What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team So Rozovsky started looking for other groups she could join. A classmate mentioned that some students were putting together teams for ‘‘case competitions,’’ contests in which participants proposed solutions to real-world business problems that were evaluated by judges, who awarded trophies and cash. The competitions were voluntary, but the work wasn’t all that different from what Rozovsky did with her study group: conducting lots of research and financial analyses, writing reports and giving presentations. The members of her case-competition team had a variety of professional experiences: Army officer, researcher at a think tank, director of a health-education nonprofit organization and consultant to a refugee program. One of her favorite competitions asked teams to come up with a new business to replace a student-run snack store on Yale’s campus. Rozovsky’s study group dissolved in her second semester (it was up to the students whether they wanted to continue). Photo
What Does Your Body Language Say About You? How To Read Signs and Recognize Gestures - Jinxi Boo - Jinxi Boo Art by LaetitziaAs we all know, communication is essential in society. Advancements in technology have transformed the way that we correspond with others in the modern world. Because of the constant buzz in our technological world, it's easy to forget how important communicating face-to-face is. Body language is truly a language of its own. 10% from what the person actually says40% from the tone and speed of voice50% is from their body language. Lowering one's head can signal a lack of confidence. Pushing back one's shoulders can demonstrate power and courageOpen arms means one is comfortable with being approached and willing to talk/communicate The lowering of the eyes can convey fear, guilt or submissionLowered eyebrows and squinted eyes illustrate an attempt at understanding what is being said or going onA lack of confidence or apprehensiveness can be displayed when you don't look another person in the eyesOne tends to blink more often if nervous or trying to evaluate someone else
13 Ways to Encourage Conflict at Work Have you sabotaged your team’s results by playing peace-keeper? While no one wants to spend their time in a hostile work environment, a certain amount of conflict is healthy. It’s the friction that creates the fire. If you give your people permission to disagree respectfully, they’ll come to better solutions, solve more problems, and spot more gaps than they would if playing nice was their highest priority. Here are 13 ways to encourage healthy conflict at work. All change involves some pain. So ditch the peace-keeper mentality and avoid stagnation by encouraging healthy conflict.
Virtual Collaboration: The Skills Needed to Collaborate in a Virtual Environment Keywords: Virtual collaboration, virtual collaboration skills, virtual collaboration barriers. Introduction Virtual Collaboration Teams (VCTs), generally defined, are groups of individuals, geographically dispersed, that work together using collaborative technology (e.g. chat rooms, e-mail, instant messaging, video conferencing, etc.) in order to accomplish organizational goals (Brake, 2006; Cottone, Pieti, Schiavinato, Soru, Martinelli, Varotto, & Mantovani, 2009; Fruchter, Bosch-Sijtsema, & Ruohomaki, 2010; Suduc, Bizoi, & Filip, 2009; and Zhang, Tremaine, Egan, Milewski, O’Sullivan, & Fjermestad, 2009). Because many organizations use VCTs to accomplish organizational goals, the author of this paper argues that individuals need to have relationship building, communication, collaboration, and technological skills, in order to succeed in VCTs. Relationship Building Skills Trust Familiarity Environment and Context Diversity Communication Skills Simple Language Ambiguity Knowledge Sharing
re:Work - The five keys to a successful Google team Pod. Work group. Committee. Autonomous collective. A group of us in Google’s People Operations (what we call HR) set out to answer this question using data and rigorous analysis: What makes a Google team effective? Over two years we conducted 200+ interviews with Googlers (our employees) and looked at more than 250 attributes of 180+ active Google teams. We were dead wrong. We learned that there are five key dynamics that set successful teams apart from other teams at Google: Psychological safety: Can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed? If you answered “yes” to the five questions above, congrats! Psychological safety was far and away the most important of the five dynamics we found -- it’s the underpinning of the other four. Turns out, we’re all reluctant to engage in behaviors that could negatively influence how others perceive our competence, awareness, and positivity. Googlers love data.
If You Can’t Empathize with Your Employees, You’d Better Learn To Empathy—the ability to read and understand other’s emotions, needs, and thoughts—is one of the core competencies of emotional intelligence and a critical leadership skill. It is what allows us to influence, inspire, and help people achieve their dreams and goals. Empathy enables us to connect with others in a real and meaningful way, which in turn makes us happier—and more effective—at work. Many people mistakenly believe that empathy—like other emotional intelligence competencies—is something you’re born with or not. But it’s not that simple. In fact, we all have the capacity for empathy. We all know, though, that some people pick up clues well and others are clueless. He called me up—out of the blue—and said he needed my help developing his emotional intelligence. To start with, this smart leader discovered, Miguel’s financial wizardry was short lived. Before this all came to light, Miguel had been identified as a potential successor to the CEO. But it wasn’t over. Miguel was shocked.
✔ Effective Communication in a Team - part 1: my 5 general rules Note: This article is based on my Editor’s note from the 11th issue of the Polish edition of the Productive! Magazine. Being extremely happy with the changes that we've implemented by the end of last year in the Nozbe team, I often think that there are still things that can be improved. For example... communication. Between individual departments (e.g. customer service - programmers), between heads of departments and, of course, between me and each of my employees. It's all about effective communication Communication within an organization is a tool that boosts productivity. It's also the best "weapon" in the hands of each leader. Based on my own experience of managing a growing team, recruiting new people, working with clients and business partners, I've created a list of rules that may help improve in-company communication. General rules of effective communication 1. If you tend to make mistakes in emails and you're using Gmail, set the delay send option. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Ways to Improve Your Interpersonal Skills Advertisements Interpersonal communication is inescapable. Indeed, it is impossible to ‘not communicate’. Humans are social creatures and every public act is an attempt at communication. Career-wise, your skill and talent might not always be enough to take you places. Simply put, you may be the best employee – hard-working and one who knows his job like the back of his hand – and yet you might miss that promotion if you’re not popular enough. Although certain people can just be born with this particular skill, others can acquire it over time. To help you develop and improve your interpersonal skills, here we present some time-tested tips. Identify your pain areas Awareness is the first step towards learning. Get over yourself The ego can well be the most debilitating factor as far as your social life is concerned. Understanding is the key Often others may do things that hurt you or are particularly debilitating for your career. Be a good listener Everybody loves a good listener!
✔ Effective Communication in a Team [part 2]: my 7 rules for improving interpersonal relations In my last article on communication I've discussed about my 5 general rules of communicating within a team. We talked about the importance of being prepared, of writing clearly, choosing the right communication channel... and also body language.. and even spicing it up with emoticons or memes. Now let's talk about the importance of building strong interpersonal relations with your team in order to communicate even better. As you know, my entire Nozbe team works remotely - we all work from home. That's why we decided to have an all-company meeting in person every 6 months. This is one of the moments we can build stronger relationships with each other and these help us communicate through tasks better throughout the year: Rules related to interpersonal relations 1. Effective communication has to respect any differences in terms of characters, mind-sets, abilities, etc. 2. ... or rather: their careful expression. At work, slip-ups, mistakes and conflicts can occur. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Challenge Two: | | The New Conversations InitiativeThe New Conversations Initiative SUMMARY (repeated from Introduction) This chapter in the The Seven Challenges Workbook describes the process of starting conversations by declaring your conversational intent and inviting the conscious consent of your prospective conversation partners. The basic idea is that you can help your conversation partners cooperate with you and reduce possible misunderstandings by starting important conversations with a stated invitation to join you in the specific kind of conversation you want to have. The more the conversation is going to mean to you, the more important it is for your conversation partner to understand the big picture. When you need to have a long, complex, or emotion-laden conversation with someone, it can make a GIANT difference if you briefly explain your conversational intention first and then invite their consent. Why explain? Many good communicators do this explaining intent/inviting consent without giving it any thought. “Hi, Steve. “Hello there, Mr. 11.
Google Finds That Successful Teams Are About Norms Not Just Smarts | Hunter Walk Which Google employees has made the biggest impact to the company over the past decade? Besides the familiar choices of Larry and Sundar, I’d nominate Google’s outgoing CPO Laszlo Bock. Under Laszlo’s direction Google’s hiring and management assumptions have been challenged by real data, resulting in transformative shifts such as *not* assuming college test scores are a predictor of success as a Googler. Another important question was “What makes a team successful (or not)?” It would make sense to start with some assumption that a team’s success is tied to its composition in some fixed way. ‘‘We looked at 180 teams from all over the company,’’ Dubey said. What did the research – called Project Aristotle – eventually discern? What interested the researchers most, however, was that teams that did well on one assignment usually did well on all the others. So what were the norms of successful teams? Update Like this: Like Loading...