Four Questions to Ask Yourself When You Notice Problems on Your Team

Every manager faces it--those times when your team is not behaving like a well-oiled machine and you finally have to step in to do something about it--or him, or her, or the situation. Here are a few things to keep in mind. Is this a short term problem? In some cases, an individual may start behaving in a less than effective way, but only for a short time. This can be due to personal issues of all kinds, or a short term health issue, etc. If the person is usually cooperative, and you know of extenuating circumstances, you might try to be extra gracious during that window of time when their normal patience and kindness is not as evident (i.e. while their husband/son is deployed, while they get elderly parents into assisted living, while their...

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Make Their Job a Little Easier

A simple tip today...pick one or two employees on your team and ask them this simple question: "What would make your job easier today?" Then, as quickly as possible, try to act on that suggestion if it can be reasonably applied. If not, suggest an alternative that will help improve that employee's day. For example, let's say one of your support staff has to drop off the outgoing mail at the post office each day after she leaves work. Is it possible to hire a courier, or erect a secure mailbox at which she can put the outgoing mail inste...

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In Esther 8, some excitement occurs in the story of Esther. It is at this point that the king makes a decision to "approve" Esther's request that her people, the Jews, be saved from destruction. Isn't that great? Yes, but... What if the king's scribes didn't respond quickly to write the edict? (v. 9) What if people didn't know all the individual languages, to be able to write in that language, for all the various provinces? (v. 9) What if the "sealing" of the edict hadn't happened properly, to affirm the authority of the command? (v. 10) What if the person who "wrote in the name of the king" didn't accurately portray what the king wanted? (v. 10) What if the mounted couriers didn't speed to deliver the news? (They didn't have email or Facebook...

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There is No "I" in TEAM, or Is There?

There is a well-known quip that there is no "I" in team. After all, team is spelled  TEAM. One catalog for team building materials uses TEAM to mean "Together Everyone Achieves More." Ain't that special? In real life though, quips, mugs and posters don't automatically lead to a team working the way a couple of employees of a local firm described their team to me, as running "like a machine." It takes time, effort, and understanding to truly relate as a team. Because of that, yes, there is an "I" in team, because teamwork starts with YOU. Teams are only as good as the individuals that make them up. Yes, the whole is greater than the parts, but if the parts are defective, the team will be affected. (Hey, that sounds like another quip! "Parts...

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Peanut Butter and Honey

As I write this, I am sitting in my favorite writing spot, a coffee shop on the banks of the river in my city. Today I decided to have a whole wheat bagel with peanut butter and banana. There is leftover peanut butter, so I decided to add a little honey to it, stir it together, and finish it up just as it is.  Yum! You can't see the honey in the container. But you can taste it. It's that little bit of extra sweetness that brings the peanut butter to "treat" level. That "honey" is the same thing you will find in a workplace culture that has the undeniable, indefinable feeling of "this is a great place to work." Where does that culture come from? Taking care of your employees. Your people are your teammates. One organization I know refers...

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