INBOX ADVICE Smells like team spirit
Sadly not all teams work effectively together. Sarah Lewis, chartered psy- chology and author of Positive Psychol- ogy at Work (Published by Wiley) has five tips to create a stand-out team.
1
Create a positive working culture
Very few people like to be in an atmos- phere that is critical, hostile, unfriendly or cold. Yet many teams manage to cre- ate precisely this culture. Research has found that the key to the difference between high performing and low per- forming teams is the ratio of positive to negative comments in team meetings. Interestingly this doesn’t need to be balanced, it just needs to be weighted in favour of positive comments, at least by a ratio of 3:1.
2
Help people play to their strengths
Many people have put much effort into attempting to address their weaknesses over the years. However recent thinking is that attending more to our strengths will reap greater benefit in terms of per- formance improvement. Help team members discover their strengths and then find ways as a team to utilise everyone’s strengths to achieve the team task.
3
Recognise commonality amongst team members
A productive way to access these com- monalities is through the sharing of sto- ries. When people are asked to share personal stories of their moments of pride at work, or moments of achievement or success, or the part of their job that means the most to them, they are expressing their values and sense of purpose in an engag- ing, passionate and easy to hear form.
4 Move from the habitual
Groups can get stuck in repeating dynamic patterns. When this happens
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listening declines as everyone believes they know what everyone else is saying. To break the pattern there are some things you can do. Ask questions, or introduce activities that mean people need to think before they speak. Posi- tively or appreciatively framed ques- tions are particularly good for this. So too are imagination based questions.
5
Create future aspirations When teams suffer a crisis of
motivation or morale it is often associ- ated with a lack of hope – and so we need to engender hopefulness. Appre- ciative Inquiry as an approach is par- ticularly good at doing this as it first of all discovers the best of the current sit- uation, unearths the hidden resources and strengths of the group, and then goes on to imagine future scenarios. As people project themselves into
optimistic futures clearly connected to the present, they begin to experience some hopefulness. This in turn engen- ders some motivation to start working towards those more aspirational scenarios of how things can be.
PA NEWS
Gandolfini’s PA left $200,000
The relationship shared between boss and PA is a powerful one and a recent testomony to this was the news that the late Soprano’s actor James Gandolfini included both his personal assistant and his secretary in his will. Both were left a substantial sum of money – $200,000 each from the kind-hearted star.
Mandela’s PA hits the road for boss
Every July since 2010 Zelda la Grange takes part in Bikers for Mandela Day, and this year was no different. But while Zelda is clearly a philanthropist and keen to raise awareness of important issues there’s also a more personal tale behind her participation – for she is Nelson Mandela’s PA. She has worked alongside Mandela for nearly two decades and was even part of the application to the UN to have July 18th declared Nelson Mandela day.
Keep up to date with the latest news, research and services on offer to busy PAs
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