The factors that bring people together into a collaborative venture are varied. One is proximity and shared goals: people within a department, for example, have more opportunities to work together than people across different departments. Another factor is similarity: people who are similar to each other, either because they have the same or similar age, […]
Subject: Team Building and Teamwork
Why Employees Hide Their Knowledge and How to Encourage Sharing
While employees are supposed to share their knowledge with other employees for the benefit of the company, employees will often find a reason to keep that knowledge to themselves. Perhaps they believe that they will lose some status or power; sometimes employees who share knowledge will then be judged or evaluated based on that knowledge; […]
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Be a Learning Leader
Leaders drive the process of organizational learning and adaptation by providing time and space, granting the freedom to explore and fail, and by encouraging those around them to look at things in new ways. This research examines the characteristics of a core set of leadership relationships, providing insights to help leaders reflect on their own […]
Can Emotional Intelligence Shape a Team’s Collective Performance?
Research in recent years has consistently shown emotional intelligence (EI) to be a key determinant of performance for leaders and employees. Broadly defined as a set of competencies for identifying, processing and managing emotions, EI has been linked to many individual outcomes, such as job satisfaction and engagement. But what about at the team level […]
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Back to Leadership Basics: Make Time for Your Team
It sounds so obvious. It is obvious. But far too few managers actually do it. We are talking about the most basic of leadership tasks – spending as much time as possible working closely with their direct reports and other employees for whom they are responsible. By so doing, they will have a far greater […]
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How Employees Win ‘Voice’ and Influence Decisions
It is well established, in research, that employees who are allowed to voice their opinions perceive decision-making procedures as more fair and are more likely to display pro-social behaviours and work in the collective interest. Relatively little, however, is known about what influences leaders’ decisions to grant ‘voice’ and act fairly. The results of the […]
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When Suspending Group Debate Enables Innovation
How can new product development (NPD) teams best generate ideas and develop them into viable concepts? The ‘obvious’ answer — through interaction and working together — is not necessarily the right or best one. While some studies suggest group debate and group brainstorming offer significant benefits — for example, the ability to combine and integrate […]
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How to Lead Virtual Teams
Virtual teams, made necessary by globalization and possible by technology, are now common in business. They’ve taken over traditional functions such as procurement, manufacturing, IT and finance, as well as newer activities such as global supply chain and global service delivery. They’re often assembled for new-product development and R&D. And they’re increasingly found at the […]
Managing the Multigenerational Workplace
In a white paper published by Kenan-Flagler Business School, Dan Bursch and Kip Kelly describe today’s workforce has decidedly multigenerational and comprised of five generations each with distinct general characteristics: Traditionalists (born pre-1946): traditionalists tend to have a strong work ethic that translates into stability and experience. Essentially they view of work as a privilege, […]
Can a Leader Be Too Ethical?
High levels of ethical leadership can have unintended consequences, demotivating employees and making pro-social and co-operative behaviours less likely, according to recent research in Europe and the US. The research, based on three field studies and an experiment, finds a negative, linear relationship between ethical leadership and employee deviance: the more ethical the leader, the […]