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The Best Teams Hold Themselves Accountable

Want to create a high-performance team? Want to limit the amount of time you spend settling squabbles between team members? It turns out those two issues are closely related: Our research shows that on top-performing teams peers immediately and respectfully confront one another when problems arise. Not only does this drive greater innovation, trust, and productivity, but also it frees the boss from being the playground monitor. I first saw the connection between high performance and peer accountability years ago when consulting with a very successful financial services company. It had an unparalleled return on capital, breathtaking sales growth, and the highest customer renewal rate in the industry. In my first face-to-face meeting with the CEO, whose name was Paul, and his direct reports, I committed a major faux pas. I discovered halfway through the meeting that I was calling the wrong guy, “Paul.” It was an innocent mistake. When it was time to begin, one member of the executive tea

9 Career Killing Social Media Mistakes To Avoid

Social media is playing an increasing role in the way companies run their business, including how they hire. According to CareerBuilder,  60% of hiring managers  check out applicants’ social media presence as part of their screening process and over 25% of employers report terminating or reprimanding an employee due to social media faux pas. You can argue about whether it’s right or fair for hiring managers to snoop around on your social media accounts. Clearly, they are doing it anyway. This means that you have to be vigilant. I  asked my readers over at Twitter  what career killing mistakes applicants and employees should avoid on social media and got dozens of replies. Here are the best responses. 1. Being dramatic, combative or insulting “We all have those moments. You post something and some rude person tries to call you out, or you see a post denigrating a friend. In those moments, you might want to give somebody a very public piece of your mind. Resist the urge. Li

Five Rude And Insulting Interview Questions -- And How To Answer Them

You are a well-brought-up person with perfect manners, or at least you aspire to be. You probably know that the rudest thing you can do is to call out, mention or acknowledge another person's bad behavior! When someone is rude to you, the best thing to do is to smile and ignore the impolite behavior. As a well-brought-up person, that's what you will do when you run into rudeness on the job search trail. Sadly, I can almost guarantee that you will run into rude interviewers asking terribly impolite and intrusive questions. Here are five of the most insulting questions an interviewer can ask  you. All five of them are very common. Interviewers are  badly trained. Somewhere along the line, somebody taught them that in the business world, it's okay to ask people questions you would never dream of asking someone you were meeting for the first time in any other setting. We would never presume to ask someone at the gym, the grocery store, a block party or a place of

5 Positive Ways to Constructively Critique Employees

There inevitably comes a time when a manager has to give negative feedback. It’s inevitable. No employee is perfect. Everyone can use a little improvement. The tricky part is providing feedback in a way that doesn’t send the employee spiraling into a pit of despair and self-loathing. That’s one way to get on the bad boss list. When it’s time for the annual review, or even a much-needed discussion with an underperforming employee, don’t hide from the impending uncomfortable situation. Negative feedback can be dished out in a way that doesn’t damage egos, or send employees packing. In fact, when given in a positive way, negative feedback can be very motivational and inspiring. An   article from   Psychology Today   explains how to give good constructive feedback using the sandwich method. Start with a compliment, gently add what needs improvement, then top it off with another compliment.While this method can be applied to giving feedback almost every time, here are some additio

How to Get Experts to Work Together Effectively

How should teams of experts working on knowledge-intensive projects be structured? Should they be hierarchical? Or will flexible, self-organized groups perform better?  Teams often struggle with how to get the most value from the members’ expertise, to minimize conflict, to integrate their diverse expertise, and to leverage it during all phases of a project. The traditional approach is to put the person with the most experience and expertise in charge — for example, a head coach or a chief programmer. The assumption is that this person has the expertise to make the best decisions about how to allocate tasks and responsibilities. Teams that adopt this model feature a rigid hierarchy, whereby final decisions are centralized through this single, formally designated individual. The downside of this approach is that when projects increase in complexity and team size, the central individual can become a communication and coordination bottleneck for the team. Another approac

How to React to Biased Comments at Work

Bias at work can be overt and insidious. It can be shocking and enraging. But the subtle “Wait, what just happened?” moments are far more frequent. Take these examples: A client assumes you are in a subordinate role because of your age. A prospective customer only makes eye contact with your white colleague. A coworker calls you “angry” while your equally assertive male counterpart gets labeled “strong” (a far too often occurrence for women as   one of our previous studies   showed). Moments like these leave you questioning others’ intentions and your own perceptions. The inner dialogue can sound a bit like, “I’m upset. But should I be? Do I have a right to be?” At best, this shadowy bias is exhausting. At worst, it is soul destroying. Bias’s sometimes slippery nature also makes it difficult to eradicate in the workplace. Leaders implement policies that prohibit discrimination against protected classes, but rules can’t prevent unconscious, unintentional bias. How do you legis