Many believe loneliness and isolation at work is not a business problem, but research continually shows that it is. Do not let team member loneliness and isolation be a hidden factor influencing performance and well-being on your teams and in your organization.
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High Performance and Well-Being: Enter The Loose Cannon- Destructive to Both
Ahhhh, the loose cannon in the workplace. In our experiences and research, we have seen that almost every work team across the spectrum of businesses, industries, and professions has at least one if not more. The Wall Street Journal reports that 98% of workers experience incivility on the job, with 50% reporting they engage in rude exchanges at least weekly. This behavior affects everyone around them causing negative emotions to ripple through teams everywhere diminishing productivity and job performance. This is the work of the loose cannon.
Continue ReadingHigh Performance Leadership: 3 signs that a star performer is on the path to burnout
How does a high-performing individual in a team experience full-blown job burnout? In the majority of cases, there are indicators that can be observed early enough to reverse the trend.
Consider this scenario. It is one of many that cause leaders and teams to burn out.
Pat, a star performer, has been crushing it at work, a real force multiplier on her team, who raises the bar for everyone she works with by balancing the proper amount of challenge and support for each team member, pushing them to do better. She has been a key driver in her department’s performance and has been identified to supervise a new project with new levels of responsibility. Rather than invest in development and prepare her for her new duties by providing management training, her boss decides she should start her new role immediately. And so she does. No one notices that she is barely surviving and not thriving as she transforms from a very effective individual contributor to an ineffective manager.
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon situation. It is a regular occurrence for organizations to transition new leaders into leadership positions without prior training. The Center for Creative Leadership reports that almost 60% of new managers report not receiving leadership development training prior to them assuming their new position.
What happens next is critical. And if unnoticed can lead to the end of stardom and have ripple effects across the team and organization. A wise manager who views their department as a multi-team system will look for signs of emerging behavior, such as burnout on a team, and then take action to remedy it before it spreads.
Continue ReadingHow Can Whole Brain Thinking Improve Team Performance?
When teams struggle to communicate, it influences the quality of collaboration. It can create anxiety in the team, which becomes a barrier to connection and team learning, sapping the team’s energy and impacting performance. Thriving teams are fueled by human energy and learning, not performance. High performance is an outcome that results from solid team bonds, connections, and team learning.
A critical task in any organization is processing and sharing information to gain insights, learn, adapt, and innovate to create and maintain a competitive advantage in their respective field or industry. Everyone, not just the team leader, has a perspective to share, and when done in a team learning environment, those perspectives can lead to valuable insights and ideas.
When working with teams to improve dynamics, we use the Neethling Brain Instrument (NBI) to improve communication, collaboration, and connection, which influences a team’s ability to learn. The assessment and team activities we do in conjunction identify underlying causes creating the barriers the team is facing and surface the dysfunctional patterns that are holding the team back.
The NBI measures an individual team member’s unique thinking preferences or cognitive style. It influences how people lead, communicate, negotiate, innovate, and make individual, team, and organizational decisions.
Continue ReadingWhat is a Thriving Team?
We often get asked, “What is a thriving team, and why does it matter?” It is a great question. We will go into detail below but think about it this way – improved efficiency, employee experience, productivity, and performance follow thriving. If your teams are thriving at work, that is a competitive business advantage which means better business outcomes for your organization. The improved employee experience benefits your organization by keeping turnover costs lower and serves to attract talent, which supports talent acquisition and recruiting managers in their roles. Thriving is an outcome and employee experience is how your teams and organization will get there.
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