The satisfaction and sense of accomplishment a team gets when solving big problems is incredible. But solving those problems, like starting new initiatives, can come with misalignment, people staying quiet, and even disagreement that causes divisiveness within the team. Leaving you with a disengaged group of people and plenty of stress.
But if you know what causes these issues and when they pop up, you can work to prevent them from happening in the first place.
When people feel safe to open up in meetings they can share ideas, which fuels creativity. They can share mistakes they made, which allows the team to learn. They can even challenge one another without divisiveness and get stronger outcomes.
But when you ask a team to share, you will often hear crickets. Leaving you feeling frustrated and confused.
Imagine working in a space when you ask people to share and they speak up. People are open and fully engaged in your meeting. There is dynamic conversation and things are getting done.
But there are a variety of reasons why people don’t feel comfortable speaking up. Causing a lot of people to be disengaged and leaving you with silence.
This can leave you as a leader feeling frustrated and confused. Luckily there are things you can do to create a more open and engaging environment.
Your team has some big challenges and It’s time to use an innovation workshop to come up with new ideas. But you worry about the challenges that can occur during the workshop. People don’t buy into the process, they don’t share ideas, or they even start arguing with one another. Leaving your team feeling more frustrated and disconnected than before.
Fortunately, the innovation workshop doesn’t have to be like that. It can be a great way to bring a team together, build comradery and create incredible solutions to your biggest challenges.
We’ve been working with teams for over ten years. Helping them come together in a way that is safe, collaborative, and productive.
In this post, we will share with you common challenges you can avoid when going through a workshop on innovation.
There are many different innovation workshop exercises and processes. But what type of culture should the workshop have in order to create the best experience?
During the workshop on innovation people may not share their ideas, divisive conflict breaks out, us vs. them happens and people don’t buy-in to the ideas. This can leave people feeling frustrated, disengaged, and discouraged.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. An innovation workshop can be a great tool that brings people together, encourages creativity, and gets people to buy-in to new ways of doing things.
We’ve been working with teams for over ten years. Helping them come together in a way that is safe, collaborative, and productive.
In this post, we will share with you the culture that we have seen create a happy and productive innovation workshop.
Imagine watching your team culture come together like a fine-tuned orchestra. They know how to solve problems, communicate difficult issues and support each other. But people can be messy because of so many different goals, personalities, and values. A disconnected team culture can slow down productivity and even increase turn over.
Imagine having a team culture that knows how to support and get excited about a new vision. But bringing people to unite for a vision can be complex. People may have different beliefs about what the vision “should” be. If people aren’t behind a vision, it can leave them feeling frustrated because they don’t feel seen or heard. This can cause people to start disengaging from their work and go against the team culture.
You’re in the meeting and you watch for the first time as different groups within an origination come together to form a unified team culture. It is exciting and a big relief. But this doesn’t happen nearly enough because groups have different goals, values and challenges. These differences can cause distrust and create an us vs them dynamic.
Watching the impact of trust in the workplace can leave a leader feeling excited and less stressed. But working to create the trust can be complicated. Especially when the team has different views and goals. When there is a lack of trust, team members can’t work well with one another. They often work in silos and don’t openly communicate with each other.
Imagine working in a space where there is absolute freedom to speak your mind. When you share an idea people encourage you. When you bring up mistakes, you receive thanks and appreciation. People celebrate the fact that you brought up the dirt underneath the rug.
It’s an empowering feeling when your team starts building trust in the workplace and everyone becomes candid with one another. But often times we find team members who won’t open up for a variety of reasons. They may be scared, uncertain, annoyed. Getting them to engage is like pulling teeth. This resistance slows down the creativity and productivity of a team.
Imagine knowing when your team culture is on the right track. Employees are building trust in the workplace and opening up to one another. But it’s difficult to know if what you are currently doing is leading to that goal. There are so many other things to focus on at work, it can be hard to know when your team is developing a solid culture.
“There's a variety of different folks from the team that were establishing an expertise and a voice. Being able to present, share and engage the team from the stage. Everybody had a voice.”
Today’s clip is with Scott Robinson, CEO of FreshForm. He shared how we and his team worked to develop an inclusive team culture.
“It's not that the team didn't want to help me, it's not that the team didn't want to take on extra work. It's that they needed to know that A, I needed the help and then B, they needed to know how to help.”
Today’s clip we have Nick Casares, the Head of Product at Polyient. He shares with us how we was able to get more support from his team.
“Once the what and the why for a team is really clear and articulated, the how the team accomplishes its mission is where you can really unleash a lot of good energy and their talent so they can use their creativity.”
Today’s clip with is Fred Krawchuk, the CEO of Pathfinder Consulting Group. He shares with us how to bring a team together through what, why and how.
