Central to highly functioning teams is team members and leaders who make themselves available to help others. A culture of giving is an important one to generate for staff to thrive. As a team leader, you need to develop your capabilities to mentor, coach and nurture your staff, giving them the support and clarification they need, ideally before they even need to ask for it. For effective collaboration, staff need to be able to share knowledge and be of service to their colleagues wherever...

So you’ve got a rock in the pit of your stomach. You know what needs to be done and it can’t be avoided any longer, for everyone’s sake. But how are you going to get through this?

It’s time to let someone go. But how do you do it with empathy and compassion? How do you let someone go with their dignity intact and without destroying the motivation to seek out new opportunities, to grow and learn and find the company fit that is right for them?

How are you...

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you, your kids or grandkids would have grown up with the movies, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Inside Out and The Incredibles.

The studio behind all these hits, Pixar, has been heralded as a game changer in animation and in business, under the fierce leadership of now retired co-founder, Ed Catmull. Since Toy Story was released in 1995, Pixar has produced 23 feature films, won 20 Academy Awards and 9 Golden Globe awards.  Not only...

A study by Businessolver concluded that one out of three people would switch jobs for a more empathetic company. 40% would work longer hours for a more empathetic employer and a whopping 60% would even take a pay cut to be in a workplace wi greater empathy!

Employees value compassionate workplaces. 

The study clearly demonstrated that an empathetic workplace directly affects employees’ productivity, engagement, motivation and retention.

It’s hard to...

Studies have shown that psychological safety is the most important factor in building effective teams. A team that has a high level of psychological safety is one in which team members feel safe to speak up, to admit their mistakes, or take a risk.

One of the biggest challenges most teams face is having trust in each other and their leaders. Trust allows for open communication and creates an environment where team members have confidence that they will be supported by...

Collaborative activity has increased significantly in the past two decades. Teams are an essential unit within an organization as well as how we function socially. 

Given the proliferation of teamwork, in 2012 Google took on the task of researching how to optimize teams. They set out to determine what factors determined an effective team and how they could improve the way people work together.

They undertook a study they named Aristotle - in honor of...

One of the greatest challenges leaders can face is something they often don’t even realize is a problem. What happens is that leaders often have a pretty clear picture of what needs to happen in their head-who’s doing what and why. The problem is that just because it’s clear in their head, leaders might not realize things aren’t as clear for their staff. It’s only human for us to tend to assume that something that’s clear for us is just as clear for others....

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by an impossible workload of urgent tasks, you might feel like it’s time to find a new job! Or it could just be that you need greater clarity to identify where you really need to focus your efforts. 

When you’re unclear about your role and responsibilities, it’s easy to be distracted by lower priority work. Or it may be that you’re being burdened with tasks that aren’t really aligned with your role. If so,...

How to build psychological safety on your team

‘There’s no team without trust’ Paul Santagata, Head of Industry, Google. Quote via HBR

When it comes to team performance, Google discovered that there’s a common denominator across top performing teams. Google undertook a two year comprehensive study on teams which revealed that psychological safety is key for performance. 

Psychological safety is about creating a culture where team members don’t...

Whether you want to go remote or not, it’s becoming increasingly likely that someday you will. What might have been a temporary, ad hoc situation may become more permanent. If you’re not used to managing a remote team, you might worry-

• How do I keep up morale and productivity?
• What’s the best way to communicate?
• How can I support my team when I’m not with them?

We can learn from professionals who have been working remotely long before the pandemic hit. If you can...