Beyond teambuilding: whole person leadership

For several years now, we have been delivering team-building seminars, highly rated by our clients based on the measurable results we have achieved. It has just dawned on me that I do these programs a great disservice by calling them “team building.”

Sure, we use elements of traditional team development activities. But, I’ve belatedly realized what we do is way more than “team building.” Let me explain why I think team-building does not do justice to what we have been doing and why I think it’s necessary to go “beyond teambuilding” to achieve sustainable change.

One of the great lessons that the current recession is driving home is that success as a leader involves far more than excelling at “business.” We have to succeed in all areas of our lives to be truly successful at work. Genuine work-life balance means we also have to develop our “our own private selves.” Leadership based on this principle is referred to as “whole person leadership.” It’s about finding mutual balance among
family, community, work and our private selves. It means developing individual’s personal, holistic abilities so that they can truly function as valued contributors on a team.

This has resulted in us developing a perspective that connects management and employees conceptually, focusing on vision, purpose, and meaning. The result is stronger teams that resemble “communities,” which encourage development of the whole person. The added bonus is that this personalized development influences not only the work environment but also family and community life. Implementing this new approach to whole person leadership is transformational and empowering for the company, the team and the individual’s personal life. The term “team building” simply does not do it justice.

The value of training

According to Jim Harris in his book The Learning Paradox, a number of issues would begin to appear, if company employees did not receive on-going training. In a down economy – like the one we are currently experiencing – one of the areas that is subject to cutback is training and development. This means, I think, that HR people need to know how to measure the strategic value of training in business terms. Harris suggests the following outcomes when training goes away; I suggest that these outcomes should be the basis of how we measure the value of the training we deliver:

1. Fewer skilled employees
2. Lower-quality work
3. Poor customer service
4. Higher customer turnover
5. Increased marketing costs
6. Slow corporate growth
7. Higher employee turnover
8. Higher recruitment costs
9. Reduced attraction for new employees
10. Increased IT support
11. High informal training costs
12. Increased workload
13. Increased burnout
14. Slow response to bids
15. Slow response to competition
16. Turf battles, office size and politics are valued

Leverage the tools of social networking

Companies should not be afraid to embrace social networking sites.

Despite the current recession, buisness is still global. Social networking offers cost effective toolds to help keep employees and teams connected to each other and to management.

When we recover from this recession the knowledge of how to integrate social networking will provide a competiive edge to the companies who embraced it.

Sales is a good job in a recession!

Sales is remaining a reasonably well-paid job, probably because smart firms see sales as even more important when times are hard… and compensate their professionals accordingly.

The amount of sales jobs increased by 11% since 2007 to roughly 16 million sales jobs in the United States  in 2008, (the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Arguably the recession was already underway when those numbers were compiled.

So, even though times are tough.... sales is not a bad place to be!

Become a consultant!

This snippet from Steve Tobak caught my eye:

"If you think you’re working for a crappy company with bad managers, they don’t have a problem; you have a problem.

So solve it. Quit and go somewhere else.

Better still, try the DIY Management method. If you have a fire in your belly to fix management problems, try your hand at it. Become a manager. Become a VP. Become a CEO. Then you can become a consultant who fixes management problems."

Female Talent in Emerging Markets

Bloomberg (01/26/10) Hewlett, Sylvia Ann

"Taking advantage of the pool of highly qualified women in emerging markets such as the Middle East could be the key to the future growth of multinational corporations.

A new study on Women in Emerging Markets by the Center for Work-Life Policy reveals that woman earn more than half of all global tertiary degrees, and women in the United Arab Emirates are as ambitious as American men. However, female executives in the Middle East work in a very difficult job environment that is further complicated by different time zones and cultural mores. Female executives get very little break on weekends, considering an end-of-the-week conference call beginning at 2 p.m. in New York means those in Dubai are still at work at 11 p.m. Friday night. Mothers, daughters and wives are discouraged from working, and local regulations and work rules often put them at a disadvantage.

The study offers some strategies multinationals can use to leverage and support talented women. Multinationals could rotate conference calls across time zones, and provide networking opportunities for senior women. Companies also can lobby local authorities on making the work environment fairer to women, and can provide childcare and eldercare."

Social Networking. Time to turn on the privacy settings?

A survey by CareerBuilder.com of about 2,700 executives in America last year found that 45% of them looked at job candidates’ social-network pages as part of their research, and more than a third of those had unearthed information there that put them off hiring someone. Time to turn up those privacy settings?

In recessionary times it is very smart to stay in touch with as many social and professional contacts as possible. Reinforcing the connections with the people you work with and improving your ability to stay in touch with and expand your “network” of contacts, is a great way to join the digital revolution - in the unlikely event that you are not already on board. I’d like to share a quick and simple method that I use for researching contacts. CLICK HERE to read a short article I wrote.