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“Creating Successful Leaders”

Category Archives: Better Business

January 22, 2014 How to conduct a killer brainstorm session

One of my favorite parts of business is brainstorming. I love getting all my people in a room together and letting them unleash their ideas and opinions. The energy level in these types of meetings is usually sky high, as laughter and enthusiasm for upcoming projects abound.

I’ve had a lot of experience conducting successful brainstorm sessions, but there was a time when I wondered whether these types of meetings were useful. After all, how often do they result in off topic digressions, scattered tidbits and unorganized, unfocused planning? A bit too much, if truth be told.

I had to learn that as the person guiding the brainstorming, it was my responsibility to keep the ideas pushing forward toward the end objective. To do that, I developed a few techniques:

1. First and foremost, keep the atmosphere light and low-pressure. Your team is with you for a reason. You trust their ability and their input. However, there are always those of us who are less eager to speak up. To get the ball rolling, make it clear that the brainstorm is a safe place to get creative without fear of judgement.

2. Lay out the objectives of the meeting beforehand. Giving your team time to think things through on their own before the meeting will help keep them focused and realistic. While improvisation and wild ideas are part of the fun of any brainstorm session, specifying clear objectives up front will enhance the meeting’s productivity.

3. Provide a visual map of the meeting as you go. I like using big sheets of paper and a box of colored markers. Friends of mine swear by a good old white board, while still others have gone digital and taken notes with a laptop and a projector. It doesn’t matter what medium you use, but I highly recommend guiding the meeting visually to keep the team from being bored, confused or disengaged.

4. Ask specific questions of each of your team members. Show them that they are valued by tailoring questions to their skill sets and asking their opinions.

5. delegate the work once a solution is reached, and email the notes you took for the team to go back to for reference.

Good luck, and have fun!

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December 12, 2013 3 Ways To Build Community In Your Life

I was once approached by a colleague with a very unexpected and uncomfortable suggestion: he thought I should distance myself from a particular co-worker and went as far as to suggest that by associating with this other female colleague, I was actually hurting my career.

I believe that this man was speaking from a place of genuine interest in my well-being—he thought he was doing me a favor. I knew that the person with which he wanted me to stop associating had, as of late, lost some of upper management’s support. However, I perceived this recent lack of support to be due to misunderstanding, not due to a lack of skills or business acumen. I found this person to be extremely intelligent and was learning a lot from her. So, as much as she was a personal friend, she was also someone who was teaching and guiding me with her experience and education.

Instead of accepting my colleague’s advice, I decided to respond by sharing the positive things about my relationship with this particular female co-worker. I described what I learned and valued as a result of associating with her and attempted to show a side of this person to him that he did not know. I asked him, “What better choice than to befriend someone who challenges my thinking and exposes me to things that she has learned and experienced that I have not?”

I share this story to illustrate just how hard being a part of a community can be. You will encounter people who try to sabotage the relationships you’re trying to build, and learning how to handle this gracefully can be quite the challenge. It comes as no surprise that strong communities are built upon respect, reciprocity, and courageous leadership, but how do we go about achieving this? How do we overcome the naysayers and saboteurs?

Author, speaker and consultant Peter Block shares some insight into how healthy communities are formed. Take a peek at this clip from one of his talks:

As Block says, strong communities…

1. Center on people’s gifts and strengths, and give them a space to flourish.

2. Are localized, within walking distance. Keep your community close, if not geographically, then on a personal level. Shoot for that small town feel, where everyone knows your name and everyone’s got something valuable to bring to the table.

3. Disregard labels, encourage genuine interaction. Official titles and bureaucracies are a sure way to kill community. While necessary, don’t let labels define your community. People are not numbers and labels.

Seeing past the labels and looking at personal strengths is what allowed me to defend my coworker using examples of her positive attributes. I’m glad I stuck up for her, because as I suspected, she turned out to be a great teammate and friend. Applying these three simple ideas to your community–whether in your neighborhood or in your office–will transform a stale environment into a dynamic one.

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November 21, 2013 4 Ways To Delegate More Effectively

When done properly, delegation is a win-win. You end up saving time, and the person you’ve passed work onto feels valued for their unique skills. Why is it, then, that more people swamped with work don’t delegate?

Because Delegation Takes Up-Front Work

Many leaders find that it takes them more time and effort just to bring others up to speed, when what they’re trying to do is lessen their workload. Why delegate if it ends up being more work in the first place?

It’s true that you’ll need to work harder and longer when you’re preparing to delegate tasks. There will be meetings, training, negotiations, and the inevitable hiccup. But if you take the necessary time to delegate in a meaningful way, you’ll end up saving far more time and energy in the long run.

How do you do this?

Know Your Team

This is where it comes in handy to know the people who you work alongside better than just knowing their name or where they went to school. When you’re familiar with their interests, passions, and experiences, you’ll find delegation much easier. You won’t be guessing, fingers crossed, that George can take care of the task you’re passing off. You’ll be confident that he can, because you know George, and man is George competent.

What’s more, knowing your team will let you sleep better at night. Just as every mother must let their children go off into the real world at some point, so too will you need to let go of the desire to obsess over the tasks you’ve passed on to others. They’ll appreciate that you trust them enough to leave it in their hands, and you’ll be able to focus on other things.

Plan Well

If you’re delegating to a group of people, you’ll need to hold a meeting or two beforehand to help build unity within the group. They’ll go off and tackle bits of the greater project, sure, but it helps them to know how their contribution functions within the whole. It also helps you stay mentally organized as you’re the one keeping track of all the loose ends.

Which leads to…

Check In

While you should trust your team to perform well, it isn’t micromanaging to do frequent check-ins on status. Keep it friendly, and be open to their feedback. They often have great ideas to contribute and they’ll feel appreciated when you take their ideas seriously.

If you’re worried that it may be too hard to ensure that your standards are being implemented by those you’ve delegated work to, fear not, but be sure to…

Have Clear Deadlines, Goals and Expectations From The Get Go

And be specific about them. It’s better to over-prepare in the beginning and be able to ease off as your team gets up to speed than it is to go into a project unorganized and be forced to pull people off projects.

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