Want a more purposeful, aligned, and engaged organization? “Make sure managers and direct reports are taking a collaborative approach to performance,” says Susan Fowler, senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies and coauthor of the company’s Self Leadership training program. “It starts with agreed-upon goals,” Fowler continues. “In my early days as a consultant,…
Some people carry an extraordinary share of the load at work. You know them—people who seem to be on everyone’s go-to list. Sometimes it’s an IT resource. Sometimes it’s a project manager. Sometimes it’s the person who has the clout or the drive to get things done. Often, 20 to 35 percent of value-added collaborations…
I recently had an opportunity to sit in on a webinar conducted by Ken Blanchard, Eunice Parisi-Carew, and Jane Ripley, coauthors of the new book Collaboration Begins with You: Be a Silo Buster. As they talked about the book, the three authors shared five key ingredients for creating a collaborative culture on a team, department,…
In her consulting work with organizations, teams expert Eunice Parisi-Carew finds that organizations sometimes confuse collaboration with simply getting along or being polite. That’s a common mistake—and one of the most difficult to address. “Collaboration is often hardest within polite groups of people because they don’t tend to express differences openly,” explains Parisi-Carew. “True collaboration…
Ken Blanchard knows a thing or two about collaboration. After all, he’s written successful business books with over 60 different coauthors. In a new article for Chief Learning Officer, Ken shares five keys for successful collaboration from his latest book, Collaboration Begins with You, which is being released on October 12. Together with coauthors Eunice…
Differences are inevitable when passionate people work together. Eventually, after a team gets through an initial orientation with a new task, members usually come to the realization that working together to accomplish a common goal is tough work. This occurs in the “dissatisfaction” stage of team development when the team recognizes the discrepancy between what…
“It all depends on who you’re working with.” That was the feedback from team members to a recent survey about the state of collaboration within our department. The feedback was consistent that collaboration was…well…inconsistent. It all depends on who you’re working with. In all organizations you’ll hear people complain about the difficulty of working with…
Have you ever been at a meeting and noticed that more people were on their cell phones, laptops, or tablets than were paying attention? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. People are getting good at holding their devices just below table top, so all you see is the top of their heads. But this isn’t a…
Whether it is caused by flooding in Alberta, snowstorms in Washington D.C., or fires in California, the need for clear continuity of operations plans (COOP) has brought renewed emphasis on telework and virtual working. Unfortunately, too many organizations jump into telework without a clear understanding of what is necessary for a successful telecommuting initiative. Here…
Research in the fields of social, positive, and industrial/organizational psychology has repeatedly found that employees thrive best in work environments that allow them to think for themselves, and to construct and implement decisions for one course of action or another based on their own thinking and volition. The research is also clear that we suffer…