Creating Teams With An Edge

Teams can be a driving force for organizational performance--and managers can play a key role in teams' ultimate success or failure. Highlighting the latest research on team development and dynamics--and including hands-on tools for improving communication, resolving conflicts, promoting interdependence, and more--this guide helps managers at all levels to motivate teams to achieve higher performance.

Teams can be a driving force for organizational performance--and managers can play a key role in teams' ultimate success or failure. Highlighting the latest research on team development and dynamics--and including hands-on tools for improving communication, resolving conflicts, promoting interdependence, and more--this guide helps managers at all levels to motivate teams to achieve higher performance.

Creating Teams with an Edge: The Complete Skill Set to Build Powerful and Influential Teams Teams can be a driving force for organizational performance-and managers can play a key role in teams' ultimate success or failure. Highlighting the latest research on team development and dynamics-and including hands-on tools for improving communication, resolving conflicts, promoting interdependence, and more-this guide will help managers at all levels to motivate teams to achieve higher performance. The Harvard Business Essentials series is for managers at all levels but is especially relevant for new managers. It offers on-the-spot guidance, coaching, and tools on the most relevant topics in business. Each book includes the critical information that managers need on a given topic-from budgeting to hiring to communication to strategy-and offers interactive tools and worksheets that translate advice into action. Providing ready answers to day-to-day issues, these guides make sound, trusted mentoring advice available whenever managers need it. Other Books in the HBE Series: Managing Change and Transition Hiring and Keeping the Best People Finance for Managers Business Communications Innovation Negotiation

Understand the dynamics of all different types of teams Beyond Team Building: How to Build High Performing Teams and the Culture to Support Them represents the latest in thinking about creating effective teams. The authors present a new “Five C” framework that focuses on the core aspects of team building. The book helps the reader assess how his/her team is performing on each of the 5Cs—context, composition, competencies, change, and collaborative leadership, and discusses options concerning how to improve team performance along each of these dimensions. The book includes: • A wealth of examples of effective (and ineffective) teams from such companies as Cisco Systems, Bain & Company, and Amazon • New material concerning how to develop effective entrepreneurial and family teams • How to manage cross-cultural, virtual, and alliance teams • How to create a “team building organization” This book provides the next generation of team leaders, team members, and team consultants with the knowledge and skills they need to create effective and high functioning teams.

From the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams, a practical guide for leaders looking to make their organizations more interconnected and unified in the midst of sudden change. Too often, companies end up with teams stuck in their own silos, pursuing goals and metrics in isolation. Their traditional autocratic structures create stability, scalability, and predictability -- but in a world that demands rapid adaptation to a new reality, this traditional model simply doesn’t work. In Team of Teams, retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal and former Navy SEAL Chris Fussell made the case for a new organizational model combining the agility, adaptability, and cohesion of a small team with the power and resources of a giant organization. Now, in One Mission, Fussell channels all his experiences, both military and corporate, into powerful strategies for unifying isolated and distrustful teams. This practical guide will help leaders in any field implement the Team of Teams approach to tear down their silos improve collaboration, and avoid turf wars. By committing to one higher mission, organizations develop an overall capability that far exceeds the sum of their parts. From Silicon Valley software giant Intuit to a government agency on the plains of Oklahoma, organizations have used Fussell’s methods to unite their people around a single compelling vision, resulting in superior performance. One Mission will help you follow their example to a more agile and resilient future.

TEAMS ON THE EDGE gives readers a front-row seat during challenging wilderness expeditions to remote locations in India, Mexico, Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon. Along the way, Shawn Stratton highlights the power of team dynamics and life-saving decision-making skills-skills that were put to good use as his group's navigated isolated mountain ranges, treacherous glaciers, and raging rivers. Stratton offers a behind-the-scenes look into his time as a former senior instructor with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). Juggling the roles of expedition leader, teacher, and medical care provider, he discovers that the secret to success lies in the strength of the teams around him. TEAMS ON THE EDGE shares valuable leadership and team- building lessons that can be applied anywhere, from the wilderness to the workplace.

This book takes a revitalized look at how teams should work in today’s business is driving real growth in some of the world’s most innovative firms. Every manager desires to have great teams around them collaborating together and running with the mission. Unfortunately, most of these teams have been built around outdated practices made popular by companies that either no longer exist or haven’t been relevant in years. However, a new generation of teams has learned to do things differently--things like hiring the right person instead of the best person; focusing on one priority while leaving room to explore new ideas; creating an environment where people are comfortable dealing with the uncomfortable; and maximizing profit by not making it top priority. In Extreme Teams, take a peek into top companies and examine the teamwork experiments powering their results, including how: Pixar’s teams use constant feedback and debate to transform initially flawed films into billion-dollar hits A culture of radical “freedom and responsibility” helps Netflix execute on the next big thing Whole Food’s super-autonomous teams embrace hard metrics and friendly competition to drive performance Zappos fuels the weirdness and fun that sustains its success From marketing to design to technology to product demand, everything has changed in business and will continue to do so. Why shouldn’t the teams carrying out these changes undergo their own upgrades?

The best way for a business to succeed is through its people. While there are gains to be had from streamlining processes, reducing costs or making a strategic change, the biggest potential for success comes through how humans collaborate. Specifically, the greatest gains are achieved through high performing teams, and teams of teams. Containing more than 40 tools which can be used in a virtual or in-person coaching environment, Building Top-Performing Teams is a practical guide for leaders, HR professionals, coaches, team coaches and anyone with management responsibility. It covers how to motivate, develop, engage and reward a team of employees with different levels of experience and priorities to achieve outstanding business success. Building Top-Performing Teams includes essential guidance, tools and techniques that show how to promote team ways of working rather than individual-focused processes. It also includes guidance on managing internal team conflict and ensuring that teams are purpose-driven and working towards a shared business goal. Each chapter includes diagnostic questions and reflective practice exercises to allow readers to identify how to apply each element of team development to their workforce. Supported by the authors' experience in organizations such as the BBC, John Lewis, KPMG, Britvic, the NHS and BMW this is essential reading for anyone needing to unlock the value of teams to achieve greater business performance.

Lead each person on your team up the learning curve. What's the secret to having an engaged and productive team? It's having a plan for developing all employees--no matter where they are on their personal learning curves. Better morale and higher performance happen through learning, argues Whitney Johnson. In over twenty years of coaching, investing, and consulting, Johnson has seen that employees need continuous learning and fresh challenges to stay motivated. The best bosses know this, and they know how to make it happen by thoughtfully designing people’s jobs around the skills they have today as well as the skills they'll need to be even more valuable tomorrow. That's how entire organizations stay competitive in an unpredictable, rapidly changing business environment. In this book, Johnson explains how to become one of those bosses and how to build your A-team by: Identifying what your employees already know and what they need to learn Designing their jobs to maximize engagement and learning Applying a seven-step process for leading each person up their learning curve We all want opportunities to learn, experiment, and grow in our jobs. When our bosses work with us to help us leap to new challenges, the result is a team that knows how to thrive, no matter what the future holds.