None of us is as smart as all of us—take this quiz and see for yourself

Here’s an exercise from a team building class I attended that I wanted to share with you. It uses questions from a Mensa quiz to illustrate the point that a team’s collective wisdom is always greater than any individual team member’s. To get started, see how many of these questions you can answer individually. According…

Got room on your team? Not if this person already has a seat

What’s one of the biggest barriers to people working together effectively? “The human ego,” according to Dr. Ken Blanchard, best-selling business author and co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies. As Blanchard explains, “When people get caught up in their ego, it erodes their effectiveness. That’s because the combination of false pride and self-doubt created by…

The Challenge of Working in Teams—Dealing with Conflict

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…

Don’t Leave Collaboration to Chance: 3 Strategies for Leaders

Collaboration is a hit-or-miss proposition (and mostly a miss) in today’s organizations, according to Dr. Eunice Parisi-Carew, a teams expert with The Ken Blanchard Companies. The result is a huge loss in productivity and potential as “pseudo-teams” struggle with tasks that could have been accomplished more successfully if the team members worked together more effectively.…

3 Steps for Improving Your Relationships at Work

Contrary to the “Don’t get personal at work” philosophy there is growing evidence that strong relationships at work are a key ingredient to high performance. In Why Relationships at Work Are So Important, best-selling author Susan Fowler, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies explains that “relatedness”—a feeling of connectedness and belonging—is one…