that in all cases the same quality standard will have been achieved.
Support Process
Please forward all of your future emails to the designated (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit email address that has been provided and please do not duplicate or copy your emails to other AGC email accounts as this will just cause unnecessary administration. Please note that emails are always answered as quickly as possible but you will need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general tutorial support emails during busy periods, because emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. You will also need to allow a period of up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Please therefore kindly allow for this within your time planning. All communications are managed online via email because it enables tutorial service support managers to review other communications which have been received before responding and it ensures that there is a copy of all communications retained on file for future reference. All communications will be stored within your personal (CLP) study file here at Appleton Greene throughout your designated study period. If you need any assistance or clarification at any time, please do not hesitate to contact us by forwarding an email and remember that we are here to help. If you have any questions, please list and number your questions succinctly and you can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each and every query.
Time Management
It takes approximately 1 Year to complete the Team Accountability corporate training program, incorporating 12 x 6-hour monthly workshops. Each student will also need to contribute approximately 4 hours per week over 1 Year of their personal time. Students can study from home or work at their own pace and are responsible for managing their own study plan. There are no formal examinations and students are evaluated and assessed based upon their project study submissions, together with the quality of their internal analysis and supporting documents. They can contribute more time towards study when they have the time to do so and can contribute less time when they are busy. All students tend to be in full time employment while studying and the Team Accountability program is purposely designed to accommodate this, so there is plenty of flexibility in terms of time management. It makes no difference to us at Appleton Greene, whether individuals take 12-18 months to complete this program. What matters is that in all cases the same standard of quality will have been achieved with the standard and bespoke programs that have been developed.
Distance Learning Guide
The distance learning guide should be your first port of call when starting your training program. It will help you when you are planning how and when to study, how to create the right environment and how to establish the right frame of mind. If you can lay the foundations properly during the planning stage, then it will contribute to your enjoyment and productivity while training later. The guide helps to change your lifestyle in order to accommodate time for study and to cultivate good study habits. It helps you to chart your progress so that you can measure your performance and achieve your goals. It explains the tools that you will need for study and how to make them work. It also explains how to translate academic theory into practical reality. Spend some time now working through your distance learning guide and make sure that you have firm foundations in place so that you can make the most of your distance learning program. There is no requirement for you to attend training workshops or classes at Appleton Greene offices. The entire program is undertaken online, program course manuals and project studies are administered via the Appleton Greene web site and via email, so you are able to study at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office as long as you have a computer and access to the internet.
How To Study
The how to study guide provides students with a clear understanding of the Appleton Greene facilitation via distance learning training methods and enables students to obtain a clear overview of the training program content. It enables students to understand the step-by-step training methods used by Appleton Greene and how course manuals are integrated with project studies. It explains the research and development that is required and the need to provide evidence and references to support your statements. It also enables students to understand precisely what will be required of them in order to achieve a pass with merit and a pass with distinction for individual project studies and provides useful guidance on how to be innovative and creative when developing your Unique Program Proposition (UPP).
Tutorial Support
Tutorial support for the Appleton Greene Team Accountability corporate training program is provided online either through the Appleton Greene Client Support Portal (CSP), or via email. All tutorial support requests are facilitated by a designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). They are responsible for deciding which professor or tutor is the most appropriate option relating to the support required and then the tutorial support request is forwarded onto them. Once the professor or tutor has completed the tutorial support request and answered any questions that have been asked, this communication is then returned to the student via email by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). This enables all tutorial support, between students, professors and tutors, to be facilitated by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM) efficiently and securely through the email account. You will therefore need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general support queries and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because all tutorial support requests are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Consequently you need to put some thought into the management of your tutorial support procedure in order to ensure that your study plan is feasible and to obtain the maximum possible benefit from tutorial support during your period of study. Please retain copies of your tutorial support emails for future reference. Please ensure that ALL of your tutorial support emails are set out using the format as suggested within your guide to tutorial support. Your tutorial support emails need to be referenced clearly to the specific part of the course manual or project study which you are working on at any given time. You also need to list and number any questions that you would like to ask, up to a maximum of five questions within each tutorial support email. Remember the more specific you can be with your questions the more specific your answers will be too and this will help you to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or duplication. The guide to tutorial support is intended to help you to understand how and when to use support in order to ensure that you get the most out of your training program. Appleton Greene training programs are designed to enable you to do things for yourself. They provide you with a structure or a framework and we use tutorial support to facilitate students while they practically implement what they learn. In other words, we are enabling students to do things for themselves. The benefits of distance learning via facilitation are considerable and are much more sustainable in the long-term than traditional short-term knowledge sharing programs. Consequently you should learn how and when to use tutorial support so that you can maximize the benefits from your learning experience with Appleton Greene. This guide describes the purpose of each training function and how to use them and how to use tutorial support in relation to each aspect of the training program. It also provides useful tips and guidance with regard to best practice.
Tutorial Support Tips
Students are often unsure about how and when to use tutorial support with Appleton Greene. This Tip List will help you to understand more about how to achieve the most from using tutorial support. Refer to it regularly to ensure that you are continuing to use the service properly. Tutorial support is critical to the success of your training experience, but it is important to understand when and how to use it in order to maximize the benefit that you receive. It is no coincidence that those students who succeed are those that learn how to be positive, proactive and productive when using tutorial support.
Be positive and friendly with your tutorial support emails
Remember that if you forward an email to the tutorial support unit, you are dealing with real people. “Do unto others as you would expect others to do unto you”. If you are positive, complimentary and generally friendly in your emails, you will generate a similar response in return. This will be more enjoyable, productive and rewarding for you in the long-term.
Think about the impression that you want to create
Every time that you communicate, you create an impression, which can be either positive or negative, so put some thought into the impression that you want to create. Remember that copies of all tutorial support emails are stored electronically and tutors will always refer to prior correspondence before responding to any current emails. Over a period of time, a general opinion will be arrived at in relation to your character, attitude and ability. Try to manage your own frustrations, mood swings and temperament professionally, without involving the tutorial support team. Demonstrating frustration or a lack of patience is a weakness and will be interpreted as such. The good thing about communicating in writing, is that you will have the time to consider your content carefully, you can review it and proof-read it before sending your email to Appleton Greene and this should help you to communicate more professionally, consistently and to avoid any unnecessary knee-jerk reactions to individual situations as and when they may arise. Please also remember that the CLP Tutorial Support Unit will not just be responsible for evaluating and assessing the quality of your work, they will also be responsible for providing recommendations to other learning providers and to client contacts within the Appleton Greene global client network, so do be in control of your own emotions and try to create a good impression.
Remember that quality is preferred to quantity
Please remember that when you send an email to the tutorial support team, you are not using Twitter or Text Messaging. Try not to forward an email every time that you have a thought. This will not prove to be productive either for you or for the tutorial support team. Take time to prepare your communications properly, as if you were writing a professional letter to a business colleague and make a list of queries that you are likely to have and then incorporate them within one email, say once every month, so that the tutorial support team can understand more about context, application and your methodology for study. Get yourself into a consistent routine with your tutorial support requests and use the tutorial support template provided with ALL of your emails. The (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit will not spoon-feed you with information. They need to be able to evaluate and assess your tutorial support requests carefully and professionally.
Be specific about your questions in order to receive specific answers
Try not to write essays by thinking as you are writing tutorial support emails. The tutorial support unit can be unclear about what in fact you are asking, or what you are looking to achieve. Be specific about asking questions that you want answers to. Number your questions. You will then receive specific answers to each and every question. This is the main purpose of tutorial support via email.
Keep a record of your tutorial support emails
It is important that you keep a record of all tutorial support emails that are forwarded to you. You can then refer to them when necessary and it avoids any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Individual training workshops or telephone support
Please be advised that Appleton Greene does not provide separate or individual tutorial support meetings, workshops, or provide telephone support for individual students. Appleton Greene is an equal opportunities learning and service provider and we are therefore understandably bound to treat all students equally. We cannot therefore broker special financial or study arrangements with individual students regardless of the circumstances. All tutorial support is provided online and this enables Appleton Greene to keep a record of all communications between students, professors and tutors on file for future reference, in accordance with our quality management procedure and your terms and conditions of enrolment. All tutorial support is provided online via email because it enables us to have time to consider support content carefully, it ensures that you receive a considered and detailed response to your queries. You can number questions that you would like to ask, which relate to things that you do not understand or where clarification may be required. You can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each individual query. You will also then have a record of these communications and of all tutorial support, which has been provided to you. This makes tutorial support administration more productive by avoiding any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Tutorial Support Email Format
You should use this tutorial support format if you need to request clarification or assistance while studying with your training program. Please note that ALL of your tutorial support request emails should use the same format. You should therefore set up a standard email template, which you can then use as and when you need to. Emails that are forwarded to Appleton Greene, which do not use the following format, may be rejected and returned to you by the (CLP) Program Administration Manager. A detailed response will then be forwarded to you via email usually within 20 business days of receipt for general support queries and 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Your tutorial support request, together with the corresponding TSU reply, will then be saved and stored within your electronic TSU file at Appleton Greene for future reference.
Subject line of your email
Please insert: Appleton Greene (CLP) Tutorial Support Request: (Your Full Name) (Date), within the subject line of your email.
Main body of your email
Please insert:
1. Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) Tutorial Support Request
2. Your Full Name
3. Date of TS request
4. Preferred email address
5. Backup email address
6. Course manual page name or number (reference)
7. Project study page name or number (reference)
Subject of enquiry
Please insert a maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Briefly outline the subject matter of your inquiry, or what your questions relate to.
Question 1
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 3
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 4
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 5
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Please note that a maximum of 5 questions is permitted with each individual tutorial support request email.
Procedure
* List the questions that you want to ask first, then re-arrange them in order of priority. Make sure that you reference them, where necessary, to the course manuals or project studies.
* Make sure that you are specific about your questions and number them. Try to plan the content within your emails to make sure that it is relevant.
* Make sure that your tutorial support emails are set out correctly, using the Tutorial Support Email Format provided here.
* Save a copy of your email and incorporate the date sent after the subject title. Keep your tutorial support emails within the same file and in date order for easy reference.
* Allow up to 20 business days for a response to general tutorial support emails and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because detailed individual responses will be made in all cases and tutorial support emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received.
* Emails can and do get lost. So if you have not received a reply within the appropriate time, forward another copy or a reminder to the tutorial support unit to be sure that it has been received but do not forward reminders unless the appropriate time has elapsed.
* When you receive a reply, save it immediately featuring the date of receipt after the subject heading for easy reference. In most cases the tutorial support unit replies to your questions individually, so you will have a record of the questions that you asked as well as the answers offered. With project studies however, separate emails are usually forwarded by the tutorial support unit, so do keep a record of your own original emails as well.
* Remember to be positive and friendly in your emails. You are dealing with real people who will respond to the same things that you respond to.
* Try not to repeat questions that have already been asked in previous emails. If this happens the tutorial support unit will probably just refer you to the appropriate answers that have already been provided within previous emails.
* If you lose your tutorial support email records you can write to Appleton Greene to receive a copy of your tutorial support file, but a separate administration charge may be levied for this service.
How To Study
Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can help you to plan a task list for getting started so that you can be clear about your direction and your priorities in relation to your training program. It is also a good way to introduce yourself to the tutorial support team.
Planning your study environment
Your study conditions are of great importance and will have a direct effect on how much you enjoy your training program. Consider how much space you will have, whether it is comfortable and private and whether you are likely to be disturbed. The study tools and facilities at your disposal are also important to the success of your distance-learning experience. Your tutorial support unit can help with useful tips and guidance, regardless of your starting position. It is important to get this right before you start working on your training program.
Planning your program objectives
It is important that you have a clear list of study objectives, in order of priority, before you start working on your training program. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance here to ensure that your study objectives have been afforded due consideration and priority.
Planning how and when to study
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. This approach is designed to let you study efficiently away from the traditional classroom environment. It is important however, that you plan how and when to study, so that you are making the most of your natural attributes, strengths and opportunities. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance and useful tips to ensure that you are playing to your strengths.
Planning your study tasks
You should have a clear understanding of the study tasks that you should be undertaking and the priority associated with each task. These tasks should also be integrated with your program objectives. The distance learning guide and the guide to tutorial support for students should help you here, but if you need any clarification or assistance, please contact your tutorial support unit.
Planning your time
You will need to allocate specific times during your calendar when you intend to study if you are to have a realistic chance of completing your program on time. You are responsible for planning and managing your own study time, so it is important that you are successful with this. Your tutorial support unit can help you with this if your time plan is not working.
Keeping in touch
Consistency is the key here. If you communicate too frequently in short bursts, or too infrequently with no pattern, then your management ability with your studies will be questioned, both by you and by your tutorial support unit. It is obvious when a student is in control and when one is not and this will depend how able you are at sticking with your study plan. Inconsistency invariably leads to in-completion.
Charting your progress
Your tutorial support team can help you to chart your own study progress. Refer to your distance learning guide for further details.
Making it work
To succeed, all that you will need to do is apply yourself to undertaking your training program and interpreting it correctly. Success or failure lies in your hands and your hands alone, so be sure that you have a strategy for making it work. Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can guide you through the process of program planning, development and implementation.
Reading methods
Interpretation is often unique to the individual but it can be improved and even quantified by implementing consistent interpretation methods. Interpretation can be affected by outside interference such as family members, TV, or the Internet, or simply by other thoughts which are demanding priority in our minds. One thing that can improve our productivity is using recognized reading methods. This helps us to focus and to be more structured when reading information for reasons of importance, rather than relaxation.
Speed reading
When reading through course manuals for the first time, subconsciously set your reading speed to be just fast enough that you cannot dwell on individual words or tables. With practice, you should be able to read an A4 sheet of paper in one minute. You will not achieve much in the way of a detailed understanding, but your brain will retain a useful overview. This overview will be important later on and will enable you to keep individual issues in perspective with a more generic picture because speed reading appeals to the memory part of the brain. Do not worry about what you do or do not remember at this stage.
Content reading
Once you have speed read everything, you can then start work in earnest. You now need to read a particular section of your course manual thoroughly, by making detailed notes while you read. This process is called Content Reading and it will help to consolidate your understanding and interpretation of the information that has been provided.
Making structured notes on the course manuals
When you are content reading, you should be making detailed notes, which are both structured and informative. Make these notes in a MS Word document on your computer, because you can then amend and update these as and when you deem it to be necessary. List your notes under three headings: 1. Interpretation – 2. Questions – 3. Tasks. The purpose of the 1st section is to clarify your interpretation by writing it down. The purpose of the 2nd section is to list any questions that the issue raises for you. The purpose of the 3rd section is to list any tasks that you should undertake as a result. Anyone who has graduated with a business-related degree should already be familiar with this process.
Organizing structured notes separately
You should then transfer your notes to a separate study notebook, preferably one that enables easy referencing, such as a MS Word Document, a MS Excel Spreadsheet, a MS Access Database, or a personal organizer on your cell phone. Transferring your notes allows you to have the opportunity of cross-checking and verifying them, which assists considerably with understanding and interpretation. You will also find that the better you are at doing this, the more chance you will have of ensuring that you achieve your study objectives.
Question your understanding
Do challenge your understanding. Explain things to yourself in your own words by writing things down.
Clarifying your understanding
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your understanding.
Question your interpretation
Do challenge your interpretation. Qualify your interpretation by writing it down.
Clarifying your interpretation
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your interpretation.
Qualification Requirements
The student will need to successfully complete the project study and all of the exercises relating to the Team Accountability corporate training program, achieving a pass with merit or distinction in each case, in order to qualify as an Accredited Team Accountability Specialist (APTS). All monthly workshops need to be tried and tested within your company. These project studies can be completed in your own time and at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office. There are no formal examinations, assessment is based upon the successful completion of the project studies. They are called project studies because, unlike case studies, these projects are not theoretical, they incorporate real program processes that need to be properly researched and developed. The project studies assist us in measuring your understanding and interpretation of the training program and enable us to assess qualification merits. All of the project studies are based entirely upon the content within the training program and they enable you to integrate what you have learnt into your corporate training practice.
Team Accountability – Grading Contribution
Project Study – Grading Contribution
Customer Service – 10%
E-business – 05%
Finance – 10%
Globalization – 10%
Human Resources – 10%
Information Technology – 10%
Legal – 05%
Management – 10%
Marketing – 10%
Production – 10%
Education – 05%
Logistics – 05%
TOTAL GRADING – 100%
Qualification grades
A mark of 90% = Pass with Distinction.
A mark of 75% = Pass with Merit.
A mark of less than 75% = Fail.
If you fail to achieve a mark of 75% with a project study, you will receive detailed feedback from the Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and/or Accredited Consultant, together with a list of tasks which you will need to complete, in order to ensure that your project study meets with the minimum quality standard that is required by Appleton Greene. You can then re-submit your project study for further evaluation and assessment. Indeed you can re-submit as many drafts of your project studies as you need to, until such a time as they eventually meet with the required standard by Appleton Greene, so you need not worry about this, it is all part of the learning process.
When marking project studies, Appleton Greene is looking for sufficient evidence of the following:
Pass with merit
A satisfactory level of program understanding
A satisfactory level of program interpretation
A satisfactory level of project study content presentation
A satisfactory level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
A satisfactory level of the practical integration of academic theory
Pass with distinction
An exceptional level of program understanding
An exceptional level of program interpretation
An exceptional level of project study content presentation
An exceptional level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
An exceptional level of the practical integration of academic theory
Preliminary Analysis
Online Article
By Meir Dan-Cohen,
Boalt Working Papers in Public Law,
2001.
“The Value of Ownership
To understand private property, it is generally assumed, we must recognize the contribution objects make to human life. On the prevailing view, ownership is valuable only insofar as its subject matter is of value: In the order of valuation, objects come first, owning them comes second. But despite its air of obviousness, the assumption does not suit our ordinary concept of ownership. Ownership can be valuable quite apart from the value of the owned object, and it can be the source of an object’s value as well as derive from the latter its own value. I will call the value that ownership has as such ownership value. Despite its ubiquity, ownership value is mostly hidden from sight by the numerous benefits that are normally bound up with ownership. To reveal ownership value we must disentangle it from these benefits. I do so in Part 1. Recognizing ownership value poses a number of puzzles, both conceptual and normative. The conceptual task is, accordingly, an account of ownership that goes beyond the privileged opportunity it provides to take advantage of an object and benefit from it. I offer such an account in Part 2. Part 3 takes on the normative issue: it demonstrates how the proposed account explains the significance we attach to ownership as such, and ownership’s capacity to endow objects with value they do not otherwise possess.1
My main conclusion is simple and can be briefly stated. At its core our ordinary concept of ownership does not describe a normative but an ontological relationship to objects, analogous to our relationship to our bodies, and best revealed by attending to our self-referential use of first person pronouns, personal and possessive.2 The result is a non-reductive and non-consequentialist account of property, or, more accurately, of the idea of ownership. Given the amount of speculation generated by this topic in the past, it may be doubted that yet another theory in this area is what the world most urgently needs. As against this, the puzzles I discuss in part 1 present what I believe is an unanswerable challenge to the dominant approaches to property which tend to be both reductionist and consequentialist, thus suggesting the need for a theory of the general type I’ve mentioned; and a new theory of this type is required because no such satisfactory theory exists. I will not however try to establish the latter claim by engaging critically with predecessors. This would make for an inordinately long and unnecessarily tedious paper. There is a second shortcut I must indulge in order to avoid the same perils. Many forks mark the philosophical road I will take in constructing my approach, and for the most part I’ll make the requisite choices, say between realism and anti-realism or conceptualism and anti-conceptualism, without so much as acknowledging them. This is just as well since as often as not the choice is motivated largely by my destination and by my general sense of direction. I don’t think that any of my implicit philosophical positions are extreme, though, so I can hope that the resulting approach will be of interest even to readers who would have taken a different turn at various junctures.”
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Online Article
By Mark D. Cannon & Amy C. Edmondson,
Long Range Planning,
March 2004.
“Failing to Learn and Learning to Fail (Intelligently):: How Great Organizations Put Failure to Work to Innovate and Improve
Organizations are widely encouraged to learn from their failures, but it is something most find easier to espouse than to effect. This article synthesizes the authors’ wide research in this field to offer a strategy for achieving the objective. Their framework relates technical and social barriers to three key activities – identifying failure, analyzing failure and deliberate experimentation – to develop six recommendations for action. They suggest that these be implemented as an integrated set of practices by leaders who can ‘walk the talk’ and work to shift the managerial mindset in a way that redefines failure away from its discreditable associations, and view it instead as a critical first step in a journey of discovery and learning.
Introduction
The idea that people and the organizations in which they work should learn from failure has considerable popular support – and even seems obvious – yet organizations that systematically learn from failure are rare. This article provides insight into what makes learning from failure so difficult to put into practice – that is, we address the question of why organizations fail to learn from failure.
We also note that very few organizations experiment effectively – an activity that necessarily generates failures while trying to discover successes – to maximize the opportunity for learning from failure and minimize its cost. In short, we argue that organizations should not only learn from failure – they should learn to fail intelligently as a deliberate strategy to promote innovation and improvement. In this article, we identify the barriers embedded in both technical and social systems that make such intelligent use of failure rare in organizations, and we offer recommendations for managers seeking to improve their organization’s ability to learn from failure.
Research foundations and core ideas
Over the past decade or so, our research has revealed impediments to organizational learning from failure on multiple levels of analysis. The first author has investigated individuals’ psychological responses to their own failures, demonstrating the aversive emotions people experience and how that inhibits learning. The second author has identified group and organizational factors they limit learning from failure in teams and organizations. We have worked together for a number of years to conceptualize and develop recommendations for how to enable organizational learning from failure, drawing from our own and others’ research. In this article, we hope to provoke reflection and point to possibilities for managerial action by synthesizing diverse ideas and examples that illuminate both the challenges and advantages of learning from failure.”
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Online Article
By Wolfgang Lattacher & Malgorzata Anna Wdowiak,
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research,
27 June 2020.
“Entrepreneurial learning from failure. A systematic review
Abstract
Failure plays a pivotal role in entrepreneurial learning. Knowledge of the learning process that enables an entrepreneur to re-emerge stronger after a failure, though considerable, is fragmented. This paper systematically collects relevant literature, assigns it to the stages of the experiential learning process (concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, active experimentation; Kolb, 1984), evaluates the research coverage of each stage and identifies promising avenues for future research.
Introduction
“Entrepreneurship is a process of learning” (Minniti and Bygrave, 2001). Entrepreneurs can profit from particularly rich learning in the aftermath of critical events (Cope, 2011). One of the most critical events an entrepreneur can face is failure (Espinoza-Benavides and Díaz, 2019)—the closure of a business that does not meet a minimum threshold for economic viability (Cope, 2011; Ucbasaran et al., 2013). Given the considerable degree of uncertainty and ambiguity associated with entrepreneurship, failure is a common phenomenon (Politis, 2008; Sarasvathy, 2001). Entrepreneurial learning from failure is therefore important for practitioners and a topic that has recently gained traction in research.
In practice, entrepreneurial learning is important, as it improves the individual’s stock of knowledge. The knowledge acquired through failure can, under certain conditions, facilitate successful entrepreneurial re-emergence. Moreover, failed entrepreneurs may profit from learning outcomes in other occupational contexts and when coping with subsequent critical events. From a research perspective, entrepreneurial learning from failure is interesting for at least three reasons. First, failure, despite having gained considerable research interest recently, still constitutes an emerging field with a number of questions to be answered (McGrath, 1999; Ucbasaran et al., 2013). Second, the application of learning theories to the context of failure may not only improve our understanding of failure but also yield opportunities to further advance learning theory. Third, research into how entrepreneurs learn from failure responds to the call for more research that facilitates a dynamic view of entrepreneurship (Cope, 2005).”
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Online Article
Gillian Hewitt, Sarah Sims & Ruth Harris,
Journal of Interprofessional Care,
2015.
“Evidence of communication, influence and behavioural norms in interprofessional teams: a realist synthesis
Abstract
This article is the third in a series reporting the process and findings of a realist synthesis of interprofessional teamwork in health and social care. The synthesis articulated and tested four “mechanisms” (processes) of teamwork related to communication and found variable evidence to support them. Evidence was strongest for “efficient, open and equitable communication” and “tactical communication”, but lacking for the shared responsibility element of the “shared responsibility and influence” mechanism. Little evidence was found to support or oppose the mechanism, “team behavioural norms”, so its status as a mechanism of interprofessional teamwork is unclear. A striking finding for all the mechanisms was the dearth of information on how they affected patient clinical outcomes and experiences.
Introduction
This article is the third in a series reporting the process and findings of a realist synthesis of interprofessional teamwork in health and social care (Hewitt, Sims, & Harris, 2014; Sims, Hewitt, & Harris, 2015, in press). Realist synthesis is a method of literature review developed to evaluate complex social interventions, namely those that require human reasoning and action to achieve their outcomes and are highly context dependent (Pawson, Greenhalgh, Harvey, & Walshe, 2005). Realist synthesis articulates, explores and tests the theories that underlie social policies or interventions in order to explain why they succeed in some situations, but fail in others.
In realist synthesis, the underlying theories are called “mechanisms”. Mechanisms are the ways in which people respond to the resources the policy or intervention offers them (Pawson, 2002). In the case of interprofessional teamwork, the team and its members are the resource and the ways in which individuals respond to their team membership are the mechanisms of teamwork. Realist synthesis also identifies the contexts which trigger particular mechanisms in particular situations, and the subsequent outcomes. It then distils these into context–mechanism–outcome (CMO) configurations (Pawson, 2002). Realist synthesis was an appropriate review method because teamwork consists of context dependent, largely social processes, which generate a variety of outcomes.
The synthesis addressed the question: “through what mechanisms does team working affect outcomes and experience (patient, carer, staff and service), and how does context influence those mechanisms and outcomes?” Communication is frequently discussed as an element of effective teamwork and this article presents four mechanisms identified in the synthesis that relate to communication. “Efficient, open and equitable communication” and “tactical communication” were two forms of team communication, which also influenced the “shared responsibility and influence” mechanism. The manner in which teams communicated was also an element of their “team behavioural norms”, the fourth mechanism presented here.”
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Online Article
By Joanne R. Smith & Deborah J. Terry,
European Journal of Social Psychology,
March 16, 2020.
“Attitude-behaviour consistency: the role of group norms, attitude accessibility, and mode of behavioural decision-making
Abstract
The interplay between two perspectives that have recently been applied in the attitude area—the social identity approach to attitude-behaviour relations (Terry & Hogg, 1996) and the MODE model (Fazio, 1990a)—was examined in the present research. Two experimental studies were conducted to examine the role of group norms, group identification, attitude accessibility, and mode of behavioural decision-making in the attitude-behaviour relationship. In Study 1 (N = 211), the effects of norms and identification on attitude-behaviour consistency as a function of attitude accessibility and mood were investigated. Study 2 (N = 354) replicated and extended the first experiment by using time pressure to manipulate mode of behavioural decision-making. As expected, the effects of norm congruency varied as a function of identification and mode of behavioural decision-making. Under conditions assumed to promote deliberative processing (neutral mood/low time pressure), high identifiers behaved in a manner consistent with the norm. No effects emerged under positive mood and high time pressure conditions. In Study 2, there was evidence that exposure to an attitude-incongruent norm resulted in attitude change only under low accessibility conditions. The results of these studies highlight the powerful role of group norms in directing individual behaviour and suggest limited support for the MODE model in this context. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.”
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Course Manuals 1-6
Course Manual 1: Understanding Failure
Almost all leaders think that in order to remain competitive, their businesses must constantly learn and grow. Even firms renowned for their commitment to continual learning, however, find it difficult to always do what they teach.
Take Toyota for example: One of the pillars of its well-known corporate philosophy is continuous improvement. After major difficulties caused Toyota to recall more than 9 million vehicles worldwide in late 2009, its officials admitted that their desire to become the world’s largest automobile manufacturer had undermined their commitment to learning.
Why do businesses struggle to become and become “learning organizations”? Biases cause people to focus too much on achievement, move too soon, try too hard to fit in, and rely too much on experts, according to research undertaken over the last decade across a wide range of industries. In this manual, we will look at how these deeply embedded human inclinations impede learning and how they can be overcome.
Bias Towards Success
Leaders in organizations may claim that failure is a source of learning, but their actions demonstrate an obsession with achievement. This attention is unsurprising, but it is frequently excessive and obstructs learning by posing four problems.
1. Fear of failure
Failure can unleash a flood of terrible feelings, including hurt, rage, shame, and even melancholy. As a result, most of us attempt to avoid making mistakes, and when they do occur, we try to brush them under the rug. This inherent propensity is exacerbated in organizations where leaders have unwittingly institutionalized a fear of failure. They structure projects such that little time or money is available for experimenting, and they reward those who produce on schedule with bonuses and promotions. However, businesses do not acquire new capabilities—or take appropriate risks—unless managers tolerate failure and insist on open discussion about it.
2. A Stuck Mindset
Carol Dweck, a psychologist, discovered two fundamental mindsets with which people approach their lives: “fixed” and “growth.” People with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence and talents are mostly determined by genetics; you either have them or you don’t. They want to appear intelligent at all costs, and failure is something to be avoided for fear of appearing inept. A fixed attitude inhibits learning because it causes people to place too much emphasis on achieving well.
People with a growth mentality, on the other hand, seek challenges and learning opportunities. They think that regardless of how talented you are, you can always improve through hard work and practice. They do not consider failure to be a sign of inadequacy and are willing to take chances.
3. Relying Too Heavily On Prior Performance
Leaders frequently place too much emphasis on performance and not enough on the potential to learn when making hiring and promotion choices.
Case Study: Egon Zehnder
Egon Zehnder, a global executive search agency, had devised a complex method of evaluating candidates that took into account not just their past accomplishments but also their abilities over time. However, it discovered that in many cases, applicants who were similarly good on paper performed differently on the job. Why?
Karena Strella, a partner at the firm, and her colleagues believed that the answer was people’s ability to improve. They defined four characteristics of potential after a two-year initiative based on academic research and interviews: curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination. They devised interview questions to elicit these aspects, as well as psychometric assessments administered via questionnaires. This new approach is being used to evaluate job candidates by the search firm. Egon Zehnder discovered that high-potential applicants outperform their colleagues with lower potential due to their willingness to acquire new skills and their quest for knowledge.
4. The Attribution Bias
People frequently attribute their success to hard work, brilliance, and talent rather than luck; however, they blame their misfortunes on bad luck. The attribution bias is a phenomena that impedes learning.
Leaders can inspire others to look for the silver lining in failures, to adopt a growth mindset, to focus on potential, and to overcome the attribution bias.
Failure Should Be De-Stigmatized
Leaders must consistently convey that mistakes are opportunities for learning rather than a source of embarrassment or punishment, and they must act in ways that reinforce that message. Ashley Good, the founder of Fail Forward, a Toronto-based consulting service that teaches businesses how to profit from mistakes, frequently starts by asking a client’s employees questions like “Do you take risks in the course of your work?” and “Is learning from failure explicitly supported?” The responses assist leaders in determining whether their organization has a culture in which failure is openly discussed and tolerated, and if not, what steps they should take.
To Determine What Caused Success Or Failure, Employ A Data-Driven Strategy
Most leaders understand the importance of data in identifying the actual causes of effective performance, but they don’t always insist on gathering and evaluating the necessary data.
Case Study
Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, is an exception. He believes strongly in data-driven postmortems of initiatives, especially successful ones, and emphasizes that even creative efforts such as filmmaking require actions and outputs that can be measured. “Data can show things in a neutral way, which can stimulate discussion and challenge assumptions arising from personal impressions,” he explains.
Bias For Action
When faced with a challenge in your organization, how do you typically respond? If you’re like most managers, you’ll opt to take action. You work harder, longer hours, and put more strain on yourself. You prefer to do something, even if it is counterproductive, and doing nothing is the greatest option.
Case Study: Soccer Goalies
Consider professional soccer goalies and their penalty-kick defense methods. According to Michael Bar-Eli and colleagues’ research, individuals who stay in the middle of the goal rather than jumping to the right or left perform the best: They have a 33.3% chance of successfully stopping the ball. Despite this, goalies only play in the center 6.3% of the time. Why? Because it looks and feels better to have missed the ball by diving, even if it was in the incorrect direction, than it does to have remained still and watched the ball sail by.
In the business sphere, the same resistance to idleness exists. Managers feel more productive when they are executing things rather than preparing them. They consider planning to be a waste of time, especially when under time constraints. This action bias is harmful to improvement for two reasons.
1. Exhaustion
Exhausted workers, predictably, are too fatigued to learn new skills or apply what they already know. For example, research conducted by one of us (Brad) in collaboration with Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman, and David Hofmann discovered that hospital personnel’s hand-washing compliance—widely recognized as critical for preventing hospital-acquired infections—fell by nine percentage points on average over a typical 12-hour shift. When health-care professionals had a particularly busy shift, the decline was significantly greater. However, when workers got extra time off between shifts, their compliance increased.
2. A Lack Of Reflection
Being “always on” does not allow workers to reflect on what they did effectively and what they did incorrectly.
This is demonstrated by research conducted at a Wipro tech-support call center, a major IT, consulting, and outsourcing company based in India. During the first few weeks of training, researchers observed personnel. With one exception, they all had the same technical instruction. Some workers spent the last 15 minutes of each day, from the sixth to the sixteenth day of the program, reflecting on and writing about the lessons they had learnt that day. The others, the control group, simply continued to work for another 15 minutes. Workers who had been given time to reflect fared more than 20% better than those in the control group on the final training test at the end of one month. Several lab tests on college students and employees from other organizations yielded similar results.
The following antidotes to the action bias may seem straightforward, yet they are rarely used.
Build Breaks Into The Timetable
Make sure employees have enough time to rest and reflect during the workday and between shifts. Hourly workers are often entitled to or forced to take breaks in many organizations.
However, research indicates that businesses should provide even more downtime than they now do.
Case Study: Morning Star
Workers in the fields at Morning Star, a vertically integrated tomato-processing company, not only get statutory breaks, but they also sometimes have to pause their work for intervals of nearly an hour due to faults in other areas of the system (such as a tomato trailer failing to arrive). Company data suggests that workers were actually more productive across a 12-hour shift if their day contained such unexpected breaks. The lesson is that leaders should experiment to identify the best number and length of breaks.
Of course, there are no obligatory breaks for many managerial and knowledge-worker roles. Individuals must determine whether or not to pause and refuel. Almost everyone in such occupations understands the value of watercooler chats for learning and exchanging ideas. People also agree on the importance of getting enough sleep and taking holidays. Many of us, however, do not practice what we preach. This argument is emphasized by a recent Staples study. When Staples polled over 200 office workers in the United States and Canada about their working habits, more than a fifth said they took no breaks other than lunch. The overwhelming majority of individuals identified guilt as the primary factor. Despite this, 90% of supervisors polled said they supported breaks, and 86% of employees felt that brief breaks from work made them more productive.
Encourage After-Action Reflection
We can have a better understanding of the acts we are considering and their potential of keeping us productive by reflecting on them. “Don’t be busy to avoid thinking,” a great tutor once advised one of us.
Some businesses are experimenting with strategies to incorporate reflection into their daily operations. One effective approach views reflection as a post-hoc analytical tool for determining the causes of success and failure. The United States Army is well-known for its post-action reviews (AARs). AARs are led by a facilitator rather than the project’s leader to ensure that a rigorous process is followed. An effective AAR compares what happened with what should or should have happened and then thoroughly diagnoses the gap, whether positive or negative.
Whether contemplating with a group or by oneself, keep a few things in mind. To begin, keep in mind that the purpose is to learn. That requires being honest with yourself, something an outside facilitator can assist with in group settings. Second, attempt to obtain a complete and accurate picture of what transpired. This necessitates examining many viewpoints (because we all have imperfect and frequently biased ideas) as well as utilizing data. Third, try to figure out why things happened the way they did. Finally, consider ways to improve the work. Beyond the obvious adjustments to the current process, consider how you would do things differently if you could.
Exercise 4.1: Failure Toss
• to learn from a previous failure
• To alleviate fears of future failures
• To encourage lifelong learning
• Each participant will receive paper and a pen.
• Trash can
• Keep your FAILURES as well as your WISDOM.
• Keep your WISDOMS and discard your FAILURES.
• Keep your FAILURES and throw away your WISDOM.
• Throw away your FAILURES as well as your WISDOM.
• What decision did you make?
• Why?
• What is the takeaway from this experience?
Course Manual 2: Embracing Behavioral Norms
What do you think would happen if you stepped into a meeting dressed as a clown? Or what if you replaced all of your computer’s notification noises with kittens meowing?
Even if these actions aren’t officially against corporate rules, your coworkers may look at you funny. That’s because of group norms, which are unwritten ground rules that your team adheres to even if you’ve never written them down. Group norms influence how a group behaves, including little issues such as universally accepted clothing codes.
Because group norms are frequently suggested rather than specified, you may have never considered them previously. You can encourage team collaboration, boost efficiency, and maximize performance by purposefully building group rules.
What Exactly Are Group Norms?
The verbal or unspoken standards that dictate how team members interact, collaborate effectively, and work efficiently are referred to as group norms. Typically, group norms are not documented. Instead, they are unspoken regulations and standards of behavior that are influenced by the surrounding company culture ground rules. These implicit beliefs influence and define how members of a team make choices, communicate at work, and even resolve problems.
Even if you’ve never actively developed social norms, you’ve undoubtedly encountered them. Even if they are unaware of it, every sort of group, including friendship groups, informal groups, and working groups, has a set of norms that they establish and refine over time.
In this post, we’ll look into working group norms to assist you steer and shape the norms of your team. Unless you’re starting from scratch, you probably already have a few group norms in place, such as:
• the communication or project management tools your group utilizes
• how your group resolves conflicts or addresses setbacks
• how group members normally interact—whether formally or informally
• How acceptable is it for members of a group to arrive late for meetings?
You can establish and empower a high-performance team and move them to the next level by clearly recognizing and aggressively shaping group norms.
What Is The Significance Of Group Norms?
Positive group norms provide team members with a sense of routine and security in their daily lives. Group norms provide implicit (or defined) shared value systems that enable team members to do their best job. By reducing the uncertainty-related worry and stress, group members may interact more efficiently and have a greater influence.
When team members are aware of — and understand — group norms, they know what is expected of them and can act accordingly. Understanding your team’s expectations helps you interact most successfully, just as knowing your project priorities helps you focus on your highest impact work.
Team members can also spend their time more thoughtfully if they follow group standards. Too often, our attention is not aligned with our intention—we spend too much time thinking about work rather than focusing on our most critical activities. By clearly specifying how team members should interact, group norms simplify meeting methods and communication preferences. Making these implicit principles concrete, team-wide policies lowers the guesswork of how team members should show up and, as a result, boosts effectiveness.
Furthermore, group norms:
• Increase trust by empowering team members to participate in decision making; and
• Create a sense of belonging among team members by encouraging them to participate in decision making.
• Improve teamwork by removing uncertainty and replacing it with predictability.
• Create team-wide communication-style policies to reduce perceived social loafing.
What are the primary advantages of team norms?
Following the correct team norms can result in some incredible rewards. These advantages are as follows:
1. Stay away from office politics: Office politics are a blight on the entire organization, and nothing positive ever comes from them. These teammate schemes or politics result in low production and frequently mask the productive aspect entirely.
Team norms assist the organization in maintaining morale and providing better productive possibilities for their employees to flourish, rather than the team driving one other down to the point when the entire team is discouraged from completing an honest day’s work.
2. Build high-performing teams: What are your thoughts? High-performing teams are formed by chance, or are they present for some mysterious reason when you join the office? NO! They have been thoroughly vetted and have had time spent on them by their excellent team leaders, who have molded them into the high-performing workforces that they are, and this incredible performance is entirely due to team standards.
Team standards are an excellent way to develop the existing team while also guiding new personnel to be properly educated. This enables the organization to create an exceptional staff that excels at their work tasks.
3. Sense of belonging: One of the most important aspects of team norms is a sense of belonging amid such a large and diverse group of people. The organization does an excellent job of including employees in decision making. This allows the employee to form a strong attachment with the organization and feel obligated to safeguard it from harm.
4. Avoid dysfunction: The following are the most well-known components of any dysfunctional team:
• Lack of attention to results
• Lack of commitment
• Lack of trust
• Fear of disagreement
• Avoidance of accountability
Strong norms help to ensure that these issues do not become a part of the team. These issues are discussed openly with the team, resulting in complete openness between the organization and the individual, which is essential for a successful team.
How Good Group Norms Foster Positive Group Dynamics
Group norms serve as the foundation for a healthy group—as well as exceptional group dynamics.
What exactly are group dynamics?
The relationships, attitudes, and behaviors of a group of people working together are described as group dynamics.
Tuckman’s stages of group development, published in 1965, was the first to define how groups emerge. Tuckman categorizes group development into five stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, and Adjourning or Mourning.
During the Norming stage of group development, groups spontaneously create their own norms. Individual members will undoubtedly construct their own group norms in the absence of clear guidance and leadership. You may assure group cohesion by establishing group norms ahead of time.
Examples Of High-Performance Team Group Norms
Every team has its own set of group norms, which are rarely documented. That being said, if your organization were to make a list of norms, this is what you might include:
1. Each meeting has an associated meeting agenda, so team members can be on time and prepared for meetings.
2. Team members track individual to-dos in a shared work management tool so that everyone is aware of who is doing what and when.
3. Team members communicate about work with collaborative platforms such as Asana and Slack so that everyone has access to the information they require. When possible, the team prioritizes transparency, visibility, and group conversations.
4. Every Monday morning, team members discuss their priorities. If new work arises, they have the authority to change due dates in order to complete their most critical tasks (while still keeping project deadlines or launches in mind). To ensure that team members understand and prioritize high-impact activity, work and projects are linked to individual KPIs or team and business OKRs.
5. Group members assume positive purpose and lead with intention—if a dispute arises, they address it proactively using established conflict resolution procedures.
6. Team members place a premium on making quick, clear decisions. They employ a decision matrix or problem-solving procedures as needed.
7. Group members do their best to include stakeholders early in the project process. They identify key stakeholders for their job using RACI charts to ensure everyone is on the same page.
8. Group and team leaders allocate resources proactively to avoid stress and promote balance.
9. Project status updates, which are shared in a centralized source of truth like Asana, keep group members informed.
10. Group members use time blocking to arrange concentrate time on their calendars in order to maximize flow state and individual productivity.
Case Study: Amazon’s 2 pizza rule
This is an incredible team norm made famous by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. This rule is an effective team standard that reduces meeting attendance to a minimal amount of people who can be fed by two pizzas.
When there is a small turnout, the debate can be more immersive, and everyone can have their say without having to wait 4 hours for their time. With fewer individuals in the room, agenda topics may be promptly discussed and the meeting can be ended rather than dragging on for several hours.
Exercise 4.2: Code of Conduct
Time:
Group size:
Goal:
2. Ask everyone what they believe would make the workshop more meaningful and enjoyable.
3. Have everyone jot down their suggestions on post-it notes.
4. Create a mind map with everyone’s ideas.
5. Ensure that each person understands the concept. If they do not, you must modify the concept until you reach an agreement.
6. Once everyone has agreed on the ideas, those principles will serve as the group’s code of conduct throughout the workshop.
Course Manual 3: Setting Behavioral Norms
Successful leaders understand that creating team norms more deliberately will help the team work together and hold each other accountable. Formally defining such criteria should be done to assist a team in improving its performance, not to respond to a team that is underperforming. This also helps provide a framework for absorbing a new team member or new employee into the existing team. Team members are held accountable for self-policing each other’s activities and behaviors.
9 Inspiring Instances Of Team Norms
Before we get into the actual process of creating team norms, let’s look at some real-world instances of team norms.
Look over this list and draw inspiration from the following examples:
1. Never stop learning: Every month, team members pledge to learning something new.
2. Team members collaborate on projects: The team should hold frequent meetings in which all team members participate and discuss the status of finished and ongoing individual and group initiatives.
3. Punctuality is essential: team members must be present and on time for all meetings, ready to work, and knowledgeable.
4. Be friendly at all times: team members should greet each other when they enter or exit a meeting or workstation.
5. Respect one another: Team members respect one another by not interrupting one another until absolutely essential.
6. There are no silly questions: team members should clarify anything they don’t understand.
7. Communication is essential: at least one teammate must be available on Slack after hours to handle stakeholder inquiries.
8. Automate everything: Teams should never perform any task manually if it can be automated.
9. Respect the workplace: teammates are not permitted to take personal calls during work hours.
These are just a few examples of team norms that you may put in place in your own company.
Roles And Implications Of Norms
Norms normally emerge gradually and by mutual agreement among a substantial portion of the group, although they can be formed fast by powerful members of the community (like a leader within an organization or the star cheerleader in high school). Furthermore, norms are not universal—if a substantial portion of a society agrees and begins to use norms, smaller groups within the larger group may strongly disagree. For example, if a town is religiously 80% Christian, 10% Jewish, 5% Muslim, and 5% atheist, Christian norms (not necessarily religious practices, but simple norms influenced by religion such as popular names, clothing styles, or what days to take off work) may be adopted in that town even if other members of different religions do not see them as their norms.
Sub-groups, like in the preceding example, will have their own norms, but those standards will normally be suppressed if they contradict with dominant group norms. This means that majority groups or powerful groups (also known as “dominant culture”) establish norms, and persons outside of these groups are more likely to struggle to satisfy the norms or reject the norms entirely, incurring a cultural cost in doing so.
Case Study
In 2016, for example, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling requiring a woman to modify her hairdo because it was unsuitable for work (or face termination).
The woman wore locs, which were considered in court to be a social norm for people of African heritage. Her workplace, on the other hand, had distinct social standards, and as the dominant culture—their norm triumphed. Traditional black haircuts contradict some majority cultural ideas of “professional,” “businesslike,” and “neat,” leading to racial cultural prejudice. Cultural beliefs and norms may alter when people acknowledge how race and prejudice have influenced their development, or, as in this case, the norms may remain. Whiteness has influenced several facets of traditional professionalism in the United States (whether consciously or subconsciously).
Just keep in mind that team norms should be properly constructed around what your organization values. Begin by establishing a list of the most important aspects of your business. This will assist you in developing norms that are appropriate for your culture.
These steps can be taken by leaders who are ready to gather their team for an exercise in defining their norms.
Step 1: Introduce the Idea to Your Group
Declare unequivocally that the activity of defining your team standards will assist the group in holding each other accountable to a certain set of norms and behaviors defined by the team, not the leader. Remind your team that each group has its own set of traditions. Attendees for this exercise should be the leader’s immediate reports; in smaller teams, any employee can participate. Provide each guest with a marker, little sticky notes, and white poster paper to display on the wall. Set aside two to three hours for the activity and require everyone to participate in person.
Step 2:Get Your Employees Involved In The Process
People are more inclined to follow the norms you establish if they help you establish them. As a result, team members should take an active role in the development of team norms.
Begin by openly examining what is and isn’t working in your present company and team culture. You should also talk about how you want them to change in the future.
Remember that team members want to be heard, so make sure you give everyone a chance to contribute.
A robust Work OS can help you run the process smoothly and with fewer headaches at this stage. For example, you can invite your complete team to brainstorm and interact on the same platform.
This is particularly important for remote and hybrid teams.
By consolidating your communication into a single location, you can eliminate departmental silos and ensure that everyone is on the same page.
You may also utilize the whiteboard on Monday.com to doodle and brainstorm ideas and collaborate more efficiently, regardless of where your team is located.
Step 3: Create A List Of Team Norms
Set up 20-30 minutes for each team member to think and put on sticky notes the customs they aim for or wish the team to uphold. “Admit when you make a mistake,” “Have each other’s backs,” “Be results-driven,” “Present creative ideas,” “Give timely responses,” and other similar examples. The notes will begin to pile up. Because you are a member of the team, you must participate in brainstorming as the leader.
Next, request that all team members post their notes on the wall or table for everyone to evaluate and read. Encourage team members to arrange their notes on the board in random order rather than all in one section. The goal is to provide a variety of ideas and thoughts rather than focusing on the specific ideas of one team member.
Step 4:Determine the Major Themes
Encourage the team to stand up and take a walk so that they can read and reflect on each note. After everyone has moved around the room, ask the team to begin categorizing the ideas into broad themes or topics. Though each team’s will be unique, typical themes could include communication, trust and respect, or goals. The goal is to limit the number of themes to no more than ten. Some of the key themes may overlap; for example, some communication standards may also be appropriate to teamwork. As a leader, your responsibility is to encourage your team to collaborate to discover the primary topics while providing support from the sidelines.
After the ideas have been divided into general themes, have each team member put a dot to the categories/groupings that they believe are most important. Divide the number of categories by the number of participants to get the number of dots — for example, 20 categories divided by five participants is four dots for each participant. Participants are not permitted to utilize more than one dot for any category. This technique will assist the team in prioritizing the top topics, as indicated by the amount of dots for each category.
Step 5:Finalize Your Team’s Norms
The main categories should be written on the wall or shown on a screen. Inquire with the team about other categories that could be integrated.
Then, ask the team to assist in defining the behaviors for each group. Each sentence should begin with “I.” “I have my team members’ backs,” “I am results-driven,” “I admit when I make a mistake and offer a solution,” or “I ask for help when needed” are examples of behaviors described under each area.
Pose the following questions to the team: What are we overlooking? What exactly is redundant? What isn’t a primary category and should be dropped or combined with another?
Step 6:Establish Team Accountability
At this stage, you should have one page of primary categories, each with basic words that specify the behavior with “I” statements.
Pose some more introspective questions to the team, such as, “How does this appropriately characterize our current and expected norms for each other?” Ask each team member to select the standard that they believe will be the most difficult for them to meet and how the other team members may assist them. In these categories and activities, ask the team if they are comfortable holding each other accountable.
Make copies of the newly specified team standards and have each member sign or initial an individual copy. Don’t bother with signature lines; simply initial or sign in the margins. Encourage participants to post the summary in their work areas for future reference.
Formalizing team norms allows you as a leader to hold your team members accountable for expected behaviour. It serves as a resource for individual team members to remind others of what is expected when working together. As a leader, it is your obligation to guarantee that individuals and teams keep their promises to one another.
Exercise 4.3: Listener and Talker Activity
Course Manual 4: Living the Behavioral Norms
Using Ground Rules to Increase Engagement and Facilitate Effective Team Meetings
The ground rules allow everyone, even Fred, to handle him. You can all hold each other accountable if you work with your team to develop an expectation that everyone in meetings will keep their opinions succinct and meaningful.
Ground rules provide you with a tool to employ when someone goes on for too long. This implies that the duty and authority to govern the discourse do not fall only on the meeting leader – ground rules provide a tool that everyone on the team may utilize!
It is crucial to note that those who take up more than their fair share of meeting time may be unaware of the influence they make on others. They may believe that no one else wishes to talk and that it is their responsibility to carry the conversation. This is exactly what occurs with my middle child and me. He’s at the age where he doesn’t talk much to his parents, so I’m simply babbling to fill the vacuum.
Over-communicators may struggle to detect social cues. There are those who will acknowledge they can’t “read” other people and would benefit from some gentle coaching to help them avoid inadvertently offending others.
Finally, they may be waiting for someone else to acknowledge them and will continue to speak until they do. When people are nervous or worked up, they tend to keep talking until they are assured that they have been heard.
Another explanation is that they are the type who thinks aloud, getting caught up in their own vocal thought process and not realizing the minutes going by. This is my unique flaw; it’s taken me years to notice my husband’s frantic toe tapping while he waits for me to get to the point!
Finally, they could be jerks who enjoy dominating everyone else with their inane blather! However, on balance, this last alternative isn’t the most plausible.
Whatever the reason, setting a clear expectation about the type of behavior the group wants in meetings allows you to freely discuss that behavior in the group. In other words, once you start talking about what you want, everyone else will find it simpler to talk about what they want. If the concept of establishing ground rules to your team makes you uneasy, consider how apparent that final line is.
Then, once you’ve established ground rules, if someone breaks those standards and you all do nothing about it, as they say, you get what you tolerate.
Case Study: A Conference Call in Real Life
Let’s look at what ground rules are and how to implement them for your team.
Ground Rules as a Tool
The ground rules explain the code of conduct for a meeting and the team, as well as the behavior that is required of all participants. Team ground rules should be developed and agreed upon by the entire team, because groups are more likely to accept and adhere to norms that they have established for themselves.
If you think you have an agreement and the other person does not follow through on it, you didn’t, did you?
Event facilitators frequently create ground rules at the start of the workshop. What is less usual, but has a greater long-term good influence, is the adoption of ground rules at the team, department, or organizational level.
The Stigma Of The Phrase ‘Ground Rules’
Some people object to the idea of establishing “Ground Rules” because it appears to be too restrictive and punitive. If the concept of working with your team to establish “Rules” irritates you, try the following alternatives:
• Meeting Code (also known as the Pirates’ Code)
• Meeting Manifesto (akin to the Agile Manifesto, outlining shared principles)
• Meeting Guidelines, Protocols, or… You get the picture.
Team Norms (meaning “accepted standards”) is another name for Ground Rules. Go for it if it works for you. One word of caution: people may use the term “Norm” interchangeably to refer to your written “Norms” as well as any normal-but-unwanted behavior in the group, as in “Sally’s 6 minutes late, as per norm,” which can erode these agreements over time.
While the ground rules you utilize should be built in collaboration with your team, it’s always a good idea to start with some examples. Here are some examples of ground rules we’ve used to promote the behaviors that research shows contribute most directly to meeting quality standards. Many more examples may be found online and are referenced in the resources below.
A Team, Department, or Organization’s Ground Rules
Again, these are only instances.
Do you think some of these would work in your group? Do you dislike the wording?
Follow your instincts!
That is, in fact, the entire purpose of the practice.
Ground Rules Examples
Respect our commitment to making meetings fun and effective.
• we adopt these ground rules as our collective commitment to doing outstanding work in meetings. These are our rules; if we believe there is a better method, we can and will modify them collectively.
• everyone is accountable for upholding the ground rules. Recognize when we have gone astray and speak up.
(this one provides you and everyone else permission to speak up if there is an issue.)
Please respect everyone’s time.
• begin and end on time.
• communicate any times that need to be changed ahead of time.
• share the time; do not monopolize the debate or deny others the opportunity to express themselves.
(this one believes it is an issue when one person does all of the talking.)
Respect the meeting’s work.
• understand the goal of the meeting and the anticipated outcomes. If something is unclear, please inquire.
• arrive prepared and ready to participate.
• information is the basic material from which results are created. Prepare to share whatever information you have that will help the meeting’s outcomes.
• everyone is in charge of keeping the meeting on track. Speak up if you believe the group is losing focus.
• make specific pledges and then follow through; walk your speak.
Respect one another as human beings.
• assume the best intentions, but make no further assumptions. In order to better grasp something that is obscure or upsetting, ask questions.
• pay attention while others speak. Remember that no one knows all of the information, and refrain from interrupting.
(when combined with a well-run go-around, this rule allows meeting leaders to incorporate the perspectives of numerous individuals into the conversation before calling on the dominating person and asking the dominant person to wait their turn.)
• share your thoughts and concerns with the group. Show each other bravery and respect by having the necessary difficult dialogues.
• first and foremost, treat one other with kindness and tolerance. We all have difficult days when we aren’t feeling our best. When you have a difficult day, you will appreciate this patience.
• look after yourself. Take a pause or step away if you need to. The group appreciates your participation, so do what you need to do to provide your complete attention.
• have a good time!
When And How To Implement Team Ground Rules
Ground rules are generally established during team formation or as part of a meeting enhancement endeavor.
Teams that are just getting started might establish ground rules as part of a larger working team agreement by including “What agreements or ground rules do we wish to make for our meetings?” as one item on the agenda.
Check out Lisette Sutherland’s process for creating a “Remote Team Working Agreement” for a template that walks you through the production of a full-fledged Working Agreement. (Hint: you don’t have to be part of a remote team to use it.) Meeting expectations are also considered as part of Paul Axtell’s approach for presenting a new leader to a team. Finally, if you’re in charge of a delicate discussion, read Dr. Patricia Roberts’ Guidelines for Leading a Sensitive Discussion.
Existing teams that want to enhance their meetings can also work together to set ground rules in a short, concentrated meeting.
Here’s a rundown of the procedure.
A Meeting to Establish Ground Rules for the Team
The goal is to agree on our shared expectations for meetings.
• An awareness of the things we agree will help us do our best work in meetings
• A documented set of agreements—or ground rules—that we’ll follow to ensure our meetings are effective in the future
Preparation: Before the meeting, each team member should conduct their own study on these questions.
1. What exactly are meeting ground rules, and how are they applied?
2. Can you give some examples of businesses or organizations that employ meeting ground rules?
3. Which ground rules do you believe might assist us in holding better meetings?
Agenda:
1. What are ground rules, and why should we use them?
Check in with everyone quickly and remind everyone on the aim of this meeting. Then, go over what folks discovered during their pre-meeting research.
2. What do we see when we are at our best? What do we do (or don’t do) in our most fruitful and pleasurable meetings?
Discuss your team’s meeting experience, capturing both what everyone believes works well and the challenges that the team believes prevent meetings from working.
3. What ground rules should we establish for our meetings?
Create an initial set of ground rules with your team. Concentrate on getting the proper thoughts out there rather than polishing the phrase. These are your rules; you can change them at any time.
4. Verify the list: Are we all in agreement on these proposed ground rules?
Finish the meeting by collectively reviewing the final list of draft ground rules and answering the following questions:
– Do these ground rules address the highest priority areas we mentioned earlier? If not, is there anything more we need do here right now?
– Where will the ground rules be posted so that we may readily refer to them during meetings?
– Who will be in charge of documenting and communicating these ground rules to the team?
You’re finished once you’ve devised a strategy for finalizing and posting your new ground rules.
How to Implement Ground Rules
Meeting behavior is trained and adjusted using ground rules. The most powerful and dramatic use of a ground rule occurs during a meeting, when someone says, “Sorry, but we agreed to xyz in our ground rules, so I think we need to…”
“Sorry, but we promised to only have one chat at a time,” for example. Ted didn’t seem to have finished his point.”
Or “We pledged to come prepared to meetings, but it looks like we aren’t ready to have this debate. What are our options? Would you prefer to postpone, or should we extend the meeting by 10 minutes so everyone can read the pre-work?”
Ground rules can also be shared with new team members and employees as part of the onboarding process. This lets newcomers know what to expect. Ideally, the new employee will learn the ground rules from another team member rather than the boss, as this underscores that these are norms that must be enforced by everyone.
• Reminders posted in meeting rooms (and as a way to demonstrate your values to visitors). Several start-ups and technology firms have big Meeting Rules posters in their conference rooms to remind employees while also impressing outsiders with their professionalism.
• Revised to include special terminology and traditions that represent your team’s personality and culture. Some teams, for example, adopt the “Vegas Rule” – as in “what occurs in Vegas remains in Vegas” – to establish that meeting topics are confidential.
• Used in organizational marketing and recruitment to demonstrate your team’s commitment to great results. Yes, organizations do this, which is why that homework assignment to go discover examples is possible!
Exercise 4.4: Rules of Engagement
Resources:
Time required:
Group Size:
Instructions for Rules of Engagement
1. What does teamwork entail for us?
2. What is the significance of teamwork?
3. How will we ensure that we work well as a team?
1. Can you see any similar themes among the flip-charts?
2. What steps should we take to improve our teamwork?
3. What happens if things don’t go as planned? Will you always be successful?
4. What is the most crucial feature or characteristic of a team?
Course Manual 5: Debrief to Win Core Values
Only by embracing the required core values in their daily lives can front-line, battle-tested fighter squadrons operate efficiently. Most businesses profess to have and truly want to practice the core values we’ll discuss. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to live up to their stated beliefs because they do not practice them on a regular basis. The core values are a desired element, but the reality of what the organization genuinely values is the daily work—and how the staff responds to this grind. Looking back on the difficult situation of leadership responsibility in global company reveals the truth: the underlying values we bring into our companies are often those we practice at home. Few people are willing to welcome those seen on a PowerPoint slide or on the office bulletin board “for fun.” “A company’s values are its core,” writes Harvard Business Review writer John Coleman. However, values are meaningless “unless they are enshrined in a company’s practices.”
Vulnerability, collaboration, empathy, self-awareness, humility, and ownership are the basic principles required in an organization that aspires to practice accountable leadership. If these essential principles sound like they originate from your firm or group, that’s because they do. These are the fundamental values that allow members of high-performing teams to step forth from positions of leadership and accept failure. These are also the core values that, if properly implemented into the organization’s processes, foster an environment in which the newest team member knows they may speak the truth without fear of retaliation or penalty. It will be impossible to create a debrief-centric culture without these.
5.1: Understanding Vulnerability
Workplace Vulnerability: A Leadership Skill
Emotional intelligence, empathy, inclusivity, and vulnerability have joined the long-established traits of teamwork, communication, and problem-solving on lists of vital leadership talents in recent years. Vulnerability has risen to the top of the list, thanks in large part to the writings and TEDtalks of American author and researcher Brené Brown, who describes vulnerability as “essentially uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”
The Advantages and Drawbacks of Workplace Vulnerability
Vulnerability, which is frequently misinterpreted as weakness or fragility, is the foundation of true and lasting connection. It is the ability to reveal who we truly are and what we truly think and feel via our words and actions. While unmasking can be difficult in many aspects of our lives, it is especially difficult in our professional lives, where we are expected to maintain a cordial but professional distance from our coworkers while projecting confidence and infallibility (especially to those we report to).
Benefits
The evidence is clear on the benefits of bringing our “whole selves” to work, with important outcomes including higher quality production and happier employees. In fact, being able to reveal the breadth of our human experience (whether struggling as a single parent, dealing with a mental health issue, or feeling overwhelmed in a new role, for example) has been linked to increased feelings of self-worth, increased creativity and innovation, and deeper relationships, all of which benefit us professionally and personally.
Risks
It is unsettling to expose our vulnerabilities.
However, there are risks to exposing our emotions at work, including rejection of our ideas, criticism of how we perform, and ostracization for not fitting in. Fears of being stigmatized, scolded, or dismissed can also have a significant impact on our desire to express our emotions or even present an unconventional viewpoint. And what is acceptable sharing in one group may be considered TMI (or “too much information”) in another, exposing us to judgment and gossip.
Is It Worth It to Be Vulnerable at Work?
For some people, being vulnerable is a risk they are unwilling to take. It could be based on previous experiences of stepping up or sharing and being ignored — or worse.
To move forward, improve, adapt, or innovate, firms must exchange ideas, make suggestions, and engage in open cooperation. Many firms’ largest expense is wages, yet they are not utilizing their workforce’s full creative potential. In order for this to happen, we must establish an environment that encourages people to take chances.
You can encourage others to take calculated/tolerable/appealing risks in three ways:
1. Establish the sandbox.
2. Make it secure.
3. Emphasize learning over outcomes.
Establish The Sandbox
We’re not talking about taking risks at any expense here. We must monitor health, financial, and reputational risks. Some industries are overly regulated, and for good reason. Some businesses just cannot afford a huge financial mistake. Some businesses are concerned about their brand promise or reputation among customers or other stakeholders.
We can use those concerns to design a box if we regard them as restrictions. The box’s margins are the boundaries that represent how far we can go: how much danger we can take. We may safely offer this box to our staff and ask them to play in it if you treat it like a sandbox.
You may then challenge employees to come up with fresh ideas to boost sales, products, or markets. Challenge them to come up with creative ways to please your consumers, members, patients, or clients – all while not violating health and safety requirements, industry norms and practices, costing more than $1,000, causing no harm, and so on. Then set them loose.
Knowing the boundaries allows employees to be creative without fear of repercussions.
Make It Secure
Remove the fear of the risk. You must provide a psychologically secure environment for employees to express ideas, take initiative, and try things they are not yet skilled in without fear of being blamed, ridiculed, or punished. To foster an environment that not only tolerates but also welcomes innovative ideas. One that fosters team members’ trust and collaboration rather than competition and criticism. This takes time and continuous experience, where the individual learns to trust that they are protected within this team.
Emphasize Learning Over Outcomes
If the emphasis is constantly on the outcome — “Did we make it or not?” — attempting is riskier. If we instead focus on the process and ask, “What did we learn?” — if we can stay curious — we can encourage further experimenting, which can lead to more innovation.
And it must begin with the leader. Leading by example is incredibly effective in conveying that learning is the goal. If a leader can share experiences when they took a risk and the outcome differed from what they expected, as well as the lessons learned, it will provide a good example for staff to follow. This is essential for all levels of leadership to practice. It’s fantastic if the CEO admits to taking a risk and learning from it, but if the employee’s immediate management disagrees, the employee is unlikely to feel free to take a risk.
Is it worth the risk?
Whether it is “worth the risk” will remain a personal decision that each individual employee must make for themselves. However, if we can establish an environment in which employees feel safe to take risks and share ideas, we will be able to develop more inventive, resilient, and adaptive firms.
The Cultural Impact
Furthermore, when moving beyond who we are as professionals to who we are as people, extra cultural factors must be considered. Those of minority ethnic groups inside a dominant culture, for example, have real reasons to remain silent: voicing a dissenting perspective may reinforce a racial stereotype; alternatively, one may be viewed as “acting white” by agreeing with a dominant view. Immigrants and people who practice non-Christian religions in traditionally “Western” countries, for example, may feel they can’t be themselves anywhere, let alone at work, especially if their religious or cultural traditions are expressed in behavior, appearance, or clothing that some members of the majority population find threatening. When a person believes that being different from “the norm” is undesired, being vulnerable at work comes with significantly greater risks and more reasons to cover feelings and ideas.
Sharing more of who we are can feel like a tightrope act at times.
Case Study
Michael works as a Vice President for a Fortune 500 company. Michael’s team had a very informal dynamic, and he had a very relaxed relationship with his direct subordinates. The informality, though, did interfere with Michael’s ability to communicate precise expectations at times. Furthermore, when his direct reports did not comprehend his expectations, they did not seek clarification. They also did not display an appropriate level of accountability for meeting deadlines.
As a result, when his expectations were not reached, a dissatisfied Michael would frequently swoop in to take the ball and run with it. This irritated his subordinates. As a result, they began to put in less effort at work. They assumed that whatever they supplied would be inadequate for Michael, who would eventually redo their job. This pattern of conduct was not only harming Michael’s team, but it was also affecting how his team was seen by the larger organization.
Taking Initiative
Vulnerability is defined as the removal of one’s mask in order to allow for an open, honest, and transparent flow of information. Michael, like many leaders, trembled when the word “vulnerability” was spoken and said, “I can’t do that, what will people think?” However, flaws are a part of the human experience. It affects us all. People will believe you are human, and your relatability will soar.
The subject of Michael’s “swooping” came up during a facilitated session with his direct reports. His immediate reports expressed how Michael’s behavior impacted their ability to accomplish their duties. “I don’t like to fail,” Michael said in an uncomfortable tone. “My fear of failure motivates my performance and behavior.” As you can expect, that was a watershed moment. All of the rage and frustration that had before engulfed the room had evaporated. Michael’s “why” was finally grasped by the team.
The Story’s Moral
While Michael’s transparency did not address the issues of unclear expectations and a lack of responsibility, it did significantly improve his direct reports’ understanding of him. It also allowed for a discussion on the issues. There is merit in displaying vulnerability. It is truthful. It improves comprehension. It reveals information that enables others to assist. It reveals your humanity while also allowing you to be yourself.
Demonstrating Vulnerability And The Importance Of Culture
Not surprisingly, terms like boldness, daring, and fearlessness ride shotgun with vulnerability in the workplace, with the assumption being that being vulnerable, regardless of context or circumstances, has an aspect of heroism. Leaders, in particular, are asked to lead by example, both by revealing more of their hidden selves and by fostering circumstances that allow others to do the same.
What is frequently overlooked in this discussion is the organizational culture required for vulnerability to take root in the teams and organizations with which we work.
Some company cultures make it extremely difficult to demonstrate vulnerability.
Numerous CEOs and top executives complain about a lack of creativity to drive required innovation, but fail to connect the shaming, blaming, or silencing cultures they run with how professionally perilous it is for employees to risk being mocked, ignored, or dismissed from the team.
Being genuinely vulnerable in the workplace involves two things: an individual commitment to be open, and a corporate culture that fosters and honors genuine openness. It also necessitates a belief that it is helpful to the individual, the team, and the larger business, as well as a willingness to persevere even when it is difficult, as it frequently is.
Moderation and Intentions
Finally, whenever a person discusses their thoughts and feelings with others, it must be in service of the group’s goals. Offering one’s raw ideas and opinions recklessly is not vulnerability; it is reckless and potentially offensive. Again, leaders who assume that being vulnerable entails letting it all hang out and oversharing as a strategy to enhance team cohesion may end up creating a climate of malaise. Moderation and sound judgment are essential in all situations.
Leaders should not be perfect. They should exhibit the behaviors they want their teams to emulate, including being truly and imperfectly human.
Executives would be wise to notice the amount of energy and productivity lost due to employee attempts to fit in, as individuals required to execute the task invest more in self-protection and withholding their imperfect humanity from one another, and less in progress toward shared goals. This communal effort depletes individual resources, leaving many workers with less to invest where it is most needed: in work, relationships, and the innovation required for advancement.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that there is little to be gained by being all talk and no action when it comes to cultivating more open, sharing team cultures. When both hearts and brains are required to tackle problems large and small, senior leaders should embrace the view that what is better – for clients, stakeholders, employees, the business, and potentially even the planet – comes from exposing (where appropriate), rather than concealing. And that the most impactful thing they can do is establish and model the psychological safety and conditions for amazing work to arise.
Exercise 4.5: Vulnerability Exercise
STEP 1:
STEP 2:
STEP 3:
CONCLUSION
5.2: Understanding Collaboration
The Importance of Collaboration
To be honest, collaborative group projects can be difficult. Spending hours trying (and failing) to integrate different group members’ ideas; tiptoeing around disagreements to avoid stomping on each other’s toes (“that’s an interesting suggestion, but…”); compensating for the group slacker. However, collaboration isn’t always a bad thing. Indeed, via this program, you can discover enormous enjoyment and value in teamwork.
Comprehending the value of the collaborative process, which begins with understanding what collaboration truly is, is the key to finding delight in cooperation. According to Merriam-Webster, collaborate means “to work jointly with others or together, especially in an intellectual endeavor.” The mechanisms underlying this may alter based on the environment (in-person versus distant, in school versus in the business, synchronously versus asynchronously, etc.), but the following essential values stay constant.
Understanding the importance of the collaborative process is the key to finding satisfaction in collaboration.
1. Different people have different ideas about what is valuable. Working with a varied team that may have different mindsets or thought processes than you is one of the most valuable aspects of teamwork. This not only helps you think critically about a topic, throwing new light in ways you hadn’t considered before, and gain more insight into your project, but it also pushes you to defend your position, either strengthening your argument or compelling you to capitulate. It is crucial to note, however, that collaboration is not the same as debate; occasionally, in order to keep peace within a group, it is best to acknowledge a draw and proceed accordingly.
2. Place an emphasis on the abilities of others. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, which implies that we all contribute unique skills to a group. Fortunately, this also means that team members can help where one lacks and vice versa. This fosters a strong, collaborative work environment. Furthermore, it allows teammates to learn from and challenge one another, sharpening existing talents while also learning new ones. However, it is critical that skill sets are evenly matched in order to divide duties fairly and allow each team member to contribute to a group. If this is not the case, it is critical to reach a fair conclusion.
3. Relationship worth. The relationships built by working together are my favorite value of cooperation and the one that offers me the greatest delight. According to studies, having a common aim can often help create new connections. However, keep in mind that, while this is an excellent benefit of collaboration, you will not become friends with every team member you ever work with. And that’s fine! It is only vital for such transitory collaboration connections to be cordial and friendly enough to properly work together through your project.
Understanding How Work Is Actually Completed
Three examples will demonstrate how standard approaches to mapping processes and analyzing activities have limitations in understanding the performance of individuals, teams, and entire organizations.
• Individual achievement. A non-profit wants to increase the efficiency of its fund-raisers. Targeting specific sorts of donors, managing the sales process in a predetermined order, and persuading donors with appeals tailored to their interests were all proposed by conventional wisdom. Nonetheless, some top performers followed only a few of these habits, while others followed them all.
• Group performance. A effort to improve the processes of a large multinational construction corporation increased employee efficiency. However, even after controlling for the varying attractiveness of their markets, performance discrepancies persisted between sales offices.
• Overall organizational performance. As an engineering firm expanded internationally, it became increasingly difficult to bring together construction managers and engineers, whose goals regularly clashed. (The former was concerned with cost-cutting, whereas the latter was concerned with technical solutions.) Unfortunately, the company’s linear view of the construction process cast little light on collaboration challenges, stressing the duties performed by each group and the handoffs between them.
In situations like these, network analysis can be beneficial to businesses. The initial stage is to identify the functions or activities where connectedness appears to be most important, followed by mapping links within those priority areas. Tracking e-mail, monitoring personnel, using existing data (such as time cards and project fee codes), and delivering short (5- to 20-minute) questionnaires are all options for gathering the essential information. Organizations charting their decision-making processes could ask their staff, “Whom do you ask for input before making an important decision?” Others who are interested in innovation may inquire, “With whom are you most likely to discuss a fresh idea?” If Joe claims he was helpful to Jane but she claims she doesn’t know him, his claim is dismissed. Companies can use ordinary tools to produce network maps displaying relationships once they have the information.
The true value is seen when businesses move beyond mapping interactions to quantifying the benefits and costs of collaboration. Companies must examine the time employees spend on various types of contacts, as well as the savings and sales contributions of specific collaborations, to do so. This analysis relies heavily on fully loaded compensation figures for network participants as well as detailed survey results (for example, answers to questions like “How much time did working with employee X save you?” or “How many deals in the following revenue bands did you work with employee Y?”).
Case Study: Harmonizing Collaboration at DuPont Through M&A
DuPont, which was founded in 1802, has had almost two centuries to perfect its corporate collaborative methods. It has expanded from a single facility on the Brandywine River creating explosives to a global corporation. One of the lessons DuPont has learned from its acquisition history is the best way to integrate people and companies. DuPont’s approach to integration is more about harmonization than absorption because the corporation has strong foundations and core values but not a homogenous culture (for example, its Crop Protection sector has a distinct subculture). Another characteristic of DuPont’s collaboration is its emphasis on creating stakeholder maps, or “RACIs,” for specific projects to identify who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. Today, DuPont is on the eve of a $130 billion merger with Dow Chemical Company, ushering in a new era of collaboration.
Developing Relational Value
The tremendous outcomes of detecting and replicating high-performing networks represent only a small portion of network analysis’s potential. It is also feasible to foster specific relationships that aid in income generation and productivity. Targeted action is far more effective than blanket promotion of connection, which generally strains already-overburdened personnel and results in inefficiencies. A more informed network perspective assists businesses in identifying the few essential spots where better connectivity generates economic value by bridging business unit and functional barriers, physical distance, organizational hierarchies, and a scarcity of expertise.
Generating Income
A network perspective frequently reveals “hidden” people whose value to cross-selling or closing deals is significantly greater than individual performance measures would suggest. It can also indicate where to imitate collaborative behavior, when to bring in relevant experts from the network’s periphery, and how to remove barriers to collaborative sales efforts, such as time, skills, personalities, incentives, and a lack of knowledge about which colleagues have expertise. A global technology company’s and a consulting firm’s experiences demonstrate how these challenges play out in practice.
A renowned technology firm employed network analysis to become more responsive to consumers and market movements. The analysis not only assisted the company’s leaders in determining where collaboration created money, but it also proved valuable in redefining the roles of key network players.
For example, the company separated collaborative contributions by revenue bands and discovered that the most and least value interactions (those earning more than $2,000,000 and less than $250,000, respectively) invariably involved different persons. Furthermore, a network perspective assisted the organization in determining which coworkers were aware of one another’s skills but did not use it. This very real but frequently invisible obstacle to cross-selling and account penetration is common in enterprises, in our experience.
To increase sales, the organization attempted to emulate the behavior of the primary contributors while also assisting some key salespeople in understanding how collaboration could help them be more successful. It rapidly became evident that the high-performing collaborators’ success was due to more than just skill or affability. When compared to other salesmen, they were judged to be more tolerant, attentive to requests, adaptable, open to constructive criticism, enthusiastic team members, and excellent conflict managers. Because of the relevance of these characteristics, the company revamped its incentive program and launched an initiative to develop collaboration skills throughout the sales network.
Increasing Productivity
Most companies—even high-performing ones—can find chances to increase their collaborative productivity. Sometimes network research reveals that they can save money by facilitating the exchange of advice and information among colleagues. In other circumstances, a network perspective identifies previously unseen collaborative inefficiencies caused by poor job design, inappropriate delegation of decision-making authority, and out-of-date position descriptions, process stages, or organizational structures.
Specific concerns and interventions differ significantly between industries. However, some broad themes emerge. Companies that lack a network view frequently spend resources inefficiently, manage personnel blindly, and face significant variations in the efficacy of collaboration within and across units. Examining the time savings generated by partnerships allows businesses to identify what’s working, decide what, where, and how to invest in greater connectivity, and redefine roles and personnel levels.
Exercise 4.6: Simulated Challenges
Time required:
Group size:
Goal:
• What will future advertisements include?
• How will your employees work to restore the company’s excellent name and credibility?
5.3: Understanding Empathy
Empathy’s Importance in the Workplace
Why Empathy Is Important and How to Foster Empathetic Leadership
Companies must hire and create more effective managers and executives capable of taking their firm ahead in both good and bad times. This necessitates looking beyond typical management development tactics and fostering the most crucial talents for success.
Unexpectedly, empathy is one of those qualities – a critical leadership attribute.
Empathetic leadership is understanding others’ needs and being aware of their feelings and opinions. Unfortunately, it has long been regarded as a soft talent rather than a performance indicator. Research, on the other hand, has revealed that today’s effective leaders must be more “person-focused” and capable of working well with people from diverse teams, departments, nations, cultures, and backgrounds.
Researchers evaluated data from 6,731 mid- to upper-middle-level managers in 38 countries to see if empathy influences a manager’s job performance. A feedback assessment was used to rank the leaders in the study on their level of empathy.
They found that empathy in the workplace is positively related to job performance.
In other words, research discovered that managers who demonstrated sympathetic leadership toward direct reports were seen favorably by their superiors. The results were consistent across the sample: managers who were assessed as sympathetic by their subordinates were also rated as excellent performers by their boss.
The ability to be sympathetic and connect with people is essential in our personal and professional life. Empathy in the workplace, which is a crucial component of emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness, improves human connections in general and can lead to more effective communication and positive outcomes in both work and home situations.
Empathy in the Workplace: A Definition
The ability to recognize and relate to the ideas, emotions, or experiences of others is referred to as empathy. Those with strong degrees of empathy are adept at seeing a situation through the eyes of another person and reacting compassionately.
Empathy in the workplace simply means that your employees may build genuine, empathetic connections with one another, which improves relationships and performance.
It’s critical to distinguish between compassion and empathy, as the two are sometimes mistaken.
• Sympathy is often defined as sentiments of pity for another person without fully comprehending what it is like to be in their shoes.
• Empathy, on the other hand, refers to the aptitude or ability to envision oneself in the circumstances of another, experiencing the emotions, ideas, or opinions of that person.
Empathy is frequently more productive and beneficial in the job.
How to Be a More Empathetic Leader
4 Ways to Improve Your Workplace Empathy
Empathetic leadership can manifest itself in a variety of ways. We urge that leaders use the four measures outlined below to demonstrate greater empathy in the workplace, as well as with their colleagues and direct subordinates.
1. Keep an eye out for signs of burnout in others.
Work burnout is a serious issue today, and it is exacerbated by periods of high stress and pressure. Many people are anxious, putting in longer work hours than ever before, and struggling to separate work and personal life.
Managers who are excellent in empathetic leadership can spot signs of overwork in others before it becomes a problem that leads to disengagement or turnover. This could entail spending a few extra minutes each week checking in with team members to see how they’re handling their present workload and assisting them in recovering from overwork.
2. Demonstrate genuine concern in other people’s needs, hopes, and dreams.
Working to understand each team member’s individual needs and aspirations, as well as how to best match job assignments to contribute to both performance and employee satisfaction, is part of leading with empathy. Team members who see their manager recognizing them in this manner are more engaged and willing to go above and beyond. Kindness in the workplace can improve both performance and culture.
3. Show a willingness to assist an employee with personal issues.
The distinction between work and personal life is getting increasingly hazy. Empathetic leaders recognize that their team members are dynamic persons who are dealing with personal issues while also carrying out professional tasks. They understand that it is their responsibility to lead and support those team members who are in need.
Maintaining open lines of communication and fostering transparency are important ways to build psychological safety among team members and make them feel comfortable sharing when necessary.
4. Be compassionate when others confess a personal loss.
Genuine connections and friendships at work are important, and empathetic leadership is a technique that managers may use to connect with individuals they are blessed to lead. We’ve all experienced personal loss, so even if we can’t relate to the precise loss our team member is experiencing, we can show empathy and let them know they’re not alone.
How Can Organizations Foster Empathetic Leadership?
Some leaders are naturally more empathic than others, giving them an advantage over their peers who struggle to communicate empathy. Most leaders lie somewhere in the middle and are occasionally or somewhat empathic.
Fortunately, it is not a fixed characteristic. Empathetic leadership is something that may be learned. Leaders can build and improve their empathy abilities through coaching, training, or developmental opportunities and initiatives if they are given appropriate time and support.
Organizations and HR executives can promote a more empathetic workplace and assist managers in improving their empathy abilities in a variety of ways.
Case Study
Many successful companies are emphasizing empathy in the workplace. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, for example, is well-known for emphasizing empathy as a vital source of company innovation. Nadella attributes his own success to empathy, and since becoming CEO, he has began to practice empathy inside the organization. For Nadella, this includes emphasizing the need of putting oneself in the shoes of others and being able to listen. It’s no accident that since his appointment in 2014, Microsoft’s worth has more than doubled, and he has steered the business through a succession of high-profile acquisitions. Other organizations, such as Salesforce and Dropbox, have been lauded as fantastic places to work, where people are offered opportunities based on their own personal goals, where open communication and polite treatment are encouraged regardless of role, level, or seniority.
5 Ways to Encourage Empathy in the Workplace
1. Discuss empathy in the workplace to demonstrate its worth.
Inform leaders that empathy is important. Many managers believe that task-oriented skills such as monitoring and planning are more crucial in controlling team members’ performance. However, research suggests that understanding, caring for, and developing people is just as vital, if not more so, in today’s workforce.
Explain how providing time and attention to others increases empathy, which improves your performance and perceived effectiveness.
2. Develop listening abilities.
Managers must be good listeners, skilled in active listening skills, who let others know they’re being heard and express awareness of concerns and problems, in order to understand others and sense what they’re feeling.
People feel valued when their manager is a good listener, and vital trust in the team can grow. To demonstrate the highest levels of empathy in the workplace, managers should focus on listening to hear the meaning behind what people are saying by paying attention to nonverbal indicators such as tone, tempo of speech, facial expressions, and gestures, as well as the words being said.
3. Encourage real point of view-taking.
Managers should continuously put themselves in the shoes of others. This includes supervisors taking into account their employees’ personal lived experiences or opinions. It can also be used to solve problems, manage conflicts, and drive creativity. Understanding the importance of social identity for yourself and others is really beneficial.
Empathy is especially important for successful organizational diversity programs.
4. Develop compassion.
Support managers who care about how others feel and take into account the impact of corporate decisions on employees, customers, and communities. Allow time for compassionate thinking and reaction in addition to the standard-issue values statement. Remember that your employees care about social responsibility, and your company should as well.
5. Assist global management.
Middle managers’ ability to be sympathetic leaders who can communicate across boundaries is especially crucial in global or cross-cultural businesses. Leading a multicultural team necessitates cultural intelligence as well as the capacity to comprehend people with vastly different opinions and experiences.
A Final Word on Empathy in the Workplace
And, as evidenced by the statistics presented above, when managers hone their empathetic leadership skills, they improve their efficacy and boost their odds of success on the job. Empathetic leaders are valuable assets to firms, in part because they can effectively create and sustain relationships and retain people – all of which are essential components of leading organizations wherever in the globe.
Exercise 4.7: Empathy Bingo
Fixing It
B: I’ll take you.
One-Upping
B: That’s nothing compared to what I got when I was hit by a bike.
Storytelling
B: That reminds me of a time when…
Consoling
B: You’re not to blame; you’re a fantastic tutor.
Sympathizing
B: Oh my goodness, that’s dreadful.
Interrogating
B: What exactly is the issue?
Shutting Down
B: Let’s go play some pool.
Educating
B: Look at it as an opportunity to improve your social skills.
Explaining
B: Only because of the bad traffic…
Advising
B: I believe you should make a budget.
Correcting
B: It wasn’t about a greenhouse, but about a glasshouse.
Empathizing
B: Do you feel worried and in need of support?
5.4: Understanding Self-Awareness
We understand that we must give our complete focus to our tasks at work, but we must not neglect self-awareness. Paying attention to our own actions, feelings, and productivity assists us in becoming better leaders, more attentive employees, and many other things.
Some of us may believe we are self-aware, but we are not. According to one survey, just 10-15% of 5,000 adults were fully self-aware. However, far more participants in the survey claimed they were self-aware when they were not. Self-awareness is a skill that not everyone possesses, despite popular belief that it is simple to develop.
Self-awareness development is a continual process. To do so, we must first define self-awareness.
We’ll talk about what it means to be self-aware at work and how to improve our self-awareness so that we may thrive at work. Let’s get started.
Self-Awareness In The Workplace: A Necessary Tool For Success
Leaders aim to harness the potent method of self-awareness. It’s a term that’s frequently misunderstood since individuals believe it solely applies to them and has no bearing on those around them.
However, a self-aware person influences and helps others, particularly in the workplace. Mindfulness and awareness allow a person to reflect on how others are feeling, which improves relationships.
And it’s something that should be taught from the beginning. People who are taught self-awareness have a better ability to reflect on their leadership skills and generate a stronger sense of teamwork, according to research. Self-awareness allows workers to assess their skill sets in order to contribute more effectively and to create a workplace culture that promotes teamwork.
We reap numerous benefits from self-awareness in the workplace. For starters, it’s a method of detecting stress. When we are more aware of what causes our stress, we can handle it more effectively and take better care of ourselves. Self-awareness enables us to comprehend our own feelings and how they affect others. We also receive and respond to feedback more effectively.
In terms of personal benefits, we feel more confidence in our personal strengths since they are visible. We’ll also learn how to practice more positive self-talk with ourselves, which will help us boost our self-esteem.
We’d feel confident and at ease discussing our various points of view with self-aware coworkers. We’d understand how our coworkers function and how to collaborate effectively. We demand a company culture and workplace climate that promotes self-awareness rather than dismisses it.
Two Kinds of Self-Awareness
When it comes to self-awareness, there are two distinct categories to be aware of. Understanding the distinctions between these categories will assist you in determining which aspects require additional development. Each person’s self-awareness path is unique, so identifying your strengths and problem areas can help you progress.
The first of the two categories is public self-awareness. Controlling your outer appearance and manipulating how others see you are key to this form of self-awareness. This type of self-awareness frequently entails managing your actions and emotions in order to conform to cultural norms or the “status quo.” Consider yourself speaking in front of a large group of people at an event. How do you feel about standing in front of a crowd? What steps are you taking to deal with your emotions and reactions to this event? Your public self-awareness skill set is linked to how you handle and exhibit yourself outside.
The private and internal form of self-awareness is the other type. It is just as vital to manage your own expectations and perceptions of yourself as it is to manage the expectations and perceptions of others. At its foundation, private self-awareness is concerned with the ability to comprehend oneself. People frequently discover that they are better suited to one type of self-awareness than the other. You can improve your growth strategy by determining the things you excel at.
The Degrees of Self-Awareness
Self-awareness entails more than just being aware of your environment. There are various levels of consciousness, each of which might assist you in better understanding your current situation. We’ve broken these levels down below to help you visualize the process.
What are you doing? This is the first and most fundamental level of self-awareness. This level includes knowing your current position as well as behaviors in your immediate surroundings. There will undoubtedly be diversions and hurdles on any given day. Understanding what they are can assist you in concentrating on the job at hand.
What are you feeling? The next degree of self-awareness focuses on your emotions and reactions to the world around you. After you’ve decided what you’re going to focus on, focus your thoughts on how you feel about what you’re doing and experiencing.
Where are your blindspots? The final level of self-awareness necessitates a great ability to reflect. This level requires you to take a close look at yourself and your situation in order to identify areas where you are weak. Everyone has blind spots and weaknesses, but the trick is to identify them and turning them into a growth mentality. Consider this level to be your opportunity to overcome your weaknesses and turn them into strengths.
What Is the Importance of Self-Awareness at Work?
Your company should seek to hire and nurture self-aware employees. When your personnel excels at identifying, managing, and efficiently expressing their ideas and emotions, your company processes will improve significantly. Among the advantages of encouraging employees to become self-aware are:
• Manage Conflict Effectively: Things happen in life! It is crucial how you respond to these shifts and turmoil. Maintaining a cheerful and professional attitude in the midst of adversity is critical to the effective operation of your firm.
• A Better Understanding Of Your Emotions: The road to self-awareness allows you to understand and regulate your emotions more effectively. This is critical in the job since it might affect your capacity to interact with others and collaborate efficiently.
• Increase Your Self-Esteem: Self-awareness has been shown to increase self-esteem. You’ll probably feel more successful and confident as you progress through the levels of self-awareness. Employees with higher self-esteem are more likely to excel in their jobs.
• Increase Empathy And Inclusivity: Employees who are self-aware find it simpler to empathize with persons from varied backgrounds. This leads to greater levels of inclusivity and variety of thought in the workplace.
• Better Decision Making: Decisions are made all the time in business. Self-awareness is a vital tool since it allows you to control your thoughts and emotions in order to make sound judgments.
Case Study
Hubspot contacted several leaders on LinkedIn in 2022 to get their take on self-awareness in leadership and real-world examples. Here’s a quote from Jordan Bazinsky – Executive Vice President and General Manager at Cotiviti:
“We have an R&D and Operations center in Kathmandu, Nepal. In April 2015, they were hit by a 7.8 earthquake. I received a call in the middle of the night from Markandeya Kumar Talluri, who led the office, and was huddled for safety in a doorway. The subsequent aftershocks were devastating for a country already limited by its infrastructure: ultimately 9,000 deaths and 600,000 buildings destroyed.
“Kumar lived in India and could have gone home while Nepal picked through the rubble and rebuilt. Instead, he stayed in Kathmandu, invited families to come live in our office on a temporary basis, created space for Operation Rubicon to base their relief activities, set up phone chains and efforts to locate not just our employees but friends and family that were missing.
“He intuitively knew that the people under his care would absorb his energy and take cues from his attitude, and managed himself accordingly. It remains one of the most powerful examples of self-awareness in service of others that I have witnessed at work.”
Workplace Emotions And Self-Awareness
Dealing with emotions at work is difficult. We want to appear professional, but we can’t deny that we are human beings with emotions. Our difficulties do not go away when we get to work.
Self-awareness assists us in managing our emotions everywhere we go. Our emotional intelligence is dependent on our self-awareness in order to be aware of how we feel and express our feelings clearly. It also teaches us how to accept ourselves and our feelings rather than pushing them away.
Emotional intelligence has been proven in studies to aid decision-making, collaborative work, and stress management. It teaches us how to deal with change and unexpected surprises, both of which are critical abilities to have in the profession.
With increased self-awareness and emotional intelligence, we solve problems at work more readily. If team members disagree, we have the tools to navigate the dispute so that we can work together politely and create trust. We don’t always have control over what happens at work, but we do have control over our emotions and how we react to them.
This also improves decision-making by identifying our biases and emotions rather than allowing them to interfere.
Working In An Office With Unaware Employees
Working with self-aware people is fantastic. They understand how to recognize and express their emotions, make sound judgments, and work cooperatively in groups. But what about people who aren’t conscious of their own existence?
People are sometimes ignorant that they are unaware. When confronted with a circumstance like this, we must be conscious of how we approach the problem. It’s critical to remember to use our self-awareness to be careful of how we’re feeling when working on or approaching a problem like this. It reminds us to practice self-control and emotional regulation.
It also serves as a reminder to have compassion and understanding for others. Perhaps an unnoticed colleague is attempting to self-manage and develop their self-awareness, but they aren’t quite there yet. Rather than venting our frustrations on them, we’ll use this moment to offer some constructive criticism or feedback to help them better.
It is more respectful to encourage someone with constructive critique as they seek to become more self-aware than to tear them down.
However, if the colleague in question seems unconcerned about their ignorance and has no plans to change, we may need to discuss with our management. We cannot change people who perceive no wrong with their actions. Help from our supervisors may make the workplace a more comfortable and productive environment for everyone.
Exercise 4.8: The Proust-Questionnaire
1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
2. What is your greatest fear?
3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
5. Which living person do you most admire?
6. What is your greatest extravagance?
7. What is your current state of mind?
8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
9. On what occasion do you lie?
10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
11. Which living person do you most despise?
12. What is the quality you most like in a man?
13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
16. When and where were you happiest?
17. Which talent would you most like to have?
18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? 21. Where would you most like to live?
21. What is your most treasured possession?
22. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
23. What is your favorite occupation?
24. What is your most marked characteristic?
25. What do you most value in your friends?
26. Who are your favorite writers?
27. Who is your hero of fiction?
28. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
29. Who are your heroes in real life?
30. What are your favorite names?
31. What is it that you most dislike?
32. What is your greatest regret?
33. How would you like to die?
34. What is your motto?
5.5: Understanding Humility
In recent years, it appears that an increasing number of leaders have put their company’s survival at risk for the sake of vanity, hubris, or selfish gain. We’ve seen Wells Fargo allow the creation of over a million fraudulent accounts, which earned the bank over $2 million in fees, pharmaceutical firm Perrigo face a price collusion investigation, Samsung executives accused of bribery and embezzlement, and Equifax executives profit by selling their shares before news of a massive data breach broke.
What characteristics should we strive for in leaders to avoid controversies and enhance success?
Humble leadership is distinguished by a readiness to honestly recognize oneself, an appreciation for the qualities and contributions of others, and an openness to counsel and critique. According to research, humble people are more generous and helpful, and humble leaders may engage employees more and assist teams in becoming more integrated. Humble leaders aren’t meek or incapable of making difficult decisions; rather, we perceive humility as the middle ground between arrogance and low self-esteem.
And humility is crucial not only for individual leaders. In a recent study, researchers looked at what it would take for a company’s entire culture to be humble. They were able to discover six elements that represent humility as an organizational feature by reviewing current measurements of leader and team humility and then monitoring firms with humble leaders. If you wish to strengthen your company culture, adopting the six standards outlined below can assist your workplace in embracing the generosity, togetherness, and learning that leads to success.
1. Correct Awareness
Many businesses frequently overestimate their strengths while underestimating their shortcomings, which can lead to bad management decisions and even organizational failure. The norm of accurate awareness refers to the organization and its personnel making objective, unbiased assessments of their own and others’ strengths and weaknesses.
Case Study: PepsiCo
PepsiCo, for example, recently acknowledged that their products, such as sugary sodas and high-calorie snacks, contribute to consumers’ unhealthy habits and obesity. As a result of this objective assessment of its shortcomings, PepsiCo began to make adjustments to its products and recipes to address consumer concerns, such as offering more lower-calorie options and reducing the amount of sugar in current products.
Your company should help staff comprehend your mission statement and do regular SWOT analyses: assessments of the firm’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, to build a culture of accurate awareness. As a consequence, you’ll be able to hire people that excel in those areas of weakness, as well as develop and train staff to address the gaps.
2. Tolerating Proficient Mistakes
Some businesses strive for perfection and error-free work, creating a climate in which employees are scared to improve the status quo for fear of failing and being punished. Another thing that humble organizational cultures have in common is a tolerance for proficient mistakes: blunders that originate from fresh ideas rather than poor implementation. Accepting these kind of mistakes can assist ensure that successful learning occurs.
Case Study
Accenture, a multinational management consulting firm, hosts employee gatherings on a regular basis to debate creative solutions to contemporary technical concerns. Although the answers may not always work, making strategically informed blunders is an essential element of the innovation process.
Companies such as Accenture that enable their staff to fail encourage them to be more creative. This norm can be fostered in your organization by fostering healthy risk-taking. For example, you can hold brainstorming sessions where absurd ideas are encouraged, criticism is prohibited, and ideas remain anonymous—allowing them to be judged only on their merits rather than the reputation of their author. Employees can begin to feel more liberated in their day-to-day work by participating in this fairly easy practice.
3. Honesty And Transparency
Many employees believe that by keeping operations and ideas hidden, they may prevent another person or department from “stealing” their concept. In contrast, humble organizational cultures are more open and honest. Individuals are candid and honest about their opinions and limitations.
Case Study
Accenture personnel misunderstood some facts during a customer project, increasing the expenditure and time necessary. When the error was identified, Accenture officials took responsibility for the delays and increased expenditures as they worked to resolve the issues. Being truthful can help a company acquire the trust of its customers and increase future business.
Employees are encouraged to collaborate when organizations are transparent, such as Accenture, because they don’t have to worry about their ideas being stolen, repackaged, and passed off as someone else’s. Your company may foster this norm by ensuring that senior executives are willing to offer credit to others, recognize weaknesses, accept responsibility, and apologize—and then rewarding staff for doing so.
4. Availability
Some organizations have an NIH bias, or “not invented here” prejudice: they believe that internal ideas and operations are superior than external ones. This leads to organizations dismissing any ideas that are unfamiliar or similar to their own, regardless of their value, in favor of domestically generated solutions that advance the status quo.
However, a humble organizational culture implies being receptive to new and unconventional ideas. Colgate, for example, aggressively pursues innovative ideas for active ingredients and product delivery solutions by crowdsourcing user suggestions through an Open Innovation Submission Portal.
To foster this norm, your company must actively seek fresh ideas and input from employees, as well as demonstrate that these ideas are valued. Some businesses accomplish this by establishing idea incubators, which are internal initiatives that are free of corporate influence and allow employees to engage in creative thinking. Brainstorming meetings, suggestion boxes, and looking outside your business for inspiration from other organizations are some strategies to create this standard. This might lead to fresh and interesting opportunities that distinguish your organization from its competition.
5. Employee Advancement
Employee growth and ongoing learning are also prioritized in humble company cultures. Organizations that ignore this pattern are typically more focused on short-term, day-to-day operations, fighting fires, and completing more work with fewer people—all of which may eventually drive away top talent.
Case Study
Employees at DreamWorks Animation are encouraged to participate in continual learning through a variety of means, including official training, mentoring, and outside study (for which they get reimbursed). DreamWorks Animation has in-house programs that assist employees in developing existing talents and learning new ones from peers and industry professionals.
To create this standard, your company must place a high emphasis on staff training and achievement. This does not imply that you must offer expensive tuition reimbursement schemes; instead, you might begin with more casual, simple solutions like “brownbags,” in which coworkers or suppliers share their knowledge over lunch. During performance assessments, your organization can also encourage employees to set more ambitious goals and provide them with the assistance and resources they need to attain those goals. Employees are encouraged to give their all in order to assist your company flourish in this climate.
6. Employee Appreciation
Finally, humble organizational cultures constantly recognize and applaud their employees’ accomplishments. The idea is not to boost their pride or ego, but to recognize that everyone contributes to the organization’s success—that the company would not be where it is without them.
Case Study
The online retailer Zappos is well-known for rewarding employee achievement. Zappos provides a Family HERO Award that honors deserving nominees with a customized HERO cape, a HERO pin, a $150 Zappos gift card, and a parade.
To foster this standard, your company might establish initiatives that acknowledge outstanding employees and stakeholders. You don’t have to start with extravagant parades or expensive gifts; an email to the entire organization praising a team’s accomplishments is a fine place to start. Although recognizing longevity isn’t a terrible thing, stressing achievements connects employees’ personal activities to the company’s performance. Employees are more likely to feel validated and secure in their abilities in this type of culture, which boosts morale throughout the firm.
A company’s culture can help or hurt its performance through affecting staff attraction and retention, productivity, creativity, and the company’s reputation. Culture is also an intangible asset that rivals must pay to copy. Firms can avoid actions and behaviors that limit achievement via overconfidence, hubris, and unneeded secrecy by encouraging a humble organizational culture, and instead create habits that will serve as a basis for empowerment, collaboration, and outstanding success in the marketplace.
Humility: The Key Leadership Attribute Driving A Positive Workplace Culture
While it may appear counterintuitive, humble leadership is a show of confidence and power, not weakness.
Is it feasible, however, to develop humility? What can you do to accept, adopt, and utilize the characteristics of a humble leader?
Be a good listener.
Make choices only after consulting with members of your team. Collect as much information as possible. Allow everyone the opportunity to express their thoughts and ideas. Allow others to give their ideas before expressing your own. Humble leaders make their team members feel included, which motivates them to speak up with innovative, even daring ideas that boost corporate performance. Listen carefully and respond to what you hear.
Be a good communicator.
Maintain constant contact with everyone and explain why decisions were taken, how they will affect them, and what is expected of them. Employees in the greatest company cultures believe that their leaders work with them rather than for them.
Show your gratitude.
Humble leaders do not strive to claim credit for everything. They completely recognize and openly appreciate the individual efforts of their team members. They compliment each team member’s abilities. They serve as mentors or coaches, inspiring and demonstrating to their colleagues how to best utilize their talents and execute at their best.
Don’t be an arrogant.
Humble leaders do not believe they are infallible or that they have all the answers. They confer. They talk. They recognize that other people have valid experiences and ideas that should not be dismissed. They never feel the need to be the most knowledgeable person in the room. This is yet another technique to elicit contributions from others, which can make a significant difference in the development of initiatives.
Recognize your faults.
I’ve always felt that doing something poorly teaches you more than doing something properly. Simply admit the error, repair it, move forward, and use this newfound knowledge to make smarter, more educated decisions. Admitting you were wrong is often difficult for a leader. It can be humiliating and uncomfortable, but it eventually demonstrates tenacity that your workers can mimic.
Others should be championed.
Humble leaders look for methods to elevate members of their team. They don’t have to take all the credit and trample others as they climb the ladder. They don’t need sycophants to back up their claims. They, on the other hand, genuinely appreciate that team members bring unique abilities and expertise that they may not have. Humility fosters trust and a dynamic team spirit.
What is the significance of humble leadership?
A generational shift is taking place. Millennials, who are increasingly ascending to positions of senior management, are adopting a more servant-oriented leadership style. A servant leader genuinely cares about their employees’ well-being and feels that businesses have a responsibility to strive for the greater good.
Exercise 4.9: Stop Listening
5.6: Understanding Ownership
Many things in business are beyond our control. The economy, stock market, interest rates, natural disasters, and global events can all have uncontrollable and unpredictable effects on our enterprises.
But there is one thing we can always control: our attitude and reaction to what is going on around us.
When we take ownership of our mentality and actions at work, we set ourselves up for success regardless of the obstacles we face.
Furthermore, when we encourage our employees to take ownership of their work, they become more empowered to achieve their objectives, more devoted to their jobs, and more engaged with their work. They are more likely to deliver better results when they are more involved with their task.
Taking ownership at work has tangible benefits as well. According to studies, employees who take ownership are more likely to be promoted and given raises than those who do not. They are also less prone to burnout or turnover.
Encouraging your employees to take ownership does not necessitate micromanagement or increasing their burden. Instead, it’s about setting high expectations for your team and encouraging them to take charge of their own professional and personal development.
Leaders frequently emphasize the necessity of taking ownership at work. But what exactly does that mean, and how can you make it happen?
What Does It Mean To Take Ownership?
Taking ownership at work implies taking the initiative and responsibility for your own progress as well as the success of your team or business.
Every good team requires players who are willing to step up and take ownership for (rather than blame others for) mistakes or challenges. Taking ownership at work entails being proactive, solution-oriented, accountable, and dedicated to ongoing progress.
Those that take ownership at work are prepared to face any problems that come their way. They have great problem-solving abilities and foresee problems in order to avoid them from occurring, rather than waiting for things to go wrong and hurrying to remedy them.
They are also constantly seeking for ways to make things better. They are the ones who generate new ideas and devise innovative solutions to challenging situations.
Finally, employees who take ownership accept accountability for their actions. They accept responsibility for their failures as well as their accomplishments. Accountability is something that good team members embrace rather than avoid.
Ownership is essential for a high-performing team. When your team members believe in the mission and vision of your firm and believe they have a stake in its success, they are more likely to be engaged in their job. It is your responsibility as a leader to create an environment in which a sense of ownership can flourish.
Case Study
The Advantages of Taking Ownership at Work
We open ourselves up to a world of possibilities when we take ownership of our job.
Remember that it is not about being perfect; rather, it is about accepting responsibility for our actions and doing our best with what we have. We set ourselves up for personal and professional success when we take ownership.
Let’s take a closer look at how taking ownership benefits your team:
• Taking ownership increases employee confidence and helps them feel more accomplished. It makes people feel proud and competent in their work. This is why self-esteem improves job performance and vice versa. Encouraging your staff to take an active role can provide them with a sense of accomplishment while also reducing work-related stress and worry.
• Taking ownership gives employees a sense of responsibility and control over their workplace. This helps them to have more fun at work. Trusting your staff to take ownership of their work can create a sense of success, making their tasks and extra obligations feel more significant and enriching. This also results in self-sufficient employees and, possibly, self-managing teams.
• Taking ownership fosters and recognizes creativity. You create an organization that is continuously moving forward and developing when everyone feels empowered to explore new ideas and find better ways to do things.
• Taking ownership promotes the trustworthiness of your staff and advances their careers. When your employees take ownership of their work, people begin to attribute results to them, and they begin to accumulate evidence of their labor and value. This demonstrates honesty and consistency, which allows them to boost their CV and confidence.
• Taking ownership can lead to promotions and raises. Taking ownership is a guaranteed approach to foster professional development and advancement inside your organization. The more you allow your team to take ownership of their work, the more leadership qualities they will acquire and the more value they will provide to the company. Furthermore, they are more likely to remain with the organization for the long term, saving time and money in turnover expenses.
• Taking ownership results in a successful workplace culture. Holding yourself and others accountable for your actions leads to employee and corporate success. Employees perform better when they know their efforts will be recognized and acknowledged; it motivates them to do their best work. In the grand scheme of things, teams perform more successfully when everyone pulls their weight and does their job.
What Are The Requirements For Teams To Take Ownership?
Creating an ownership culture is critical for any firm that wants to succeed.
Employees that feel ownership in their work are more likely to be engaged and productive. So, how can you foster an ownership culture in your organization?
Here are three elements that teams require in order to take ownership of their work.
Positive Feedback Loops
The relationship between the management and their direct reports can have a significant impact on the success of a team. If a manager has difficulty communicating with their staff, morale, productivity, and confidence are likely to suffer.
Effective managers must identify their employees’ talents and shortcomings and use this information to establish a team. They must also be able to motivate team members by assisting them in understanding the significance of their work and identifying areas where they may take responsibility and ownership.
Managers should also utilize strategies such as praise, feedback, incentives, and prizes or incentives to increase employee engagement.
Employees that take ownership for initiatives and KPIs do so at their own risk. However, mistakes are common in the workplace, and how managers handle constructive criticism and negative feedback can influence their employees’ willingness to take a risk and move forward.
Managers should present negative feedback constructively and according to each employee’s communication preference when criticism is warranted.
Recognizing and rewarding good work is one of the most effective methods to foster an ownership culture. Employees are more inclined to continue going above and beyond in their professions if they believe their efforts are being noticed and appreciated. Furthermore, publicly recognizing and praising people sets a good example for other employees and encourages them to perform their best.
Resources And Independence
Employees are more inclined to take ownership of their work when they have the required resources and independence. These include time, money, educational resources, and opportunity to work with coworkers.
Offering additional autonomy and training opportunities, either internally or externally, is one method to improve employee ownership. Encourage them to participate in webinars, podcasts, or relevant team meetings to learn from their colleagues.
Employees who believe they are learning and improving in their positions are more likely to be engaged and devoted to their jobs. Investing in employee development also reminds employees that you value their efforts and want them to stay with the company in the long run.
Furthermore, allow your team to take ownership by distributing decisions rather than chores. Don’t micromanage; instead, empower your direct reports to make decisions within their areas of expertise. This will give them the impression that they are actually contributing to the organization rather than simply following directions.
Dependable Corporate Management
One reason an employee may not take ownership is fear of retaliation. Employees who are concerned about this issue are typically afraid to speak up for fear of jeopardizing their standing, productivity, or job security.
Employee ownership might be hampered by fear, a lack of faith in the business, or a sense of powerlessness.
You must guarantee that your leadership invests in creating trust with employees in order for them to take ownership of their task. Employees want to know that the person in charge of their job is looking out for the best interests of the organization. Employees are more likely to take ownership when leaders attempt to create trust with them.
Three Strategies For Fostering An Inclusive Culture While Taking Ownership
You have the ability as a business leader to build an inclusive culture in your workplace. This part will go through how to make your workplace a welcoming place for your employees and inspire them to take ownership of their jobs.
Here are three ways you can take ownership of your company and build an inclusive culture:
1. Promote mentoring, networking, and collaboration.
Learning from others can help your team learn to take ownership at work. Allow employees to work with personal mentors to assist them advance in their professions, gain confidence, and negotiate challenging situations. Consider establishing a formal ‘buddy’ program or matching individual contributors with experts.
Making everyone feel like they belong is a critical component of an inclusive culture, and this extends to the act of taking ownership. Encourage networking and collaboration to make employees feel more comfortable taking ownership.
Structured mentorship programs or employee resource groups can help with this. You establish a sense of community in your workplace by providing opportunities for connection. This makes it easier for people to take ownership of their jobs.
2. Communicate and solicit feedback.
Communicate regularly and frankly. Keep your staff informed of both good and bad corporate news. Share information on new initiatives, strategic changes, and other key developments. The more your staff is aware of what is going on, the more likely they will be to support you.
Encourage and act on comments. Make it obvious that you want to know how things are doing, what may be better, and where they need assistance. And, when you receive comments, consider it carefully and make changes as needed.
Your employees will feel respected and appreciated, and they will be more willing to speak out the next time anything arises.
3. Set a good example
As a leader, you must set a good example. This includes modeling the values you want to see in your team, as well as taking ownership of your work. It also entails demonstrating the behavior you anticipate from others, which is frequently reminiscent of servant leadership. Taking charge of your own development sets a good example for people around you and fosters a culture of learning and growth.
Taking ownership at work is much more than accountability; it entails being proactive and setting a good example. When you take ownership of your leadership job, you create a ripple effect that benefits your team, your organization, and yourself.
Encourage Ownership Within Your Organization
Buy-in is related to ownership. To thrive, your team members must believe in your company’s mission and vision and be dedicated to helping it reach its objectives. When members of a team take ownership, they aren’t just going through the motions; they are invested in their work and searching for ways to improve.
Developing an accountability culture begins with each team member accepting ownership of their work. Your entire organization will benefit when everyone accepts responsibility for their actions and strives to be proactive and solution-oriented.
Exercise 4.10: The Worst _____ Ever
Course Manual 6: Measuring Behaviors
How do you assess employee behavior in relation to your company values?
Keeping Company Values In Mind
How can you know if someone you interview for a job will uphold your Company Values? How do you assess employee behavior in relation to your company values?
Here are some samples of three big high street names’ values:
The first and third have a brief explanation of what they mean. The second one is a simple list of words.
It is often the case that when employees of large corporations are asked if they know what their company values are, they either don’t know or have them written down somewhere and must get them in order to answer the question. This is often despite the fact that they are prominently displayed on giant posters throughout the premises. So, what causes this? It’s all about connection, meaning, and anticipation.
Here’s a basic model to demonstrate:
The Alignment Model
Gregory Bateson, and later Robert Dilts, came to the idea that we live on multiple levels: as individuals, teams, and organizations.
We have a purpose at the highest level. In organizations, this is sometimes expressed as a mission statement or, more fashionably, as the organization’s purpose. We have a purpose, whether consciously or unconsciously, behind all we do and aim to achieve as individuals and teams, and if articulated clearly, this purpose will help to keep us on course.
The next step down is identity/role. In other words, what role do we and others play in accomplishing the goal? This is less about job titles and more about the changing nature of the roles we are expected to play in relation to each purpose, such as facilitator, coach, educator, entertainer, manager, designer, support, minder, and so on.
Now comes the values and beliefs level. What is important to us as a company, group, or individual? Companies spend time identifying high-level values, such as those shown above, and then display them on their websites and walls. Employees are expected to comprehend them, integrate them, and live by them at work.
The following word is capability. Do we have the ability to do the task? What is lacking? This level can be met if it is important and we believe it is achievable.
The alignment of all of the above levels results in effective behavior. This is the most apparent aspect of the procedure, and it is frequently judged.
Finally, it is behavior, which is sometimes unconscious once it becomes habitual, that determines the organization’s culture or environment – it is the visible and kinaesthetic embodiment of all the levels above.
What Occurs In Organizations When It Comes To Values?
Organizations excel at developing a set of significant values. Who is the question relevant for, and how do we test for them during interviews and beyond? How do they become a member of the organization’s muscle? The problem with values is that they are usually expressed in high-level, abstract language that is susceptible to interpretation by individuals, if they reach that far. Abstract words are usually exactly that – abstract! As a result, many people are unable to relate to, own, or live by them.
Consider the concept of teamwork. What kinds of behaviors would you witness if you walked around an organization with this value? Who, when, and on what are you collaborating? Is it necessary for everyone or simply a few people to collaborate? How does teamwork appear and feel? How do I assess this during an interview without asking a direct question about collaboration to which the interviewee is likely to have a prepared answer, especially if they have read the values on the website beforehand? Collaboration is a working preference that not everyone enjoys.
And what about humility? How would those who demonstrate humility in the workplace act? Or perhaps zeal? According to research on job satisfaction, passion is often lacking in organizations. What are you passionate about? How does it manifest itself?
The reason for the gap is that organizations frequently stop when they reach the values level. The people who established the values know what they mean to them and assume that everyone else knows what they mean as well. They also have no effective technique of measuring them until today.
The Four Motivators That Influence Workplace Conduct
1. Supremacy
Supremacy is the desire to assert power over other people or events. It’s also known as the A drive.
An employee with a low dominance drive is collaborative, cooperative, and seeks harmony. This person accepts business policies and is generally willing to accept the opinions of others. Employees with low dominance seek to be recognized as part of a team and avoid individual competition.
An employee with a high level of dominance drive is self-sufficient, forceful, and self-assured. This individual appreciates being challenged, is at ease with disagreement, and prefers autonomy in problem-solving. Employees with high dominance seek individual recognition and can appear authoritarian at times.
2. Extraversion
Extraversion is the desire to interact with other individuals. It’s also known as the B drive.
An employee with a low extraversion drive takes time to trust others, cherishes seclusion, and requires opportunities to reflect. This person enjoys working with information and is analytical and creative. Employees with low extraversion prefer private recognition and can appear matter-of-fact at times.
An employee with a high extraversion drive readily connects with others, desires social acceptance, and seeks opportunities to influence others. This individual is outgoing, persuasive, lively, and enthusiastic. Employees with high extraversion like public praise and like to see visible evidence of their accomplishments.
3. Patience
Patience is the desire to be consistent and stable. It’s also known as the C drive.
An employee with a low patience drive need variety, freedom from repetition, and the ability to handle several priorities. This individual is adaptable to change, can manage several priorities, and works at a faster-than-average rate. Employees with low patience may be perceived as intense, restless, irritable, or brisk.
An employee with a high level of patience desire a stable work environment and the chance to work at a consistent pace. This individual need freedom from continuously shifting priorities and is patient, quiet, and serene in general. Employees with a high level of patience tend to build long-term relationships and like being recognized for their dedication.
4. Formality
Formality is the desire to follow rules and structures. It’s also known as the D drive.
A formality-driven employee need freedom from strict structure as well as freedom from rules and regulations. This individual is tolerant of ambiguity, enjoys spontaneity, and prefers to transfer specifics to others. Employees with a low level of formality are adaptable, flexible, and informal.
A formality-driven employee need clarity of expectations as well as time to build competence. This person regards himself or herself as a subject area expert and hence requires error-free operation. Employees with a high level of formality are meticulous, thorough, and disciplined, and they wish to be acknowledged for their breadth of knowledge.
Understanding Workplace Habits Via Reading Behavioral Patterns
Everyone possesses some combination of all four critical factors. When a person takes the PI Behavioral Assessment, the results are transformed into a behavioral pattern with three sigmas on either side that centers around a midpoint.
If a component is to the left of the middle, the individual has a low level of that factor. If a factor falls to the right of the midway, the person has a lot of it.
The individual in the pattern below has high dominance (A), high extraversion (B), low patience (C), and low formality (D).
The further a component is away from the middle, the more pronounced those workplace behaviors will be. Consider it like turning up the volume on your stereo. A person with a dominance drive of one sigma is moderately aggressive, whereas a person with a dominance drive of three sigmas is extremely assertive. While the first individual appears to be independent, driven, and autonomous, the second appears to be aggressive, authoritarian, and challenging.
Factor combinations, or how different drives interact, are tremendously essential. The greater the difference between the two components, the stronger the behavior. The above pattern shows that there are three sigmas separating A and D. (this is a pretty wide spread). The factor combination “A over D” indicates how comfortable a person is with taking risks. If a person’s A (dominance) factor is greater than his or her D (formality) factor, that individual is risk-taking. If, on the other hand, the candidate’s D is higher than his or her A, that person is risk-averse.
Why Does Knowing Workplace Behaviour Matter To Your Success?
Understanding factor combinations might help you identify individuals who are a good fit for an open position. If you need to recruit a sales BDR, for example, you’d opt for applicants with A over D because salespeople must be comfortable with risk.
Poor job fit is one of the four variables that undermine employee engagement and productivity. Poor job fit occurs when people are placed in roles for which they are not natively wired. You can reduce bad hires and churn by taking the time to learn what makes an applicant tick—and what type of workplace environment and role they’d be most successful in.
Poor management fit is another reason why good employees leave. When managers lack the tools necessary to manage employees in a way that drives them to the top of their game, this results in poor manager fit. When managers have access to behavioral tools, they can use the data insights to adjust their management style to each direct report.
Case Study: Google’s Behavioural Standards
When Google Inc. topped the list of the most popular firms in the world, it could no longer handle the influx of applications from thousands of job seekers from all over the world. And, because Google strives to hire only the best people who suit the firm’s organizational culture and standards, the company began considering methods to improve its recruitment and selection process for potential employees.
Google Inc disclosed its non-traditional, extremely innovative, and unconventional strategy to selecting and hiring personnel in a 2007 piece published in the New York Times. Initially, Google sought the assistance of its highly qualified and professional technological workers in order to create ways to quickly look through and assess the millions of applications held in its recruitment database.
Google’s Recruitment and Selection Methodology
The management of Google Inc also opted to focus on the particular behavioral features and personalities that distinguish Google employees from employees of other well-known organizations. It moved its emphasis from academic credentials and technical experiences to the applicant’s personality, creativity, leadership abilities, inventive and non-conventional ways of thinking, and total global exposure. Academic credentials and extensive professional experience were only the company’s second objectives in selecting the best candidates for any open vacancies.
Since then, Google Inc has become known not only for the outstanding and “luxurious” job compensation and benefits packages it provides to its employees, but also for employing some of the most powerful recruitment assessment tools capable of selecting the best employees in the world who meet Google’s standards.
Exercise 4.11: Manager or Leader?
Project Studies
Project Study (Part 1) – Customer Service
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 2) – E-Business
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 3) – Finance
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 4) – Globalization
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 5) – Human Resources
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 6) – Information Technology
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 7) – Legal
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 8) – Management
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 9) – Marketing
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 10) – Production
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 11) – Logistics
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 12) – Education
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Behaviors and ROE process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 6 parts:
01. Understanding Failure
02. Embracing Behavioral Norms
03. Setting Behavioral Norms
04. Living the Behavioral Norms
05. Debrief to Win Core Values
-5.1 Understanding Vulnerability
-5.2 Understanding Collaboration
-5.3 Understanding Empathy
-5.4 Understanding Self-Awareness
-5.5 Understanding Humility
-5.6 Understanding Ownership
06. Measuring Behaviors
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Program Benefits
Production
- Work measurement
- Labor efficiency
- Constraints management
- Workload balance
- Methods standardization
- Manufacturing reporting
- Changeover completion
- Personnel assignment
- Cost reduction
- Capacity utilization
Operations
- Interactive research
- Project execution
- Quality management
- Continuous improvement
- Performance analysis
- Cost effective
- Time effective
- Process improvement
- Performance improvement
- Process decentralization
Human Resources
- Improve engagement
- Improve retention
- Mitigate burnout
- Foster wellbeing
- Human flourishing
- Inclusive environment
- Recover morale
- Inspire workforce
- Reduce absenteeism
- Employee satisfaction
Client Telephone Conference (CTC)
If you have any questions or if you would like to arrange a Client Telephone Conference (CTC) to discuss this particular Unique Consulting Service Proposition (UCSP) in more detail, please CLICK HERE.