Staying focused is tough. Studies show that even experienced meditators find it hard to maintain focus. And many of them meditate thinking of nothing. Imagine how tough it is to focus at work. Jokes aside, focus is a serious issue that equates into billions in lost productivity every year. And this is simple to understand.
Team collaboration is what makes a team. Without it, you don’t have a team. Instead, you have a bunch of people working at the same time. However, true teams do more. They use collaboration to synergize.
Be that as it may, collaboration is not an intrinsic human need or priority. In fact, we learn to collaborate. And it’s a difficult process. This process has helped us achieve a lot. Most modern achievements are the result of collaboration.
Sure, you can cultivate greatness without collaboration. While writing poetry as a team might be fun, this is a one-person job. Also, a lot of other activities are not team activities. And that’s fine.
Team collaboration can be a metric on which you benchmark productivity. Yet, we should not confuse regular productivity with synergized productivity. In synergized productivity, the overall result is greater than the sum of inputs. Work has a final result of a value superior to the elements of work. For example, a Tesla S is greater than the sum of its parts. Yet, people could be very productive producing the parts. In this case, there is no added value, no synergy.
Onboarding done right. Surprise, it’s a challenge! In fact, a quick peek at employer review websites can tell you a lot about the value of onboarding. Dating is similar. First impressions matter. But that’s the interview. The love affair starts with onboarding.
Onboarding done right leaks when measuring quality of hire. If you’re not HR, quality of hire is a trendy metric to track. While tough to calculate, it does provide valuable insight. It is also a gateway into building a system of metrics on which to plan improvement goals. Quality of hire factors in various items. Indicators such as job performance, ramp-up time, enthusiasm, cultural fit and more. Fear not, we won’t attempt to do a math model of quality of hire.
Goals, productivity, and teams. What could be the secret ingredient that binds these three? We admire those that inspire. And nothing inspires us more than the pursuit of greatness. Tenacity. Resilience. The ability to keep going, no matter what. And it is people like these that we want to lead us. It’s no surprise that we tend to follow those who persevere.
Leaders or managers, this is the problem. While managers can be leaders, the reverse is not a must. In fact, these two roles are often separate. After all, modern businesses seem to prefer it this way. While leaders lead, managers manage.
On the other hand, every organization strives for success. Hence, any team wants to achieve, above and beyond. However, most often, management does not have a leadership role. In fact, management often deals with quality control and compliance. Also, they exercise control and offer accountability. Modern managers do all sorts of things, yet effective leadership seems to not be on the list.
There’s no question that our culture values work, and even more so, success at work. Most of us spend an average of 40+ hours at the office every week, and for a lot of employees, those hours are anything but enjoyable.
According to a recent study
Learning for the entire duration of your life might sound crazy. Who would choose to forever go to school? In fact, people think that life starts after school. Yet this couldn’t be further from the truth. Lifelong learning has little to do with schooling. It has, however, a lot to do with living.
And to a great extent, a healthy, meaningful life is more than memories and great experiences. Rather, a meaningful life is full of lessons and learning. Either lessons that you learn, or lessons that you teach.
A lot of articles out there talk about introverts and extroverts. As well as how to deal with their personality traits. However, they hardly provide clarity as to what it means to be introverted or extroverted. Or what managers should do to accommodate such variation within any team. Since this a common issue, we decided to explore it. And also offer some tips. You will better understand what introversion and extroversion entail at team level. Furthermore, how to deal with conflicts fueled by such differences.
The best work organization is using teams. We’ve known this for ages. Humans have been doing job specialization long before they even had a word for it. This is responsible for our success and for who we are, intimately. It explains the modern fascination with our deeply-seated sense of self. As well as the remarkable capacity we have to do work collaboratively.
Every manager and entrepreneur dreams of becoming an inspiring leader that people would gladly follow. Some people have a natural leadership instinct, but what if you weren’t born with such exceptional skills? Can you learn how to be inspiring to others?
Science says there are ways you can train yourself so that people listen to you and follow your lead. Here’s what I found to be useful for anyone willing to go on this journey of inspiring leadership.
Photo by Eugene Lim on Unsplash