Catalyst for Collaboration—Achieving Astonishing Results.
I continue to be amazed at how leaders can call a meeting without really thinking through the meeting objectives, outcomes, and agenda. Your meetings are costing the company real dollars – although those costs are sunk costs in the form of payroll.
Even those meetings that charge real dollars to a cost center aren’t well thought out. These meetings are typically held “off-site” – where more attention is placed on …
Have you ever been in a meeting that lasted forever? Or one person dominated the discussion? Or hijacked the team to go in a completely different direction? Or a meeting that was a waste of time because there were no clear agreements made?
That’s because no one was responsible for watching the “process”: Clarifying the objective, creating a plan or agenda to achieve the objective and then following the plan!
It is …
Psychologist Adrian Furham, Phd, was quoted in the February Issue of the Oprah magazine, “The evidence from science suggests that businesspeople must be insane to use brainstorming groups….If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.”
So is brainstorming a waste of time?
Yes…and no.
Here’s the “yes” part of the answer: I think businesspeople …
Many of you know that I serve as the immediate past president of the National Speakers Association. One of my final duties is to chair the Nominations Committee – selecting the future leaders of the association. This weekend, we interviewed ten people for five positions (with three incumbents in the running). I firmly believe each of the candidates would serve our association well – but our challenge was to …
Have you ever had someone keep bringing up the same topic? Like a dog with a bone, he just won’t give up? Worse yet, the topic gains momentum, has been discussed to death, and the group just can’t let it go? Not that I want to mix metaphors, but the group keeps beating the dead horse….
Naw, that doesn’t happen, does it? Oh yeah. It does. That’s one (among many) …
Just the other day, a colleague of mine asked to meet me ostensibly to ask my advice about an upcoming client engagement. Flattered that he would value my opinion, I agreed. When we were done talking, I didn’t think I really added much – but it was immensely helpful for him to be able to talk it through. By having to describe and explain his ideas to another human …
You walk into the room and see a traditional seating set-up for your presentation. Theater-style with two columns of chairs, with a path down the middle. The overhead screen is at the front in the middle of the room. Looks pretty good, right?
While typical for many meeting venues, and perhaps most comfortable for you, the presenter, meeting planner, or hotelier, it is NOT the best …
It’s been 20 years since I started my business facilitating teams and training others to do what I do. Back then, no one even knew how to spell “facilitator”, no less what a facilitator did!
As they say, we’ve come a long way, baby. The root word, “facil” is latin for “make things easier”. True enough, “Facilitator” is used all the time to describe anyone who “makes things easier”.
In the world of …
I love movies that make you think. Where the dots are not connected for you…and you are challenged to solve the riddle.
My experience of the new movie, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is exactly that. Set during the height of the Cold War, the former head of British Intelligence (simply named as “Control”) believed one of his direct reports was in fact a Russian agent – a mole – …
You asked for it and now I’d like your help. Based on client feedback, I decided to conduct a quarterly webinar to help you continue to develop your teams. (See what happens when you do a little business planning?) Beware of what you ask for as the 2012 Extraordinary Team Webinar Series is coming soon!
I intend to schedule a webinar in March, June, September, and August of this year. As far as topics …
