doug smith training

Team building is great and can be a true morale booster -- if your team is ready for it. If the team morale is already low, though, a team building event might be the last thing you need. How do you know? Before scheduling a team building event, check to see how each team member would feel about it. That means spending time with each of them, one on one, to discover how things are going. How are the dynamics? Does everyone enjoy working on the team? What are the challenges and the issues? You could even introduce some low risk team building activities into your regular meetings. You don't need a zip line or trust falls in the wilderness to get closer as a team. Sometimes, just a warm-up question before a meeting is enough to start the bonding. Questions like "if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?" and "if money were no object, what would you do?" and "if you could make one fundamental, game-changing change to our bus

Have you ever sat in a meeting and thought "well, here's an hour (or two) of my life I'll never get back...?" Most people have. We get stuck in unproductive meetings. We find ourselves wondering why they couldn't just have sent an email. Or we wonder why they had a meeting at all, since nothing is getting done. Bad meetings result in the single biggest waste of time in organizational life. In my workshops I tell people that "you are hereby empowered. You no longer need sit thru an unproductive meeting ever again. If you have the courage." If you have the courage to lead from the back of the room. If you have the courage to lead from any chair. If you have the courage to grab that moment of unproductive noise and make a suggestion. Make a recommendation. Redirect the group. You probably know already that you are not the only person in the room who feels the meeting slipping away. Redirect it. Risky? Sure. You might need to build some relations

When you work to solve a problem, what work do you put into improving communication? How much of your problem solving action plan is focused on communication? Communication matters. Few problems can be truly permanently solved unless there is a change in how people communicate. What's your plan? You may not have solved the problem unless you've also improved or enhanced communication. What does enhanced communication look like? Better, deeper conversations. More trusting relationships. More powerful presentations. More productive meetings. When project managers do an outstanding job of delivering on their project and solving a problem, they improve communication along the way. What are you doing to improve your communication today? -- Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High Performance Leadership Training doug smith training:  helping people communicate more effectively What have you learned today?