What to Do When Your Team Gets "Stuck" - 7 Ways to Get it Moving Again

There is no question about it. A team can be a powerful vehicle for accomplishing a major project, guiding a unit to superior performance, or bringing together diverse perspectives to solve a pressing problem.

Have you ever been a member of a smooth functioning, high performing team? Those of you who have, no doubt, harbor fond memories of how energizing it is and how great that rush of pride feels when you achieve great things together.

The best teams, including certainly that great team you were on, are not just adept at driving outcomes. They also monitor their process,--how the group deliberates and makes decisions--the morale of the group and the well-being of the individual members. Therefore, the best teams are aware of how well they are doing during a meeting and, when necessary, discuss it openly right on the spot or in a debrief discussion at the end.

Getting Stuck
Do you remember the last time you were in your car when your wheels were mired deep in a patch of oozy mud (or, for those of you from a colder climate, in a bank of snow and ice)? How heavy it feels to be stuck. How helpless and frustrated you feel. You try to accelerate, spinning your tires faster and faster. If that doesn't work, you try first revving up, then pausing, in an attempt to get a back-and-forth motion going so you can catch the next forward momentum and rocket out of the muck.

While even the best teams get stuck occasionally, most working groups experience this state more often than they realize or admit. I have seen some teams stay stuck for quite awhile, for days, even months.

Just what do I mean by "stuck?" Here are a few examples:
*A couple of people continue to dominate the discussion.
*After much debate, you still have two factions pushing their different solutions or goals.
*The discussions keep going off agenda and consuming too much time.
*Certain individuals hold up team progress by missing meetings or failing to deliver on task commitments they have made to the group.

The vast majority of teams either are not aware-or simply ignore it-when the team (which is, remember, a group of human beings) becomes stuck. Why? Because "stuckness" is a people issue, a so-called soft skills problem. It calls for courageously confronting the whole group or certain members and potentially bringing emotions into play.

The Cost of Remaining Stuck
You can't afford to deny or ignore it for very long. When your team gets stuck, it can cost you serious money, in at least three ways:

1. The energy and enthusiasm around the table drops off. Team members become discouraged. They start to lose interest in the team's goals. If the situation isn't resolved, their off-line comments about the team turn negative. ("Man, what a waste that meeting was. We're going nowhere. I wish they'd let me drop off this team and just do my regular job.")
2. The extra time each one of you spends spinning team wheels constitutes an opportunity cost. That time and effort could certainly be used more productively elsewhere.
3. Your team may end up squandering the time available for a quality decision on an issue or it may fail to meet promised deadlines. Obviously, poor decisions or missed deliverables can have serious negative repercussions for the operation and for the wider organization.

It pays to recognize when your team is stuck and then intervene quickly to get it humming again. But this still begs questions: How do you know when your team is, in fact, stuck? What can you do to turn it around?

Seven Pitfalls and Seven Solutions
Below are seven situations that can cause your team to become bogged down and unproductive. In italics are suggestions of how to respond in order to give your team new found traction.

1. Lack of Agreement. We often proceed with the business of the team without everyone being clear and onboard about the team's goals, priorities, tasks and time-lines. Have you ever held a discussion as a group to clarify everybody's expectations regarding objectives, team operating rules and individual roles and accountabilities? Raise questions when you are not clear about something. Challenge the team to confirm that everyone is on the same page.
2. Lack of Commitment. Sometimes people's initial commitment to the team's goals and agreed-upon priorities wanes. You can hear it in their voices and see it in their record of attendance, participation and delivery on promises made to members. When some people withhold their commitment, it can be a drag on the rest. Help each member identify benefits that will accrue to him or her personally from the team's success.
3. Lack of Accountability. Are all members following through on tasks they accept responsibility for and promises they make to the group? Take accountability for confronting-with respect and for the good of the team-a colleague when he or she does not (take accountability to) deliver on task commitments by the agreed-upon deadline.
4. Lack of Leadership. Whom among you do team members rely upon to step forward and lead? Who keeps the team on target and on agenda? It need not always be the formal leader, the boss. Any member can take the initiative, when needed, to challenge, inspire or confront his/her colleagues. Ask the manager to be more directive when leading. At the same time, raise the issue with the team that none of you seems to play a leadership role. Or, try stepping in yourself.
5. Lack of Communication. Communication is the lifeblood of your team. It is how the team makes decisions and gets things done. Are people being authentic when they speak in team discussions? For that matter, is it safe to say what you think, even if it goes against what the group-or the leader-thinks? Does everyone have a chance to contribute? Do members truly dialogue or do they just engage in dueling arguments? Ask everyone to be more conscious of listening, honoring all points-of-view and disagreeing constructively, with respect.
6. Lack of Collaboration. Some teams, by their very nature, need to collaborate more than others. This is particularly true for groups, such as project teams, that have to share information, reach consensus decisions and integrate individual tasks into a collective outcome. This, of course, is less of an issue for a management team composed of department heads with little in common other than they report to the same boss. When collaboration is a must, alert everyone to be sensitive to what their colleagues need and how their own action (or inaction) can impact their team mates' contribution.
7. Lack of Trust. Leadership expert Warren Bennis calls trust the "emotional glue" that holds a team together. It underpins all six elements, above. For trust to be present in your team, members must feel safe to disagree with and confront other individuals or even the team as a whole. They must believe that their colleagues genuinely hold their interests in high regard. Be patient; trust builds slowly. Encourage everybody to demonstrate their trustworthiness by meeting their commitments and speaking authentically. In return, others will reciprocate...and trust will grow.

Whether your team is a project, cross-functional, matrix, limited life or a permanent one, it will from time to time become stuck. Look to the above seven factors for the key to pulling your group out of the mud...or the snow!

Ian G. Cook is a trainer, keynote speaker, and facilitator and, since 1988, Principal of the leadership development firm, Fulcrum Associates Inc. He works with managers who want to increase their effectiveness as a leader and build a stronger team.

Ian invites you to contact him regarding the ideas in this article or to discuss challenges you face around building strong leadership at all levels of your organization, the kind of leadership that generates strong results and gives your enterprise an enduring edge.

He can be reached at 1-888-FULCRUM (385-2786) or Contact Ian. You can visit Fulcrum's website at: http://www.888fulcrum.com and for solutions to some common challenges managers face, go to: Solutions

How To Improve Communication With Your Boss

Good communication allows many life situations to run smoothly. However, there are certain relationships that deserve extra attention, such as the relationship you have with your boss. You and your boss have drastically different roles, and when each of you fulfills these roles with a hard working and understanding attitude, you'll both feel fulfilled.

Get To Know Your Boss

As in all personal and professional relationships, it's important to understand how others communicate.

Everyone has their own set of likes and dislikes, and everyone has their own unique personality types and communication styles. Once you understand their preferences, you can adjust your style and methods of communication to best suit their needs.

Understand Your Relationship

It's important to develop a good business relationship with your boss. Find out what he expects and what his goals for the business are, that way you can both be working toward the same goal.

The following tips can help you further improve your communication with your boss:

1. Avoid being too friendly. It's important to be friendly, but only to a certain extent. You're not true friends with your boss. While it may seem like a good idea at first, it can lead to some uncomfortable situations. Your boss might have trouble giving you negative feedback, or your co-workers may develop jealousy.

2. Schedule meetings with your boss. Your boss may or may not be scheduling regular meetings with you. Regardless of this, take the initiative to schedule time with your boss if you feel the need. Your boss will know that you're serious about developing your business relationship and that you really care about your job and the company.

3. Problem solving. Find out if you can help your manager with any problems that need attention. While you don't want to step on any toes, your boss will surely appreciate you taking the initiative. Doing so will really give you the chance to stand out.

4. Maintain patience. Perhaps you would've done things differently than your boss or you strongly feel that one of his decisions won't turn out right. Develop the wisdom to know if you should keep your mouth shut and go with the flow, or if you should politely speak up.

5. Shift your perspective. You can improve your communication with your boss and feel less frustrated just by putting yourself in their shoes. Imagine what everything is like for them; they likely have more burdens and pressures on their shoulders than you realized.

Be Prepared

Even if you're not quite sure what to say all the time, as long as you prepared and honest in your communication, your boss will surely notice. So if you have to reflect and write down your thoughts ahead of time, so be it. That level of preparation will benefit you in the long run.

With any relationship, good communication skills are a huge benefit. Strive to work on strengthening these skills every day and it will help your career to flourish. In the end, your positive attitude and willingness to understand others will help you forge stronger, more permanent bonds.

Dan Klatt has the unique gift of connecting people with a broad range of profound principles that resonate in the deepest part of their being. He brings awareness to concepts not typically obvious to one's daily thoughts and feelings. Follow him on twitter and Join him for the "30-Day Think And Grow Rich Video Course" now for a wealth of inspiring information!

Feeling Overwhelmed by Work? You Can Fix That!

Do you feel overwhelmed by too much to do in work (and life)? Many of us do-but you don't have to! There are simple ways to get overwhelm under control and to even feel good about all you have to do. Let's take a look at one way that I believe will help you greatly.

Urgency Leads to Stress
These days, it is very easy to reach an overwhelmed state. With the amount of e-mail we get, and with all the responsibilities in our dynamic lives, we are working on overload. As a result, there is no way we can do it all. In fact, I suspect that for many of us, 50 percent or more of the things that land on our plates never get done!

The good news is that most of the many things that cross our desk each day we can ignore without issue-there is no impact if we never take them on. Things like low priority e-mail requests, invites to unimportant meetings, and even seemingly brilliant ideas we may have can all wait without causing alarm.

But if items on our list become obligations, then real problems can arise when too many of those obligations pile up on us all at once. At that point we go into urgency mode-we can start missing deadlines and everything looks like a fire needing to be put out. In that frothy state, even things we would normally dismiss can look critical, and that leads to an explosion of stress and overwhelm. Not only does it feel lousy, but we become hugely nonproductive-this is definitely something to avoid!

Controlling Urgency is the Solution
When overwhelm happens, the solution is to control urgency. That might mean cutting out some unnecessary sources of urgency and reducing your load-for example, saying "no" to additional must-do-now assignments from your boss, or taking on fewer new projects in your own business.
But an even more important way to control the impact of urgency is to learn how to approach your workload in a way that does not cause so much stress. To do that, you need a way to change your mental approach to work. A smart approach can lead to a major reduction in your feeling of overwhelm, and, ultimately, make you much happier.

Mental Models
One such solution lies in understanding our mental model of work. Mental models are subconscious beliefs we hold about things in the world that do not always hold up to scrutiny when examined. We all have many such mental models, and some of them are widely shared, even if they're wrong. For example, in the Middle Ages people thought the sun rotated about the earth-that was a mental model that was just not accurate and was later dispelled. We also have mental models about work, and being aware of those can help us work better.

In fact, there is a significant mental model nearly all of us have about our work, which once understood, can help us get a handle on our urgency. Very simply it is this: most of us believe that in one to two weeks from today, our workload will decrease. We consistently think "this week is the worst; in a week or two it will get better." And yet, it almost never comes true-we are just as busy when that week arrives as we are now. While the misunderstandings in many mental models can be harmful, this one is good, because we can use it to help solve our feeling of overwhelm. Here's how.

Three Steps to Solving Overwhelm
The point in time one to two weeks out, when most of us stop feeling worried about our workload, is what I call our Workday Now Horizon. Like a physical horizon, it is the distance (in time) beyond which we do not see work clearly, and so we do not worry about it. Remember that term as you do the next steps.

For Step 1, you need a list of all the work items that you are currently worried about. If you do not have an exhaustive to-do list like that, then create one now. I suggest you do this on a computer in a new blank word processing page or in a new spreadsheet page. On that blank page, list everything you need to do now or soon that is currently on your mind-everything that is contributing to your feeling of being overwhelmed. Include items from paper to-do lists, from sticky notes, and especially items in your head. Get them all recorded. Also, go through your e-mail in-box to find things that you have left there that you need to work on and that are contributing to your concern about work.
Once done, at the top of that list, write the label "Worry List." This is everything that you need to worry about, all in one place.

For Step 2, create another page in a new document, and label it at the top "Over the Horizon." This page represents time beyond the Workday Now Horizon that I described earlier; that is, it represents a time period about two weeks out and beyond.

Step 3 is the key one. By cutting and pasting items, start moving tasks off your Worry List and onto your Over-the-Horizon list. As you move them, tell yourself these items do not need to be started until sometime beyond two weeks or more. Make that agreement with yourself. You cannot do it all, so something has to give, and these are the items that will wait. As you move them, you are removing them from your Worry List.

Keep moving tasks until your Worry List is no longer "worrisome." Do it until that list feels fairly reasonable in size-until the items on the list appear they can be completed in the next week or two. When you reach the number of tasks that feel reasonable for that period, stop.

Now, here's the hard part of Step 3. If any of the items you just moved over the horizon represent promises to other people, and you feel it may be irresponsible to delay them without notice, make a plan to contact those people to tell them the items will be postponed about three weeks. Plan to take some heat, but do it-your mental health is at stake. This is worth it. You cannot do it all so, it is better to let people know now rather than at the last minute. As you consider this, feel free to juggle items between the lists to balance the impact if necessary, but keep the Worry List small enough to be reasonably completed within two weeks.

Now, Your Worries Are Over the Horizon!
That's it! Put the Over-the-Horizon list away, out of sight. Keep it handy in case you need to move more items there, but don't study it again for one week. You have negotiated with yourself and others not to worry about it, so don't!

You can now focus 100 percent on the relatively small list that remains on your Worry List. It is by definition a reasonable list, so it is much less stressful. I call this short list your Now Tasks list. These are the tasks you feel good about focusing on right now. In fact, go and change the name of your "Worry List" to "Now Tasks"-it's a much better name. Know that it represents the best that you can do right now, given the time you have.

While working off the Now Tasks list, most new requests may need to go on the Over-the-Horizon page to keep your work balanced, and that's okay. Plan on visiting the Over-the-Horizon list once a week; when you do, consider if anything on that list has become more urgent. If so, move it back to the Now Tasks list. However, you will be surprised how few things on that list are still important over time; very few things need urgent attention once given the test of time, and many simply fade from importance.

Overwhelm Under Control
Guess what? You have gotten control of your overwhelm! You have created a system that allows the urgency of tasks to be tested by time. And you now have a plan for the next week or so that allows you to focus and to complete quality work without killing yourself. Feel good about it! Celebrate your new freedom-and, of course...now get to work!

The above article is based on Michael Linenberger's newly released book, Master Your Workday Now! -a book that presents powerful new approaches to managing tasks, e-mails, your goals, and your career. Michael is also the author of the #1 best-selling Microsoft Outlook book called Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook; in that book Michael shows how to use Outlook to get tasks and e-mail under control. Formerly a VP at the management consultancy firm Accenture, Michael now travels the US and the world giving lectures and teaching seminars showing others how to get back control of their out-of-control workdays. http://www.michaellinenberger.com.

Half of U.S. Workers are Disgruntled: How to Increase Morale?

Every company has employees who can’t stand their jobs. Unfortunately, for many companies this trend is increasing which leaves employers at a loss as to how to handle low morale. Dissatisfaction creates all types of problems in the work place ranging from poor productivity to plenty of drama.

Employees are not that happy with their jobs today. According to a survey of 5,000 households conducted by the Conference Board more than 50% of employees disliked their jobs. When the study was conduced in 1986 only 40% of workers hated their jobs. Thus, the amount of people disgruntled with their work life is rising.

Not all is lost simply because some employees are not happy. There is a good chance these employees won’t be happy anywhere else either. Companies do have some control over their employee “happiness level” if they make some simple adjustment. Move from the most cost effective and economical to those that require much more investment. Judge how the changes have affected your work climate before moving on.

Simple Happiness Adjustment:

1.) Cross-functional Training: Some employees get bored with their work due to the repetitive nature of their job. Allowing for cross-training not only helps employees to have more variety but also is beneficial to the company. When businesses can use their employees in a variety of places they have more options in terms of staffing needs and in-house opportunities.

2.) Flexible Schedules: Dissatisfaction may come from other family
obligations that may conflict with normal work schedules. As single mothers and father become the norm these conflicts are likely to continue. Adjusting work schedules to fit the needs of employees may be beneficial in increasing contentment and lowering turnover.

3.) Employee Appreciation: Just like you employees like it when their boss pats them on the back and says “way to go”. Appreciating your employees and their contribution to the organization can go a long way. It has been said that employees are more concerned about work environment than about pay.

4.) Clean Up The Work Area: No one wants to work in a nasty and dirty work area. By putting plants in the hallways, repainting rooms and remodeling areas a positive impact on the workplace will happen. It shows team members that the company isn’t all about squeezing productivity out of them but also about providing them with an excellent environment.

5.) Provide Growth Opportunity: No one wants to work for a dead end job. If you are an employee who is working hard but don’t see your job ever going everywhere the chances are you will punch in and out like a zombie. By allowing for internal promotional opportunities it gives workers a chance to go up the corporate ladder and helps them set goals.

Murad Ali, a two-time published author, writes articles and offers advertisement space for businesses. Visit http://www.thenewbusinessworld.blogspot.com

Just in Case Your Co-Worker Calls Off in the Coming Months Here's Why

The following are real upcoming spring holidays whether your company chooses to acknowledge them or not; some of your co-workers just might, leaving you in the dark asking yourself, "Why did he (she) call off?"

• April 16th - National Librarian Day
• April 17th - National Cheeseball Day
• April 20th - Volunteer Recognition Day
• April 24th - Pig in a Blanket Day
• April 26th - Hug an Australian Day
• April 28th - Kiss Your Mate Day
• April 29th - National Shrimp Scampi Day
• May 1st - May Day
• May 3rd - Lumpy Rug Day
• May 4th - National Teacher's Day
• May 5th - Cinco De Mayo
• May 8th - World Red Cross Day
• May 9th - Mother's Day
• May 11th - Eat What You Want Day
• May 12th - National Receptionist Day
• May 14th - Dance Like a Chicken Day
  
  Bored? Live a little. http://thingstodobored.blogspot.com