I used a new title to describe this post that continues my case study of the organization I am coaching on implementing the win-win agreement process that embraces the Three Brain Synergy methodology of types of people.

The title reflects the goal of the owner of the company who sees this process and the leadership training that proceeded it as essential to scaling the organization. What he means by this is that in order for the organization to continue to grow and be less dependant on him driving everything, his managers and their teams need to develop greater autonomy in decision-making and be more pro-active in taking initiative to identify and act on key opportunities.

He realizes that this will only happen through shifting his own leadership approach and by coaching his direct reports so they make better decisions and themselves delegate and develop their team members.

The win-win process we are implementing is geared to assure that each manager is committed to their own leadership transformation and that they are well supported by the president. Thus each win-win agreement is a two-way written document that covers the performance commitments of the manager and is supported by a written support committment by his/her boss.

Over the last few weeks I have interviewed each manager and their manager and drafted both the performance commitments and the support commitments. Now I am meeting with the two parties, the manager and his boss to review the final drafted document. Once this is agreed upon by both parties, the next step will be to conduct a practice review coaching session. In the coaching session they are to practice the skills of coaching and active listening they learned in the training workshops.

The goal each month is to have them meet to discuss and evaluate the performance of the manager for each leadership behaviour that is crucial for the realization of their most critical operational responsibilities as described in the document. The same is done for the support commitments by the boss. Both parties must agree on the evaluation score and this happens through discussing their perceptions while practicing active listening. They must come to consensus on the final evaluation score.

I will sit in on a few sessions following the practice session to monitor their performance and assure the sessions take place.

The next phase will be to introduce the empowerment initiative process, which really drives continuous improvement for both the managers and the operations.

I will soon report on the progress of the evaluation coaching sessions. For more information visit the Three Brain Synergy website.

Stephen Goldberg

Over the last fifteen years that i have worked in the training and coaching field I have met many business owners and executives who always had concerns about people performance in their organizations. I see this as good because I don’t think we are ever fully satisfied with ourselves and people when it comes to our business and organizational performance. Being able to openly admit what bothers you to a stranger is not easy, but it is always beneficial to voice your concerns.

One thing i have noticed consistently over the years is that most business owners and executives do not understand what teamwork is. They often mistake people working together as teamwork. In our training workshops we explain the four stages of team development and what it means for people to function at each level. Most employees in organizations I have visited or worked with usually had people functioning at the first level of team development most of the time, which we describe as the dependency level.

To have teams function at a higher more productive level requires team members to learn new skills in collaboration, communication, decision making, problem solving etc. It also requires the business owner to change his/her leadership style to foster team development and less dependency supervision. I mention again the business owner because change has to start at the top or the culture of the firm will not evolve much.

I posted the question, what is the difference between groups of people working together versus a team of people to my leadership groups on Linkedin. Interesting responses have started to come in. Someone posted links to two articles which I think are great, especially the first one.
Here are the links to these articles:

The Top 10 Key Differences Between a Team of Individuals and a Group of Individuals
Team Tactics: The Critical Difference between Groups and Teams

So what does it take to create a dream team starting at the top management level? It starts by understanding the difference between a group and a team followed by the role of the leader in making this happen in his/her organization.

This month we will be holding a tele-seminar, Creating Your Dream Team where we will describe the Three Brain Synergy approach to creating a dream team and the fundamental knowledge that it takes to make this transformation a reality.

You can join the discussion by signing up for the free call now.

Stephen Goldberg

From DDI http://www.ddiworld.com/thoughtleadership/pulseoftheworkforce.asp

I have posted to my Three Brain Synergy blog an audio recording taken from our October telephone seminar on the leader a facilitator.

You can access the recording here.

I read this article by Rick Spence in the newspaper this morning about an innovative approach to maximizing customer satisfaction, employee performance and investor support.

It could be your ticket to survive the next slump

By Rick Spence, The Financial PostOctober 5, 2009

This continues my case study of my intervention with a small business to improve people performance.

You can read my previous posts to get familiar with this case and what has happened up to now.

Even though we have been through a nasty recession that has affected their market which is telecom the firm continues to do very well.

I formed a win-win agreement between the president and myself that defines the expected outcome and what he expects from me. I used the same method as I will for the agreements between him and his direct reports.

This enabled the president to walk though and experience the win-win agreement process, which he now understands well and made it easy for him to commit the resources to this next phase.

Over the last two weeks I have meet three mangers to hold one-on-one coaching sessions to clarify their understanding of the process and to begin drafting their performance commitments.

Each performance commitment contains their personal goal related to their classic type and the accompanying goal to overcome the key tendency related to their type. This is highly important because keeping this goal in focus, reminds the person of the qualities of their type and the tendency that holds them back the most. Working on their type related goal keeps them in a mindset of continuous improvement.

The president had already given me his concerns about each person’s performance and with that I had drafted the leadership behaviors to address these concerns as part of the win-win agreement. So my focus now is to clarify the performance responsibilities of each respective managers’ department against which to measure their performance.

There is a direct correlation between the leadership behaviors of a managers and the performance of his department.

It was interesting to see in the interviews that the hardest thing for managers to deal with is people. This is what causes them the most grief and what makes their job hard.

This has not changed in years and is perhaps worse than ever since people tend to meet less in person to take the time to exchange with each other. Yet companies tend to ignore these issues and keep throwing money at system improvements to solve the problem. Or they hold fun team building events thinking that this type of bonding will get people to work better together. People development is not a quick fix but an ongoing commitment.

I still have two more managers to meet before I complete the first draft of their respective win-win agreements and send them for their review.

Once this is done I will meet each one again to confirm and draft the support commitments from their boss.

Stephen Goldberg

visit me at www.threebrainsynergy.com

I like reading articles like the one linked here about being creative in selling. As creatures of habit we often get caught up in doing what we thinks works and is comfortable.

The truth is there are always ways we can improve and reading Rick Spence’s well written article got my creative juices flowing.

Turn tire-kickers into customers. Read, enjoy and prosper!

This weeks question of the week was submitted by someone through a group on leadership on Linkedin.

How does one implement a participative leadership style when she/he is just new in the position, the relationships and knowledge of the team members have not been developed and business needs to keep moving forward?

Last weeks question and answer from know-yourself expert and author Fritz Glaus has been posted on the Three Brain Synery blog.You can post your answers for others to see here by adding a comment.

I have also posted an audio recording of last weeks tele-seminar conference call on Effective Decision Making using the three brain approach. Here is the link.

Leadership and team development question of the week; join the discussion Info ThreeBrainSynergy – Monday, August 24, 2009

Participate in this weeks leadership and team development question of the week. The question is:

What makes real teamwork in organizations so difficult to achieve and maintain and so rare to find in today’s workplace?

To post an answer go to the public forum in the basic membership area. 

This week is our monthly free tele-seminar conference call. The subject this week is:

Decision-Making Effectiveness with ThreeBrainSynergy.

The call is this Thursday August 27th at 2:00PM EST. Register now!

Answer to last weeks leadership & team development question Info ThreeBrainSynergy – Monday, August 24, 2009

Here is Friz Glaus’ answer to last weeks leadership question along with a video interview with Fritz  sharing his views on the subject. Watch the video on You Tube

Leadership question of the week of August 17th 2009:

What type of person and what style of leadership are required in a leader intent on developing a team of managers and/or vice-presidents reporting directly to him who are self-directed and fully autonomous?

I would like to deal with this question in relation to a specific group of business people rather than to leaders in general. The basic leadership  requirement will be the same, but I would like to focus on the specific business leaders that ThreeBrainSynergy is addressing, namely company owners (Presidents or CEO’s) whose innate style of leadership is that of quick action. They decide and act quickly themselves and they expect quick action from the vice-presidents and other executives who report directly to them. They also expect their direct reports to be able to carry out such action without the need for detailed explanations.  Read more