Music transforms experience … from the humdrum, the everyday, into something else … Music is used in theater, it is used in movies, it is used to ratify revolutions … Other experiences transform our lives, but none so universally … [Music is] one of the most important of man’s activities, and one gauge of […]
Subject: Team Building and Teamwork
Group Coaching: The ‘X-Factor’ Explained
Group coaching is known to help break down barriers to communication, build trust and solve specific and practical problems in organizations. An interpersonal learning process, it can create the impetus for change. Its effects can be explained by psychology and psychodynamics. Good coaches use the ‘clinical paradigm’ as a conceptual framework for group sessions. They recognise […]
Leadership Ensembles: 4 Blueprints for Senior Decision-Making
Imagine a cellist, taking on different roles depending on whether he/she is playing with a quartet, a chamber orchestra, or a full orchestra. Today’s leaders are not dissimilar; they come together in different arrangements to undertake most of an organization’s decision-making. These groups of leaders, or ‘ensembles’, debate changes in their company’s direction, or draw […]
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Social Status, Performance and Managing Stress
Social status relates to the prestige, esteem and respect that managers and employees receive from their colleagues, subordinates and superiors. While in society, social status can be attained through wealth in addition to power, social status in the business world is often a function of hierarchy. Executives and managers will benefit from a higher social […]
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Leveraging Diversity through Integrative Thinking
Without tools and processes, the quality of thinking from even the most diverse team is likely to match that of the loudest person in the room. Unless people are taught how to integrate there will be no additional value to having opposing views and no integration across views. Why is leveraging diversity so hard? When […]
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Co-operative Behaviour: Neuroscience Insights
A growing number of studies in both the field and the laboratory demonstrate that people are imperfect co-operators — they tend to co-operate only if others do so, and a significant minority don’t co-operate at all. This pattern of behaviour causes unstable co-operation levels and often results in the disappearance of positive collective action over […]
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Conducting Better Meetings – Can Data Help?
What can statistics and data-based analyses reveal to us about meetings that are effective (leading to consensus and decision-making) and efficient (goals achieved in optimal time)? Because the science of meetings is still in its early stages, the raw data for study is still being accumulated. However, two researchers from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, […]
Maximising Employee Performance
Based on interviews with more than 50 employees across 12 companies, as well as questionnaire data from more than 200 employees London Business School’s professor, Julian Birkinshaw, along with his fellow researchers, say that management should be about “seeing the world through the eyes of the employee.” In other words, it is a manager’s job […]
How Dominant Personality Trumps Competence in Teams
In the past research has consistently demonstrated the importance of ‘dominance’ as a personality trait in influential leaders. Understanding this, the authors through their new research found that dominant individuals achieve influence because they tend to appear competent to others, even when they actually lack competence. Furthermore, dominant individuals behave in ways that make them […]
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Leadership Tools: Magnet to Pull, Hammer to Drive
The authors set out to examine the leadership tools required to help managers rise to new challenges faced during uncertain times. Using case studies of prominent leaders of the past 50 years, they explore the keys of effective leadership. They find that in order to inspire others and lead change in difficult times, the two […]
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