teamwork posts

The Secret to Aligning Teams for Fast Results

January 18th, 2010

People often say to me, Renée, you make teamwork look so easy—what’s your secret? Well, the quick answer is, it’s all in how you apply emotional intelligence.  When it comes to aligning teams to get the results and productivity you want, the fastest way to do that is to start with this simple team building exercise called the “check-in.” (Not seeing a video-screencast below? Click here)

Let me tell you a story about how the check-in works. I was working with a team last month, and they had this wonderful VP of Marketing. She walked into a meeting and the first thing she did was not dive into the agenda. Instead, she took a couple of minutes to share where she was at—and in detail. She talked about the four projects she was managing and how two had just derailed. In short, she did a check-in, and invited everyone else at the meeting to do one too. In less than 10 minutes, she had re-focused and aligned everyone around results.

Now if you think about it that rarely happens. Usually, meetings go something like this.

You call a meeting. As the team leader, you’re focused on the agenda—there’s a lot to get through. But in truth, your mind is all over the place. You’re thinking about the numbers, some client problem, a personnel issues, a business opportunity. You’re barely at the meeting—your mind is back at your computer or on the phone.

What if you took a moment to do a check-in, just like the VP of Marketing did in our example?

What if, starting with you, the team leader, you went around the table and gave everyone a chance to dump all the data and details in their heads? Each person would get a couple of minutes to talk about what’s going on for them right now. Everyone else would just listen.

That’s the check in. It’s simple and fast and it works. Give people a chance to get the swirl out of their heads and amazing things start to happen. People shift from being preoccupied by their internal agendas to connecting with each another. They develop empathy as they hear what other people are going through. They get aligned and get results.

The check-in is a great example of applied Emotional Intelligence. What it’s really doing is raising everyone’s self-awareness, and in doing that, creating connection and alignment.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes. The next time you call a meeting, start with the check-in. Before you jump into the agenda, give yourself and your team a chance to dump out all the distracting stuff first. You’ll be amazed at how easy and quickly you get full engagement, and how that kind of focus can make productivity soar.

Interested in more on developing emotional intelligence within your team?

Emotional Intelligence and Teamwork

January 14th, 2010

Teamwork. You either love or you hate it. And for good reason. Effective teamwork requires a lot of emotional intelligence.

I’m thinking the folks over at Scotiabank have emotional intelligence in spades. They’ve launched a new initiative called “one team, one goal.” Here’s the amazing part: they have 69,000 team members, spread across 50 countries.

How are they going to find the glue that unifies all these different employees to get results? By putting emotional intelligence to work. Here’s what that means. An important principle in emotional intelligence is starting with what matters.

Scotiabank focused on finding a solution to connect people so that they would generate results they needed. They sat down as a leadership team and thought, Hey! We’ve got a lot of members, in a lot of different places, a lot of data, and we need to get one core result. What’s the glue? What’s going to hold the team together? What’s going to align all of the data and the people?

Applying the power of Emotional Intelligence, they got to the idea of developing a mentoring program in which top-tier level executives would nurture and teach second-tier executives. That became their glue and goal:  Develop new leaders.

Then it gets really exciting.

They started to think about this glue as a conversation about Scotiabank’s values, Scotiabank’s skills, and Scotiabank’s culture. They started teaching all that to this group of people, and it led to some robust conversations about problem solving.

Next thing you know this magical thing starts happening: the human element kicks in. People get electrified by ideas. They engage and connect. They solve problems and get results.

That’s emotional intelligence in action. You find the glue that will align people and data. For Scotiabank it was developing leadership through mentoring. For your team, it could be something different.

It’s interesting to note that Scotiabank is the only Canadian company to make the list of The Global Top Companies for Leaders. I’m guessing emotional intelligence has something to do with that. What do you think? How can you use emotional intelligence in your team and organization? What’s your glue?

Get “Talent needs to be nurtured” Financial Post Article

Don’t Throw Your Junk on My Desk

September 29th, 2009

“If I send you an email, do not acknowledge its receipt with a ‘thank-you’, ‘got it’ or ‘done’ response – don’t bother” said my new client,  in our first face to face meeting. At first, her words seemed brash, but later made complete sense.

She, a VP at a global organization, continued “Recognize, I interact with a large volume of email each day. I will not respond to your emails unless, I don’t agree with the contents”

Not only had she clearly articulated her expectations and norms of working together, but she had taught me to not throw junk on her desk.

Email management has become a source of frustration and angst that contributes to team dysfunction and decreased results.

As business leaders, we can greatly improve team productivity by changing our consumption and production of action, information and junk related emails…and teaching our teams to do the same.

Here’s how:
Consider all emails that flowed into your inbox within the last 24 hours.

1. What percentage required your action?
2. What percentage required that you stay informed? (eg. actions which you support)
3. What percentage was junk? (not junk mail that would get stuck in the junk filter but junk-mail created by your colleagues)

Now consider all the emails you sent yesterday.

1. What percentage requested action?
2. What percentage outlined required supportive, informed, knowledge and/or resource based actions?
3. What percentage of your sent emails were junk? (e.g. didn’t fall in #1 or #2. Be honest!).

Just as my new client broached the topic with me. I encourage you to do the same with your teams, and practice hitting the ‘delete’ key before throwing junk on other people’s desks. I can personally attest to this strategy – it works!