This video addresses the importance of very deliberately focusing the team effort on what the greatest opportunity is – and how to determine that opportunity.

Please share your comments below!

Ed Oakley & the Enlightened Leadership team

Transcription
Hi, it’s Ed Oakley. In my last video, I discussed both the importance of developing and mastering your leadership skills – especially right now with all the changes and everything going on with the economy – and doing so as a team. If you haven’t seen that video, I encourage you to watch it – it might even be better if you watched that one first, as this video builds on the learnings of that first one. You’ll find the link just beneath the video.

Today, I want to talk about an important aspect of team-based learning that will make a big difference in your level of success. I want to talk about how to FOCUS your team-based learning to make sure it is practical and addressing your most important team issues and needs…

…not just short-term actions that might not contribute significantly to the long-term performance of the team and the real leadership skill development of the team members.

We know from experience that if a team works together on developing their team and it’s team members, with proper guidance, they can find effective solutions to whatever challenges they face. But what really are YOUR team’s 80-20 issues?

The Pareto principle says 80% of the impact will come from 20% of the effort, or said another way, 20% of your issues are causing 80% of your problems. But which ones are they?

By knowing those factors, including leadership factors, that are keeping your team from being a truly high-performing team, can you see how that knowledge would provide the perfect focus for learning and development, as well as building your team’s effectiveness.

Imagine the value to everyone if they were part of a team that TRANSFORMED from a mediocre team to a recognized high-performance team. Imagine the personal learning and development that would occur DURING the experience.

To develop your team and people, you need clear direction for your efforts, and just maybe, the best possible direction would be toward becoming a high-performance team.

Well, what would that look like, you might be asking yourself?

To really know OBJECTIVELY what that direction would look like, you need to be able to effectively and honestly assess your team for it’s strengths and limitations.

And wouldn’t it be enlightening and valuable to compare your team to recognized high performing teams, as well as to norms or averages or standards for hundreds of other teams?

This a very important aspect of team-based learning and development, so let me introduce an exciting new tool -

- our highly validated Team Excellence assessment that rates your team in 8 dimensions of excellence.

We are very excited about introducing this assessment into our team-based leadership and team development processes. Let me share some of its background.

My friend, Dr Carl Larson of the Univ of Denver, and Dr Frank LaFasto, identified 40 exceptional teams from all over the world and extensively interviewed all the team members.

Included on the list were a successful Mt Everest summit team, a famous Cardiac transplant team, a highly innovative product team, several championship women & men’s sports teams, extraordinary business teams, exceptional government teams, etc. – quite a variety – but ALL recognized as exceptionally performing teams.

In their extensive research, they determined 8 consistent dimensions of excellence that DISTINGUISHED those exceptional teams from other teams. These eight dimensions are:

Clear, Elevating Goal
Results-driven structure
Competent Team Members
Unified Commitment
Collaborative Climate
Standards of Excellence
External Support & Recognition
Effective Leadership

Bottom-line, if your team rates well above the mean in all these dimensions, you ARE a high-performing team!

The assessment itself has 46 questions and takes each team member  about 15 minutes to take. Our contribution to this was first obtaining rights to use it, but then putting the assessment ONLINE, so the individual inputs are completely confidential.

When it was done on paper, some people were a bit concerned about turning in their worksheet to someone in their own organization. We’ve solved that problem!

The research and validation work that Carl and Frank and their research team did was so extensive that they published two excellent books about it: first – TeamWork: What Must Go Right/What Can Go Wrong and 2nd – When Teams Work Best: 6,000 Team Members and Leaders Tell What It Takes to Succeed.

Those two books, expensive because they’re published by a textbook company, continue to be my all-time favorites for research-based, validated guidelines for building high-performing teams.

Do you see the value of knowing if your team rated itself average to high on most factors, but well below the mean on say Results-Driven Structure and Collaborative Climate.

You’d know exactly where to put your attention, wouldn’t  you – in fact where to put the TEAM’s attention. That would be your team’s 20% that would make the 80% difference.

Significant improvement in those two dimensions would make a major difference in your team’s overall performance. Along the way, your people, AND YOU, naturally grow and develop your leadership and team abilities through the experience of creating a high-performance team.

Here’s what happened with one of our clients:

A mid-sized manufacturing division of a huge company in the Pacific Northwest was losing money and facing an expiring union contract six months away. They were in a bit of trouble.

They were especially nervous about the union contract because negotiations had been so difficult for the last one.

By doing the Team Excellence assessment – back when it was a paper version, they were able to see their areas of strength, and the gaps that were most limiting their performance.

By focusing on the greatest opportunities for improvement through team-based learning, they became profitable again that same year and had the smoothest union contract negotiation in their 28-year history.

A key factor was their clarity of their strengths and their limiting factors in the eight dimensions of team excellence. It gave them clear focus goals for the learning and development work, which was totally team-based. It also gave them confidence that they already had a lot going for them.

So, as the team worked together to improve, using new leadership concepts, tools and perspectives to do so, they all experienced the value of the changes they were making as they were making them. Buy-in was high each step of the way, but never perfect – it never is.

Each one of those team members gained great clarity on how to solve performance issues, how to create a collaborative climate, how to create a results-driven structure, etc. In short, how to create and lead high-performing teams.

They not only learned it in our workshops, but experienced it in their work as a team. A lot of mastery was achieved in the process.

So, let’s summarize where we are so far.

In the first video about problems with leadership development approaches, we recognized the importance of developing your leadership skills – critical to your long-term success and security. Leaders are ALWAYS in demand- pretty much regardless of the economy.

We further realized that developing your leadership skills on your own is tough. Frankly, most people aren’t effective in doing it. You might learn a lot intellectually, book knowledge if you will, but making it real through implementation is quite challenging when we’re trying to do it solo.

However, developing your leadership skills and team effectiveness is much easier and even FUN if you work on it together as a whole team.

This approach completely changes the game, because you’re learning together, and have some common, unifying goals. In the process you’re taking advantage of a key truth: The Answers Are in the Room! – which happens to be the title of the second chapter in our latest book, Making Managers into Leaders: A Five-Step Framework for Breakthrough Results.

Your team does have the answers if you just know the right questions to ask. Ask the wrong questions, and you’ll make the situation worse.

Then we introduced the idea of assessing your team at the beginning of the learning process to provide valuable focus on your greatest areas of need. Focus on improving the greatest gaps and watch the team jump in it’s performance.

And it just occurs to me that you might want to have your team retake the Team Excellence assessment 12 months later to identify your specific successes and next steps in transforming your team and your people.

Let’s take a specific example of the Team Excellence assessment. Let’s pick Clear, Elevating Goal. That’s really important for a high-performing team, and you might have some questions like,…

“Yeah, but what if our goal is not really that elevating?”

Well, I want to address that, but first let’s look at the assessment questions around the Clear, Elevating Goal dimension.

Each of these questions is rated by team members as:

True
More true than false
More false than true
or False

The report then provides the average score for the team for each question on a scale of 1 to 4, as well as the mean score for hundreds of other teams who’ve taken the assessment.

Here are the questions for Clear, Elevating Goal:

1.  There is a clearly defined need – a goal to be achieved or a purpose to be served – which justifies the existence of our team.

2.  Our purpose is noble and worthwhile.

3.  Our goal represents an opportunity for an exceptional level of achievement.

4.  Our goal challenges individual limits and abilities.

5.  There are clear consequences connected with our team’s success or failure in achieving our goal.

6.  Our goal is compelling enough that I can derive a worthwhile sense of identity from it.

Now, aren’t those thought-provoking questions!

What do you think your team would say about them?

Just for kicks… let’s say you’re not so sure your team would say their purpose is particularly noble, or even worthwhile.

Then, I would say to you that you need to have your team change the goal or purpose so it IS noble and worthwhile.

For example, suppose your team is doing some relatively mundane work in an organization that keeps downsizing (excuse me – RIGHT-sizing) every few months.

Can you imagine that they might not be feeling that their work is all that important? I sure can.

So, what would be a clear, elevating goal for a team in that situation – that would be noble and worthwhile?

Well, how about a goal of being so measurably off-the-scale productive that you’re recognized as a high-performing team and the company would never imagine outsourcing or downsizing you!

Do you think that might be powerful in certain situations?

Here is the point I’m trying to make:

If you’re going to be a high-performing team, you must have a Clear, Elevating Goal. That’s one of the distinguishing factors of high-performing teams.

So, if that’s an issue for your team, it’s one of the 20-80 areas to address.

And can you even imagine the power of the process of your team coming up with what their REAL… Clear, Elevating Goal is? I mean one that they fully OWN? (and YES, we’ll teach you how to do that – it’s a key leadership skill).

What an opportunity — if and only if that happens to be a dimension where your team has a significant gap. It might not be that one. Your greatest gaps might be in some of the other 7 dimensions. But you need to have the information to make the greatest difference in your performance and your learning – both individually and team.

Now, I have a feeling that this is making pretty good sense to most of you watching this video (or reading the transcription). But I have to admit, I cheated a bit to figure that out.

See, we recently asked our subscribers to complete a survey about “What they would see as being the most important components of an outstanding team-based learning and development system?”

Well, 84.8% of the people said that it would be Important or Very Important to have QUOTE an online validated team assessment to identify your team’s strengths and gaps in 8 dimensions of team excellence. CLOSE QUOTE

Yeah, I did kinda cheat, but that was very validating for my own sense of the importance of the Team Excellence assessment.

So, you’ve probably figured out by now that if this Team Excellence assessment is so important to your team and leadership development, that it’s going to have to be part of any learning system with Enlightened Leadership’s name on it …

In summary, with the Team Excellence assessment, you’ll learn your team’s strengths and gaps based on the confidential input of all team members, including the team leader. The gaps are the opportunities to improve – to move closer and closer to a true high performance team. It provides the focus for the team, as well as individual learning and development.

So, we are moving closer and closer to a learning and development solution for enhancing the effectiveness of your whole team while developing the leadership skills of all team members in small chunks of time and for the investment of only one person’s training.

I think I’m starting to get nervous. That was a big statement. We better sharpen our pencils for the math.

Ok, that’s enough for now. In a few days we’ll release another video that adds one more important dimension to this whole discussion of what’s really important in effectively developing leadership skills and effective teams — and what’s missing in so many leadership development efforts.

Thanks for watching today, and feel free to share these videos with others.

So, how are you relating to all this? We appreciate your comments, and we WILL respond. Just find the comments section below.

You might also want to read the comments from the first video. Again, the link for the first video is below.

We’ll talk soon. Make it a great day!

It is also important that you begin to consider solutions for you and your organization. Feel free to share the video with your colleagues, and please leave your comments below:

Please share your perspectives below!

To the total health of you and your team,

Ed Oakley and the Enlightened Leadership team

TRANSCRIPTION
Hi it’s Ed Oakley. We’ve discovered some significant problems with leadership development that impact your ability to develop and grow leadership throughout your organization – something critical to your success. And, I’m excited to share with you over several brief videos the breakthroughs we’ve had in the process of dealing with those problems

You know that the soft skills side of your job, the people side, the leadership side, is very important to your success and your security in your career. You do know though that people who aren’t good at the people side are vulnerable. Their jobs are vulnerable. They are at risk in their roles.

The so-called “hard part of the job”, the “technical aspects,” the parts we’ve put most of our education and experience hours into, can more and more be outsourced. That’s bad news. The good news is that the leadership part can NOT be outsourced. And, it is in high demand. So the soft side, the leadership side is critical to ensuring your success in the future — more so than ever before. If you didn’t realize that, you probably wouldn’t be watching this video.

There’s a problem with that however. It is very challenging to learn and really implement leadership on your own. It’s difficult to read a book or go to a seminar or watch a webinar all on your own and be successful in actually implementing it.

Now, it’s not impossible. But it is challenging. Think about the many things you’ve learned intellectually, but have never actually implemented. There’s a lot you “KNOW,” but you haven’t actually mastered, because you haven’t done it. Knowing and doing are very different. Can you relate to that? A doctor who knows how to do a surgery, but has not actually done it yet, is not someone I want operating on me.

Let me share an interesting story around this. I was working with a major pharmaceutical company that had an internal two-week management development process. They sent quite a few people through this management development program, and I and EL was a key part of the training process.

They also sent a few select people to a $35,000 summer executive program at a major Eastern University. Once a number of executives had attended both the executive University program and the internal program where they learned together as teams, a facilitator went out and interviewed all the executives. He asked a question, “what has been the value of each of these two programs?”

The responses were very telling. Consistently, they said that the $35,000 University Summer executive program was a lot of fun, they met a lot of interesting people, and probably made some friends that will be lifetime friends. They also learned a lot about themselves. From a practical perspective, however, the internal team-oriented management development program was far more valuable and more effective. That was consistent. In those internal sessions, they learned a lot more about how to be more effective leaders, as well as team players.

See it is extremely challenging to go off on your own and learn to be a better leader. How many times have you taken something you’ve read about back to your team – because you thought it was a good idea — and the reception was like a deer in the headlights.

It is much easier, more effective, and far more fun to learn, develop and implement as a team. Because when you do it as a team, you’ve got the opportunity to focus on specific organizational objectives and goals. When you have everyone on the team aligned on accomplishing the same goals while they’re learning leadership abilities, and how to achieve those goals, it’s easy and fun to do. There’s a supportive group focused on the entire team’s success. And there’s far more accountability.

And that was the difference in the internal management development program. it was team-based.

Now having said this, if you can afford to bring us to your site and do a face-to-face seminar or workshop, then I suggest you stop watching this video, pick up the phone and call us, and make plans for doing that team and leadership development solution-oriented workshop.

However, if you’re resource limited, either time or money or both, keep watching because we have a solution for you that changes the game and makes our work — the work of enlightened leadership solutions — proven with some 50,000 people from 67 countries over the last 23 years, accessible to a whole new group of people, teams and organizations. We’re changing some old paradigms in the learning and development industry. Stay tuned!

Let me share an accidental example of this team-based learning in action. In this case, administrative management and executives of a major West Coast University were going through a year-long leadership development program led by our company. I personally facilitated one of the sessions on-site there at the University, and several people made comments that they were getting a lot of value out of the weekly videos that they were receiving from us as part of this year-long learning process. I was, of course, pleased, because I personally created a number of the videos. But I certainly wanted to know more. “How are you using the learning videos?” I asked.

Without exception, the people who went out of their way to acknowledge the value they were receiving from the weekly videos said it was because they were sharing the videos with their team and discussing the concepts in the video, including what made sense about it, how they could use it on their own teams, challenges, solutions, and especially how the ideas, concepts and tools could be useful in accomplishing their challenging goals.

Do you see what they were doing? They were creating their own team-based learning by taking advantage of our weekly video series , and it wasn’t part of the requirement of their learning process. The best managers just saw the opportunity and jumped all over it.

Think about what happens. When you focus on your own team goals and objectives, you’ve got the whole team working with you, and you hold each other accountable for accomplishing those objectives – while you’re all learning to be better leaders – and yes, leadership can and should come from anyone and everyone on the team – when it is appropriate for them to do so.

Now, when we talk about the idea of having your whole team involved in a learning and development environment, do you automatically think,”oh geez, the cost of learning just went up!” Did you think that? Well… you’d be wrong.

We, ELS, are completely changing the paradigm of pricing in learning and development – at a time when leadership development at all levels of organizations is so critical. Imagine developing your whole team and all it’s members for the price of training just one person. More on that in an upcoming video.

Ok, that’s enough for now. In the next video – coming in a few days – we don’t want to bombard you with too much – we’ll talk about another key aspect of developing your leadership skills that is very important for you to know and understand. I’m excited about the breakthrough this new piece represents.

Now, please do me a favor. Make any comments: positive comments, negative comments, or any questions, concerns, anything that’s on your mind about any of this, please make your comments below. I would love to see them.

We’ll talk again soon. Thanks for watching.

What are your thoughts about this? Please comment below.

The Enlightened Leadership Team

Technorati Tags: DIFFICULT TIMES, leading change, SOFT PART

I had some insights this weekend about the “Leading Change in Difficult Times” webinar series and who might NOT be interested.

Watch the 5:29 video to see where you fit.

It will tell you how to get OFF the list for additional info and how to learn more if you want!

Go HERE to sign up for more information about “Leading Change…”
Thanks for letting us know either way!Ed Oakley

Technorati Tags: leading change, webinar

Here is the 4th in our series of videos about Leading Change
in Difficult Times. We’re hope they’re providing great value.

This video focuses on the specific stage of Transition that
we call the Twilight Zone. Ed Oakley provides a couple of tips
for moving people through this stage. Enjoy!

Please let us know how this was helpful to you, as well as the
questions it raised! You can email us at change@enleadership.com,
or you can leave a comment below.

Our best to you as you guide your organization through successful
change!

The Enlightened Leadership Team

Technorati Tags: forward focus, leading change, RIGHT QUESTIONS, transition

Change, change and more change. Of course the real issue
is the psychological and emotional challenges that our people
go through during change.

This second video in our series starts to address this transition that people
(you, me, our employees, families, etc.) WILL go through.

Enjoy and see how you can value from the information.

Be sure to give us your comments below, or email us at change@enleadership.com.

To YOUR successful change efforts!

The Enlightened Leadership Team

Technorati Tags: completion, HARD PART, leading change, SOFT PART, transition

We’re ready to start sending you some free videos about “Leading Change in Difficult Times.”

The first video is called “7 Steps to Successful Change Initiatives.” This video will give you a bit of overview about how to address major change.

CRITICAL! Be sure to sign up so you’ll get the additional videos, as well.

ALSO! Notice that there is a download link for a handout below the video.

Enjoy!

The Enlightened Leadership Team

Change Management at Enlightened Leadership Solutions

Technorati Tags: BEHAVIOR, change-initiatives, leading change, STRATEGY, structure

The reality is that change, itself, is pretty quick and mechanical. We flip a switch and we’re now using a new system. We make an announcement, and someone is a new manager. We painfully announce a layoff, and it is done quickly. We completely reorganize our business. It takes some time to plan, but once it is announced, it is done quickly.

The change is not the issue. The issue is the psychological and emotional process that people ALWAYS go through in their transition from the way it used to be – with which they had become very comfortable – to the new way.

It’s the People part, the Soft part – that makes all the difference!

This transition process in people occurs EVEN IF the change is a really good thing. That has always baffled me, but it is true. Even if it is a very positive change in the long run, people still go through their own individualized psychological process – and every person does it at their own pace and in their own way.

The new way might be a different job, a different boss, a totally new process of work, a new computer system, a new benefit plan(or personal change such as a change in a relationship, a death of a loved one, even winning the lottery, etc) – it doesn’t matter what the change is.  The issue is not the change. The issue is the emotional turmoil, chaos and confusion we go through during the transition from the old to the new.

And that transition is NOT instantaneous.

As managers-leaders-owners, how well we manage these transitions will make all the difference in the impact of the change on our business.

Whole businesses have failed because of poorly executed transitions.

The GOOD NEWS is that a well-led transition can enhance your organization’s effectiveness and position you for success better than you’ve ever been.

Sometimes, change is inevitable. There is no choice.

How we make the transition is ALWAYS A CHOICE! And that choice makes all the difference as to whether the change creates miserable failure or exciting results.

Stay tuned for more on this topic. And share this with others in your organization and your friends. They’re all being impacted by change!

To getting your organization through change in a way that positions you for higher success!

Ed Oakley

Technorati Tags: CHANGE, emotional-process, SOFT PART, transition

Share your comments below!

The Enlightened Leadership Team

The content of these posts will include unedited transcriptions from a recent webinar addressing “How to Optimize Teams’ Effectiveness in Difficult Economic Times”.   The webinar contained questions from the attendees.  The questions are answered by  the following five management and leadership experts:

Jerry Houston, Carol Bergmann, A.J. Hiltenbrand, Ed Oakley and See Luan Foo.

The rest of this post contains an unedited transcription of one of the questions asked and answered during the webinar:
Ed: We are going to start out with reading the very first question that we received.

Okay, here’s the first question and this is from Shazad in Pakistan.  I going to read through the whole thing before one of our panelists take the lead.  “My concern will be how to convince your non-qualified, conservative, rigid but senior bosses on many things that need reform or change.  In Pakistan, there is opacity of informed and qualified leaders in almost all the business in public sector arenas.  We as junior managers find it very difficult to convince our pessimistic and non-professional bosses and how to take a lot of heartburn in dealing with the organizational development which is much needed in our scenario.”

Now, it’s from Shazad, who would like to take a stab or a lead on that?

A.J.: This is A. J.  I’ll take a shot at that.  Ed, can you tell me if he or she is on?

Ed: It’s a valid question.  Let’s see if I can answer it.  I’m not seeing it right away, so I guess no.

A.J.: Well, then I’d like to leave something on the recording for him.  I appreciate his question.  Basically, this is the same kind of question that we got when we had International Managers in some specifically from Pakistan and the far east in the leadership seminars that we had and after we had worked together for seven or eight days, so this question kind of came out around the fire place.  I commend this person for bringing it up publicly and so quickly.

Basically, we had some tools to use in the session and we said look, “You have to pick an easy issue.  You have to pick an issue that has no threat to them.  He is talking about his rigid senior managers.

Pick something that has very, very low threat and something where the two of you have an easy win together and then come in with the ideas that you’re going to try this as a test, non-threat and let me try something of low level here, risk to them and high potential win for you as a younger manager and then go from there.

You have to recognize that the boss has the power.  They want to believe it that they have the power and in that situation they definitely do.

So show a plan, stay close to the plan, and review the results with the boss and see if you can go from there.  Appreciate the question, those are my thoughts.

Ed: Alright, I’m going to throw and just toss in a little thought too.  I just noticed that Miriam is on the call and she actually works in the Dr. Shazad’s office, so welcome and good.  In fact we have a question from Miriam later too.

But anyway, the word that jumped out at me was the word “convince” that we as junior managers find it very difficult to convince our pessimistic and non-professional bosses.

That’s the issue, you’ll never convince them.  You’re going to have to work with them in a way and A.J.’s ideas were right on but you want to work with them in a way that you’re able to draw out of them what really needs to get done or have them feel really engaged and being part of the process and making them look good at the same time.

So going over, sitting down and going over the things, one on one, they’re going well and the organization and looking at their objectives what they’re really trying to accomplish in the organization having them realize that to the extent.

And if they’re not really clear, maybe they’re not very visionary then you may very well had to say “Well, you know, is it what you really trying to accomplish this?  Have I got that wrong or am I right about that?  Is this the vision you have?  This is what I’ve understood from you.

And you might see there the lights come on and say “Yeah, that’s what I want to do”.  And then say “Well, boy I’ve got an idea and what do you think would be the benefit of accomplishing them?  What he is going to do for our whole organization, for our team?  What he is going to do for you and me?  And you get them talking about that and then perhaps you got an idea that will help move.

Now, you’ve got to buy in for the results and now come up with an idea, an action plan for moving toward that.

So that’s all I add.  Okay, anybody else what to add to that before we move on to next question.

See Luan: I’m See Luan Foo from Singapore and I can resonate with Shazad’s question.  First of all he refers to [0:10:26] that is true in the Asia pacific region too.  Secondly, it is quite common to focus on the differences between the subordinates and the boss, that’s very common but I think if we have to convince our bosses, we need to look at what other areas of commonalities first.

In other words, we have to build bridges between us and our bosses instead of erecting walls which separate us.  So once we can find areas of commonalities then I think our chances of convincing our bosses are much better.  We increase the odds of success in that way, thank you.

Ed: Alright, thank you.

That was the end of one of the questions and answers in the webinar.  My next post will contain another question and the answers.  I plan to publish this series of posts every two days.

You can find more leadership ideas at my web site:

www.makingmanagersintoleaders.com

Best Regards,

Ed Oakley