The Most Productive Teams Have These 5 Dynamics

#5 – October 05, 2020

this week's favorite

It all started with an ambitious goal – to create a service in Human Resources to help leaders staff better project teams through people analytics and insights. What the research team learned was that it was less about individual characteristics and far more about team dynamics.

A question I get a lot is: what’s a big manager mistake you’ve made? I have so many answers to this question. I talk about times when I managed someone the way that I wanted support, instead of the way that they wanted support. I talk about terrible reorg decisions, and even MORE terrible reorg communications. I share examples of when I’ve given feedback poorly. I can go on and on.

A common career aspiration that I hear is "I want to be a manager". Management is often viewed as a quick path toward career growth through increased scope and responsibilities. But management is a whole lot more than that. It's about caring for your team, communicating openly, sharing a clear vision, establishing team culture, engaging with partners, and a whole lot more. One leader has summed it up to me as helping your team achieve their maximum potential.

A common worry for employers is that their remote employees might drift off, distance themselves from the rest of the team and destroy company culture. It's often a major reason why remote work is limited to a few "work from home" days instead of having fully remote employees. At times, this worry can turn out to be true, but what can a company do to prevent it from happening?

Managers and makers alike deal with a substantial amount of tasks every day. Between juggling projects, answering emails, grabbing a midday snack, and jumping in and out of video meetings, how can you decide which tasks to tackle first? How do you know which tasks each of your teammates are working on? How do you identify possible bottlenecks if a task is not completed on time?

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