Managing and working on teams the procedures being used must be known, shared and understood. What are often seen as ‘personality conflicts’ are usually just people with unknown procedures on how to accomplish the work.

Decision Making is a common procedure that is lacking from teams. In order for the decision to be made all the people on the team must know;

The Type of Meeting They are Attending:

• Informational: Manager just shares information with the team. Little to no need for conversation or feedback. For example – Budget Numbers, Profit and Loss, Executive and Board decisions.
• Consultative: A decision has to be made and ultimately the Manager will make the decision. The team is called together to discuss and share perspectives, beliefs, evidence, pros / cons, and openly discuss what they feel is best. BUT the manager will make the final decision.
• Team Problem Solving: A problem exist and the team must make a decision. This is where consensus and other group decision making procedures are used i.e. voting, polling, multi-voting, consensus. The team will decide what to do based upon the discussion and feedback from other team members.

Who Should be at the Decision Making Meeting

Often the wrong people and too many people are in the meeting. Being thoughtful about the type of meeting, and the decision to be made…will force you to think about who really has to be there. It is a waste of everyone’s time to call people into a Decision Making meeting that should not be there. Consider;

• The decision to be made
• The type of meeting
• How much time will be allotted
• When the final project and solution must be implemented
• Who has the proper and necessary context, knowledge and ability to add to the decision
• Do they really need to be there?

The Procedure / Method for Making the Decision

The meeting agenda should include the method for making the decision that will be utilized.

Also in the beginning of the Decision Making meeting stating;

• The type of meeting
• Why the people who are at the meeting are at the meeting, why are these people and not some other people are in the meeting?
• The procedure / method that will be used for making the decision

Teams will work together and people will continue to be accountable for the outcomes when they know the roles and procedures they are working in, and how decisions will be made. A team can be de-railed when someone believes that a decision will be made by consensus, only to realize they just wasted 2 hours to find out that the Manager planned on being Consultative and ultimately deciding.

LET PEOPLE KNOW the Type of Meeting, Why they are there, and the Procedure / Method that will be used for making the decision and great work will be accomplished.

What do you think?

How do you decide how team decisions get made? Do you have any examples of good share decision making procedures? 

michael cardus is create-learning

Below are some of the flip chart notes, from the section on the Team Performance Model.

Overview of this section – 7 Steps to Team Performance

• Explore the creation and sustainment of High Performance teams.
• Co-Create Solution Focused questions and methods for advancement of each step.
• Leave with a working model and application to your work and team lives.

Lessons Learned from this section – 7 Steps to Team Performance

• Knowledge of how to put this model into existing teams to improve effectiveness of people on the team.
• A series of question and tactics that can be used to move a stuck-team into motion and success.
• Examples and ways to implement this system into your organization, teams and individual contributors.

To learn more about this program and others like it…Click Here

Click on any of the photos to enlarge

michael cardus is create-learning

• click on the image to enlarge

Finding cooperation and determining how to make use of your team, management, resources, etc… is a constant task that we all face in our work.

Anything can be useful…if (in your context of work) you find things that are not useful then STOP DOING IT! and determine what is needed for it to be useful.

Once that step is achieved Plan:Do:Check:Act…find what worked do more of that.

Stop what did not work; Or determine what is needed for it to be useful, and repeat…

What do you think?

Is this model above useful? If so how? If not…what would make it useful?

michael cardus is create-learning

Network in Aging of Western New York, Inc.

Contacted by my friend Nancy Weil to lead a team building workshop for a group that she is a part of, The Network in Aging of WNY.

Mission

To help our members enhance their efforts to improve the quality of life for older persons and their families by providing them with opportunities for resource exchange, professional development, and stimulation of interdisciplinary collaboration.

outcomes from the Team Building Time:

• Increased trust and membership communication
• People got to know and learn from each other in an enjoyable environment
• Increased alignment of mission, vision and personal perceptions of the agencies mission and vision as it applies to the individual members, and the community at large.
• Created a shared understanding strengths and abilities of the people on the team.
• Awareness of the team and personal preference style for communication and information sharing.
• Take-Away information on improving their own work and Team performance.

Jeff Reed from Mount Calvary Cemetery Group was the contact person, and wrote this great testimonial about our time together. 

“My heart stopped pounding once Michael began to speak. Coordinating a team-building workshop for thirty people is stressful enough. Add to the mix that the thirty people attending are not co-workers or close personal friends, they are members of an organization you belong to and you are hosting the monthly event.

The stress started at our first meeting when we began to entertain the thought of a structured team-building program. Will people come? Might they be intimidated with the topic? Will they think, “Great another boring session of what not to do?” Will they even participate? We even thought of running the team building session on our own until one of my employees said she heard Michael Cardus speak at a retreat she attended and “he was amazing”.

Michael was engaging right from the start, he easily shifted us into groups where we did not know one another. Instead of telling us why team building was so important he walked us through an exercise that quickly opened our eyes as to how much we have in common as individuals.

A team was formed through our common bonds. No one was singled out or put into an uneasy position you could feel the positive energy within the room.

After a short break we returned to our tables only to find a black bag positioned in the center of the table. This test of connecting the varied lengths of plastic pipe and connecters made us one. As a group we had to work together, think through every suggestion that was made to complete the task and be flexible enough to change gears mid-stream when our best laid plan was going to fail us. While only one group completed the task, we observed and learned that there truly is strength in numbers.

The time we set aside for Michael’s program flew by, the bonding in the room generated by our interaction was infectious and the noise level kept rising as we moved forward with our assigned tasks.

We all walked away with a better understanding of what a “team” can be, how important communication is between people, and realized when pursuing a common cause or goal, having teammates to lean on makes the task at hand achievable.

The time spent with Michael was invaluable!”

Interested in similar results for your Professional Group, Organization and team? Contact Mike…and be the reason people stay with your team.

michael cardus is create-learning

We all have, a one time in our careers, had a manger who has less capable or as capable as us. While having a manager who has the same capability may sound nice, it creates tension.

Tension between the Manager and you, because the manager knows that s/he cannot offer and add any value to your work.

Tension between You and the manager, because you feel constrained and frustrated that you can out-think, out-plan, and out-value your own manager plus they are getting paid more than you.

It’s rarer, unfortunately, to have a manager who is “Big Enough” to fill the role of being your manager. This manager is able to truly attract trust and unleash the team and your creativity and best work.

This happens because, the manager who is “Big Enough” is comfortable doing their own work (as a manager) and is able to let you do your best, by setting the proper context of the goals, and leaving you to do your work.  

The importance of having a “Big Enough” Manager

• Inspired by Elliott Jaques ‘Executive Leadership’

What do you think?

Have you had a manager who was “Big Enough” to fill the needed level of work? What about your work was improved because of this? Have you ever had a manager who was “Too Small” to fill the level of work? What about your work was impeded because of this? If you are a manager…how do you know that you have the necessary Managerial-Competence to be “Big Enough”?

People join companies, and leave managers…

Be the reason people stay with your company

Contact Mike today to develop, recruit or train managers that are “Big Enough” to add value to your Organization, and work with each other to move the company and people to achieve their potential.

michael cardus is create-learning

image by Mohd Khomaini Bin Mohd Sidik

I have been using this video is my Lean-Leadership and Managerial-Leadership consulting and trainings.

For people who have seen the original Monkey Business video, they know to look for the monkey BUT, as this video illustrates, even when you know what to look for you miss other things that are happening in front of your face.

Using this video to illustrate two concepts;

• The need and use of Gemba: solving problems in the location of the problem by the people who have first hand experience with the problem.
• The systemic nature of Organizations and team: By changing one thing other parts of the system/process are changed that we may not notice.

On to the Inquiry:

What are you looking at?

• What areas of focus are needed to solve this?
• While we are focusing on this area…what other areas are being ignored?
• Have we spoken to the people who are closest to what we perceive as the problem? What solutions have they tried and they are using?
• I am sure you have graphs, data, and fancy spreadsheets – what does all that mean in concrete examples?
• What Gorilla’s are you currently looking for?

What other ways could you use this video? Please share some ideas and stories.

michael cardus is create-learning