Does your team operate as a healthy community? Here are the three things we had to do to stay sane under one roof:

#1: Trust Each Other

To build trust in a relationship, everyone should be able to say the following statements to their colleagues and leaders.

1. I believe that you care about me as a person.
2. I believe that you won’t judge me on second-hand information. If you hear someone saying negative things about me, you will vow to check this out for yourself.
3. I believe that you won’t talk negatively about me to others. If we have a problem, you will come to me to talk about it. If you have to sort things out with someone else first, you will come to me shortly after.
4. If I have a problem with you, I will ask to speak to you privately soon after the offense occurred. I will then:
   • Get clear about what I believe happened that made me feel the way I do.
   • Listen to your perspective and try to understand what you meant
   • Work toward an agreement with you about how we will handle these situations better in the future.

#2: Honor the changes we are all experiencing

Every time priorities, job responsibilities and the make-up of the team changes, so do we. Plus, our lives outside of work are constantly changing. Therefore, we should honor and support each other as we live through change. Periodically, we should renew our relationships by asking:

• How do we describe our relationships? Are they easy? Hard? Why?
• What needs to be celebrated about how we have related so far?
• What can we agree to leave behind?
• What should we agree to continue/stop/start doing from this point going forward?

This is an especially useful exercise when one peer is promoted or given a great new assignment above his or her friends. Looking at the new relationship will help to relieve hard feelings.

#3: Commit to playing together

There is nothing more nourishing and renewing than play. To create healthy bonds at work, you need to laugh with your colleagues and share fun experiences.

Good peer relationships are vital to your success. Bad relationships can be fatal. It’s not enough to make sure everyone is talking. You have to continually talk about how you can get along better to reach your peak of effectiveness. Create a healthy community to ensure your team’s success.

© Marcia Reynolds

Related posts:

1. How Would You Define The Problem?

I’m guilty myself. I see a problem. I assume other people see the problem and that they will define it the same way that I define it. I assume that we all understand what the criteria for a “good” solution will be. And I dive head-first into a conversation where I try to “sell” my solution to the problem as I see it.

Here’s a thought: stop discussing the solution until we agree on the definition of the problem.

In the process, you might ask questions like:

• Do we both agree that there is a problem?
• What is the problem?
• What is the scope of the problem?
• What is causing the problem?
• What would a good solution look like?

Until we reach agreement on these starting questions, we can never agree on the solution to the problem.

How many conflicts could we resolve, reduce, or even eliminate if we all stopped talking about the solution long enough to understand our different ways of defining the problem?

Photo courtesy of www.sxc.hu.

Related posts:

1. A Better Way To Give Bad News

Delivering bad news is as undesirable as it is unavoidable. Nobody wants to do it. Yet sooner or later, most of us have faced the agonizing responsibility of communicating a message about corporate downsizing, quarterly losses, or poor job performance. Even the highest-ranking executives take extreme measures to sidestep the task—they hide out in their offices or delegate the duty to the next in command.

When it comes to delivering the tough stuff, we tell ourselves:

• If I wait, the situation will resolve itself.
• This isn’t a good time; I’ll do it later.

Most likely, these statements are unfounded and thinking them only puts off the inevitable.

Here are some tips on serving up bad news with compassion and dignity:

1) SET THE STAGE for the relationship between the presenter and audience. Identify the goals, needs, and expectations of the audience. Consider the emotional temperature—the nature and intensity of the audience’s thoughts and feelings—that will be brought into the meeting. For example, how will the company downsizing impact them? Then take your own emotional temperature as well.

2) SEND THE MESSAGE. Think about what the audience should be inclined to do, think, or feel at the end of the presentation. Avoid generalities like, “I want them to understand the infrastructure changes.” Instead, think along the lines of “I want them to be excited about the direction our company is taking and see this as a positive change.”

3) ACKNOWLEDGE THE PROBLEM. The Good News: “Congratulations, you’ve been promoted to Managing Director!” The Bad News: “Despite increased performance, there will be a substantial cut in your bonuses.” This message was not likely to be well-received by my client’s group. After Setting the Stage and rehearsing, she began announcing the news by acknowledging the problem, then continued with an outline for turning the situation around. She complimented them on effective teamwork, while keeping the focus of her presentation on how this would translate into future financial rewards for everyone.

4) STAY ON TRACK. The stress of telling someone something they don’t want to hear can be paralyzing. Here are some inner monologues to help you avoid “meltdown.” Repeat these phrases to yourself to help you stay on track:

• I need to tell you this
• We need to discuss this
• You must hear this

5) BE SPECIFIC. Start out with a positive statement about the person’s performance. Make sure it’s sincere, not empty flattery. Then get on to the hard stuff by expressing feelings of concern. Start with, “This is very difficult for me to say, but I need to tell you…” Use specifics, stating clearly what happened and giving as much detail as possible. Provide concrete examples of goals for change as well as target dates. Giving critical feedback won’t work without offering alternative actions and a time period for fulfillment. Finally, solicit feedback. Take into account the listener’s thoughts and perspectives and you will dramatically improve their chances of meeting the objectives.

Photo courtesy of www.sxc.hu.

Related posts:

1. How Would You Define The Problem?

Conversely, what can bring us down the most – if we let it – is rudeness, indifference, and other negative words and actions from others.

So here is a simple but powerful and transformative – that is, intense – experience for you.

First, make a list of the people you don’t like who impact your life.

This can include those in your professional and personal world, and those in the public eye, who rub you the wrong way or who — if you didn’t believe in kindness and compassion or at least in avoiding jail — you’d flat out enjoy punching in the nose.

Surely a few folks spring to mind.

Consider each person on your list in this regard:

What is it about this person that is worth emulating?

Instead of focusing on their disagreeable qualities, that is, for each person shift your perspective to what their best qualities are … more particularly, to the aspects of their character YOU could learn from and perhaps use more of.

Everyone has something worth emulating. Though certain people may deserve to be jailed or impeached, even they have qualities worth appreciating and emulating.

It is our reactionary egos that are prone to completely trash those who seem to have a negative influence in some way on us.

Our egos are primitive; if somebody strokes them, that somebody is good, and if somebody kicks them, that somebody is bad.

This lingering reaction creates the notion of dislike, or hate, which blocks our mind and heart from focusing on anything but the negative. But by focusing on the negative, we are doing by far the most damage to ourselves.

Honing in on what we don’t like in people won’t change them, but it does make us far less peaceful, productive and happy. It becomes a habit that perpetuates the self-damage. Plus it makes us considerably less attractive to others.

This is not a call to accept being taken advantage of by people; if changes need to occur to avoid those circumstances then by all means do what is ethical to make those changes.

But it IS a call not to let those people – really, your own ego – pull you down into discord where you don’t deserve to be.

The key then is not to let your ego rule, but to try to focus on what is worth emulating in those “unlikeable” people.

And the second step is to extend that practice to daily life.

The next time you encounter someone who seems disagreeable or worse, don’t focus on what makes him or her so lousy. Focus instead on what it is about this person that is worth emulating. Keep striving to do this until it becomes a habit you don’t even need to think about.

You will be quite surprised at how this shift in your perspective reduces your overall anxiety and enables you to achieve more … and achieve it happily.

No related posts.