*
Dog Whip, Ungava Peninsula, c.1889
*
Leadership: Getting it Right ‘A recent review of the academic literature concluded that “one in every two leaders and managers” is judged “ineffective (that is, a disappointment, incompetent, a mis-hire, or a complete failure) in their current roles”. ‘
*
Team Spirit “Team-building skills are in short supply: Deloitte reports that only 12% of the executives they contacted feel they understand the way people work together in networks and only 21% feel confident in their ability to build cross-functional teams.”
*
The collaboration curse “Why have organisations been so naive about collaboration? One reason is that collaboration is much easier to measure than “deep work”: any fool can record how many people post messages on Slack or speak up in meetings, whereas it can take years to discover whether somebody who is sitting alone in an office is [working effectively.]producing a breakthrough or twiddling his thumbs.”
*
Benjamin Voyer on the psychology of teamwork “What makes things go wrong?
There are two big phenomena. One is “group think”—when the group develops its own mind, so that group members stop being critical. The Challenger disaster is a good example of this. The issues were all dealt with at a group level and most of the information should have led any group member to say, “We have a problem and should not launch the shuttle.” It was a mixture of being part of an organisation where you didn’t want to voice your concerns and a very hierarchical organisation that meant that the people closest to the problems had no access to higher levels of command.
The other thing that can go wrong is “group polarisation” or “group shift”. Sometimes when you put people in a team they take a more extreme decision than they would have taken individually, either more conservative or more adventurous. A lot of decisions are based on this group phenomenon, one that produces a distorted perception of reality. When you stop thinking in terms or “I” and start thinking “we” things can change dramatically. …
The optimal number of people in a team is five. If you have large teams of 10 or 12, people don’t have the same impression of accountability.”
*
What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (Duhigg, 2016) ‘As the researchers studied the groups, however, they noticed two behaviors that all the good teams generally shared. First, on the good teams, members spoke in roughly the same proportion, a phenomenon the researchers referred to as ‘‘equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.’’ On some teams, everyone spoke during each task; on others, leadership shifted among teammates from assignment to assignment. But in each case, by the end of the day, everyone had spoken roughly the same amount. ‘‘As long as everyone got a chance to talk, the team did well,’’ Woolley said. ‘‘But if only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.’’
Second, the good teams all had high ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ — a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues. …
Within psychology, researchers sometimes colloquially refer to traits like ‘‘conversational turn-taking’’ and ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ as aspects of what’s known as psychological safety — a group culture that the Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson defines as a ‘‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’’ Psychological safety is ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up,’’ Edmondson wrote in a study published in 1999. ‘‘It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.’’’
*
Art of the Possible (AFSC, 2015)
Assessments: Is a Team Ready for Team Building?
Associated Non-Technical Skills: Facilitators Resource (NSW, 2014) Uses the Westray Coal Mine as a Case Study.
All About Team Building (Carter McNamara) A concise overview, with a strong set of linked resources.
Boosting Morale … Psychological, sociological and economic research has also shown that having happy, healthy and engaged workers is also good for a company’s bottom line. (Visit the APA Practice Organization’s Psychologically Healthy Workplace Program website for a database of research on the topic.) The Gallup study reports that among the least happy and least engaged employees — those with the lowest well-being scores — the annual per-person cost of lost productivity due to sick days is upward of $28,000. The sick-day lost-productivity cost among the happiest and most engaged workers: $840 a year.
BUILDING A KNOWLEDGE DRIVEN ORGANIZATION (Bob Buckman) “ the goal of establishing a knowledge sharing organization is nothing less than to break up the pattern of internal competition and bring the advantages of cooperation home to the participants so clearly that the group’s interest and the individuals’ self-interests merge”
Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster (Weick, 1993) See also: Leadership Under Fire: A Case Study in High Performing & “Fire Proof” Teams (Klaus, 2012)
Commitment and leadership as key occupational health and safety principles (2013)
Competency Dictionary for Leadership Roles (Nova Scotia, 2004)
Competency Model (Society for Human Resource Management, 2012)
Consideration of Others Handbook: A Commander’s Guide (USDOA) See also: Consideration of Others: Facilitator’s Guide (CO2, 2 Day Seminar)
Eleven Thousand Metres Under the Sea (Deep Leadership) “In an IDEAS exclusive, James Cameron talks about his recent expedition to Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench – the deepest place in the world’s oceans. Shortly after he returned to the surface, he recorded this conversation on board the Mermaid Sapphire with the expedition’s electronic journalist and backup physician, Dr. Joe MacInnis….
… Dr. Joe studies leadership in-life threatening environments – he calls it “deep leadership” – and how its components can enhance our personal and professional lives. He’s spent time with astronauts who constructed the International Space Station and traveled to Afghanistan to interview Canadian soldiers fighting the Taliban….”
Facilitation Training: Team Development (NOAA)
High-Stakes Decision Making: The Lessons of Mount Everest (Roberto, 2002) “To cite a specific cause would be to promote an omniscience that only gods, drunks, politicians, and dramatic writers can claim.”
How to Lead During a Crisis: Lessons From the Rescue of the Chilean Miners
Increasing Emotional Intelligence through Training (Schutte, et al. 2013)
Proclaiming Your Dream: Developing Vision and Mission Statements
Selection of a Supervisor (Workplace Safety North, 2013)
Team Builders and Ice Breakers (UCM)
Team leadership: The Chilean Mine Case (Scandura & Sharif, 2013)
Team training in health care can save lives
Teamwork Survey (Donald Clarke)
Transformational Leadership Survey (Donald Clark)
Tribal Leadership “a rigorous ten-year study of approximately 24,000 people in more than two dozen corporations.” [This is an easy to read and very high value book about Team Building and corporate success. Do yourself a favour: buy, read it, and use it. If you are seriously disappointed afterwards, come and see me and I will personally refund your money in exchange for the book. Yep – I am that impressed with it.]
When is Sharing Leadership in Teams Effective? (Pintor, 2013)
*
OHS Committee 
You must be logged in to post a comment.