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Showing posts from September, 2016

The Stages of Team Building

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The Tuckman-Jensen analysis of the stages of team building has become a foundational piece in understanding how teams come together or pull apart, how they perform well or fail to meet desired results. Tuckman and Jensen state that teams go through five stages of team development: 1. Forming—the search for commonalities 2. Storming-breaking away from false harmony into individual power displays, leading to rifts between team members. There is a tension in this stage between unity and individualism. 3. Norming-behavior in this stage is more about consensus between team members and more of a shift from “I” to “We.” 4. Performing-behavior at this stage shows that the members can self-lead. This stage focuses on problem solving and completing assigned tasks. 5. Adjourning-This allows a sense of completion for the team members. Otherwise, there can remain a festering feeling of unfinished business. All successful teams need to go through these stages. And, time needs

What Is Failure?

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Failure is nothing more than a few errors in judgment repeated ever day over a period of time. How often have you or someone you know seen something that is not working in a business and take the attitude that it just doesn’t matter enough to do something correct it, eliminate it or even improve it? Most of us have been guilty of falling into this philosophical trap of “it just doesn’t matter.” These errors in judgment get repeated because people don’t think they matter. Over time, accumulation of poor thinking leads to poor choices. Failure’s most dangerous attribute is subtlety. To reduce the number of failures and to increase the possibilities for success you must have powerful personal philosophy guiding your every step. You must become more aware of your errors in judgment and that each error really does matter. The next time you see something that you know is not right or leading you down the wrong path, address it. The next step is to do something about it.