In the early days of lock down we conducted some wellbeing calls for one of our clients to check that all really was well. The organisation had done a brilliant job of setting everyone up with technology, keeping tabs on those that lived alone and allowing loads of flexibility around home circumstances like demanding toddlers and worries about family members. Their staff were grateful and commented that many of their friends were envious of this kind of support because they were not getting it. In the wind, though, there was a whiff of being over the question ‘how are you?’, in that very meaningful way we have been asking it.

Some observations we have made recently from the conversations we are having with clients might resonate with you.

I am fine, please stop worrying

Many people are managing all the plates they spin well. They are clear on their home/work boundaries, they communicate these clearly to people and perform to a high standard. Everyone knows when they are available, and any domestic challenges get dealt with quietly and without drama. If you work with someone like this, you have probably learned not to keep nagging them about their wellbeing because it is interpreted as…. well nagging! If they do ask for support, it is crisp, clear, and appropriate.

Whoops I’ve done it again

Those who are not quite in control of their surroundings can be a bit erratic. One day they are on it, the next it melts in their hands. It is all very well meaning and not malicious, but it begins to cause irritation. If you have a colleague or member of staff in this unpredictable state you may say “that’s fine, don’t worry just finish it when the dog has stopped ripping the sofa apart, your flat mate has paid the electricity bill and you’ve dealt with that really serious complaint you have forgotten”. In between your gritted teeth you are thinking ‘why can’t you just get a grip and deliver!”.

I’ll have it all!

This is a behaviour we are hearing a lot about. It is described as a sense of entitlement. Some have been given so much leeway that instead of meeting you halfway with high performance they have decided they want everything on the shelves in the sweetie shop, plus the entire stock in the backroom too. For example, some people are deciding on their own that they are going to be permanently home based because it is so much easier for them. This is before the question has been asked or the policy on future homeworking has been written.

It is a tough one because you do not want to take away the wellbeing initiatives, but you also need to set boundaries. Some managers have said they are now scared of their staff because they think they can have anything they want if it makes life easier and if they don’t get it, they accuse you of undermining their wellbeing.

Time to regroup

It might help to think about the simple concept of Triggers and Reinforcers. Behaviours are triggered and we repeat them because it is reinforced. For example, a member of your staff regularly asks you questions you know they can answer. Every time they ask, you answer which triggers the behaviour and when you keep answering them instead of pushing it back to them you reinforce it. Then you hear yourself thinking “I wish they would work it out for themselves” but wishing it does not make it so. You have to trigger a different behaviour (push the question back to them) and reinforce it (push it back every time they come to you and let them know they answered it well).

In lockdown managers have triggered an acceptance of giving their employees anything they need to drive their wellbeing and reinforced it by always responding to it – quite rightly. Many of your team will have responded by drinking in that wellbeing initiative, knowing it is something to be renegotiated down the line and that will be reinforced by you acknowledging it. Yet a minority want a never-ending refill of that wellbeing trigger and by delivering that you have reinforced the idea that they can. Instead of responding with high performance they are just sticking their cup out for you to refill it.

Re contracting the trigger

Has the time come to regroup and re-contract? Reset the trigger and reinforce a behaviour that suits everyone. This doesn’t mean undermining anyone’s wellbeing, it means getting performance back on track. Do you as a manager feel ready to have a few difficult conversations with individuals who would benefit from the lines being redrawn? Most humans want to perform well, one of the challenges of lock down has been lack of structure and sometimes lack of meaningful work to get our teeth into and this hasn’t been good for many of us. Triggering a revised way of mixing wellbeing with performance and reinforcing it by sticking with it might help you reduce wellbeing fatigue.

For support when starting those difficult conversations contact us….

Bravery and courage are central themes in so many books and films we have grown up with.  The lion in The Wizard of Oz follows the yellow brick road in search of it, Shakespeare’s Hamlet calls on it to avenge his father’s murder and Jo March, in Little Women, bravely fights gender stereotyping to make her own way in life.

Leadership has always been associated with bravery but never more than now.  As we enter the next stage of this new world, the pressure is on the maintain high performance, often in the face of significant challenge, profit and income shortfalls (unless you are running Zoom or Amazon) and uncertainty about the future. So maybe now is the time to think about what being brave really means in your role and how it may be different from relying on bravado.

First some differentiating definitions:

Bravery is defined as courageous behaviour and character, whereas bravado is described as a bold manner intended to impress or intimidate.

You can see the problem here.  Bravery is all about substance.  It inspires belief and trust in leaders.  Bravado may be motivating and exciting at first but lacks weight if not followed up with evidence, action and consistency from those who employ it.  As the quote says – we need a backbone, not a wishbone.

So, when the pressure is on and whether you lead an organisation, section, team or project, how do you remain brave and avoid the bravado trap?  Here are 3 ways.

  1. Brave leaders have the courage to open themselves up to feedback, welcome it and use it positively.  Acting with bravado on the other hand can make you sound overconfident, even arrogant.  And it closes you off to feedback.  Sometimes we hide behind bravado when we are afraid of what we’ll hear if we seek feedback.  Don’t be.  If you go out to people with a well thought out argument and can back up your reasons, any feedback you seek will acknowledge that you have thought things through and may add a useful dimension to your proposal.  Better that they say it to you than about you.
  2. Share what you know.  Brave leaders are generous with their experiences and don’t withhold information without good reason.  The bravado brigade often chooses to stay quiet, fob you off and withhold information which only breeds a culture of suspicion and scepticism. It is true sometimes you need to access bravery when you don’t feel brave, to straighten up in front to people and communicate with conviction.  No one wants to see their leader unravel in front of them.  But that shouldn’t stop you communicating concerns and collaborating with others to solve problems.  Bravery, like resilience, doesn’t have to be a lone sport.  Sharing what you know will grow the team’s skills and abilities and encourage bravery in them too.
  3. Embrace diverse thinking.  This means being brave enough to surround yourself with people who don’t think like you do and will challenge existing ways of working to drive change for the better.  Leaders who prefer bravado often surround themselves with yes people – those who think in the same way or at least won’t challenge them.  This might be an energy saver and feel good at times, but in the long run is not a good thing.  Research tells us that diverse teams are more likely to be high performing. So have the courage to welcome a range of views and approaches.

We aren’t born brave – or maybe we are and life bashes it out of us.  Either way, being brave is a choice.  It’s scary at times, requires energy and time and you feel the weight of responsibility to lead people relying on you to set the direction.  But it is rewarding too and what we need from our leaders right now.  Anyway, what’s the alternative – fake it till you make it?  You may not make it.

Hello readers.  Last week we looked at some of the positives of learning online in a group or with your team and promised a counter-argument to follow.  Well, here it is – some of the downsides of virtual learning and why we need to balance it with some close contact learning experiences once our country leaders and our common sense give us the green light.

We gave you 8 benefits for learning remotely so in the spirit of balance here are 8 of the disadvantages.  Or maybe not.  Because when it comes down to it, there really is only one disadvantage.  But it’s a big one. Huge.

Here it is.  When you engage in online learning, however skilful, however much group interaction is part of it and no matter how many polls, breakout rooms, whiteboards, and interaction you include, it is NOT the same.  Human learners need connection and that means being in the same room as others, at least some of the time.  Whether it is your coach, your manager, your team, or a learning group you are part of, there is just something about the warm body experience that takes learning to a different level.

We are professional facilitators, used to being in a room with others.  Since Covid-19, we’ve adapted our business to deliver entirely virtually for now, and we’ve adapted well.  But two months on, the cracks start to show, as people crave that connection and inclusion you lose virtually.  As one colleague puts it “You can’t get the smell of people”.  Don’t take this literally.  They mean that the senses are dulled online.  You don’t pick up on the finer nuances of what others say and how they are feeling.  When you’re in a room, you somehow get more from the unsaid – that someone is feeling unsure, has additional questions that need teasing out, or that in a team session there is a tension that hasn’t been expressed.  It is odd that we are staring intently at each other’s faces during online learning (as well as staring at our own faces for hours on end – note to self – smile more) yet we don’t pick up nearly as much as we would do by being there.  This has a major impact on learning and limits its effectiveness.

This whopper of a disadvantage is less of a thing where you are looking to gain knowledge or pick up a set of skills.  Which is why online learning really comes into its own for a quick how to or to gain know how.  As soon as the learning focuses on relationships, interpersonal skills, customer care or anything requiring practice and feedback, the disadvantages of trying to do it all in the virtual space become apparent.

So here are our conclusions as we all start to dip our toe back in to the world.  Virtual learning is serving us well in many ways.  It existed before this pandemic and it will endure in the future.  It’s great for knowledge, remote coaching and self-development.  But when it comes to team coaching, team development, skills practice, and anything where relationships are the first priority, you can’t beat the face to face, scented option.

Seen on social media earlier today: “Human contact and face to face interaction is what keeps us healthy.  The rest is just background noise.”  Over and out.

How many conference calls and catch ups do you have today? Life and work BC (before Covid) was, for most of us, characterised by the warm body experience. Now we live our working lives and quite a lot of our personal lives too, on screen.

This includes the way we develop as many of us now engage in online learning, accessing courses, modules and webinars in the virtual space. As you know, our business is learning and development and some of our work with clients was conducted online anyway – coaching and training people around the globe. Some of our work was – now it all is.

At the moment we don’t have much choice but, in the future, we will have. So, two and a bit months in we thought we’d look at the impact of virtual learning – the good, the bad and the ugly. This week we look at some of the positives of learning online in a group or with your team that we have discovered, and we why should all be doing it more.

Here are some thoughts on the benefits – 8 to be exact.

  1. It’s cheaper without the cost of travel, room hire and accommodation. You pay for expertise and expert facilitation, not all the add ons required by being in a shared space. This is great for virtual teams who wouldn’t meet otherwise.
  2. Teams can learn easily together. Team learning is so beneficial. We see it over and over again. There is something about hearing new concepts and exploring ideas together, that makes application to work (and therefore, time well spent) much easier.
  3. You are in control of your space. Provided you can stem the flow of visits from cats, dogs, small humans and Amazon deliveries, you are in a comfortable space that you have determined, you are ready for learning and without someone next to you with whom you feel you have to make polite conversation.
  4. You get back to the day job quicker. Online learning tends to be shorter, so you’re unlikely to be at it all day. This means you don’t feel so much pressure about what you’re missing and how your inbox is piling up. Once again, the short distance between your learning and your every day work makes application easier.
  5. People less likely to speak up are more likely to speak up. In the virtual space, those who don’t like to give their input to a group feel more inclined to do so. Listening is also better as people can’t really interrupt each other; you have to wait your turn.
  6. You have to give it your all. Seeing everyone on screen (and we encourage our learners to keep their videos on!) can feel a bit full on (we’ll look at that when we examine the cons next week) but it has its plusses. People pay better attention, work harder to be “in the room” and are mindful of distractions, because if you do send a quick text or email during online learning, it’s pretty obvious what you are doing and someone may call you out on it!
  7. Learning in this way requires an extra dose of self-discipline, self-motivation and listening. These are all vital work and life skills and getting the chance to develop them means two lots of learning for the price of one.
  8. It breaks up the day. Groups we are working with at the moment always tell us how much they look forward to these sessions. For some it is the first chance they get to connect with others, a break from the stress of the day and a chance to use their brain in a different way.
    No doubt there are other benefits that you are experiencing to add to our list. This is a time for learning. It feels like we’ve had to develop and acquire more skills and strategies in the last two months than we have in the last two years. Learning online can be a winner.
    It can also be a drain on time and energy but save yours for now – we’ll look at the downsides of developing the virtual space next week.

You’ve set your office up, finally managed to work out how to get on a video call and are secretly enjoying the lack of a commute. You have probably been for more walks in the last two weeks than in the last two years and discovered things about your local neighbourhood you didn’t know. And you are busy, busy, busy…… or are you?

Strange things are happening to us two weeks in. Many of us had different reactions to the working at home directive. You may have noticed that some of us sprang into action, came up with 25 different ideas to grab the opportunities presented by the challenge and set up more social media links than Kylie Jenner to keep in touch with everybody. Then some of us flailed around a bit doing a good impression of Virgil the puppet in Thunderbirds not sure what was happening and how we should respond.

These responses are totally normal and will have produced some great work. Those who have paused, reflected, planned and remained calm will have done lots of foundational work that will come to fruition in the next few weeks. Those who could leap into action will have kept spirits up, kept your organisation agile and bravely gone…

And now the lull where “not busy guilt” can creep in. This is a form of natural guilt which serves as an internal elbow in your ribs to help you identify uncomfortable behaviour and change course. Natural guilt prompts you to call your Mum, leave your phone number when you scrape a car manoeuvring out of a parking space or alert the restaurant to an item missing off your bill.  Natural guilt, some social scientists believe, comes from our ability to empathise with others' suffering.

How do you know you’ve got it? Look at some of these phrases, do any of them specifically or broadly sound like the voice in your head?

  1. My colleagues are snowed under and I’m finding it hard to get dressed never mind fill a working day.
  2. I’ve been busy doing the stuff I thought needed doing but now I’m not sure I made the right choices.
  3. Why can’t I leave Piers Morgan to himself and get some work done?
  4. Another day faffing about with nothing to show for it.

This inner talk could be a sign of natural guilt. These thoughts can stop us sleeping, be weapons to attack ourselves with and generally make us feel useless.

The good news is that if you have a healthy relationship with your personal guilt, you don't agonise over the feelings, you use the dig in the ribs to change your behaviour.

Let’s take the thoughts above and use them as examples of ways we can re frame thoughts.

  1. Your colleagues may well be snowed under, some of us have jobs that have not stopped during this time (think advice line workers, outreach workers, Hospice clinicians). You may have a job that can’t progress now, cannot happen (event organisers for example) or is difficult to do from home. If you are used to being flat out with a huge workload, that’s not normal. When we then have a manageable workload, we think we are skiving. So, chill a little, step back, look at which bits of your job can continue and what you may need to introduce to prepare for the future when all this is over.
  2. If you are not sure what you should be doing, try asking. We are all in the same boat so there is no reason to feel bad about this. A chat with your line manager to agree what is a priority for you now will mean you start producing and stop feeling like you are wasting your time. Becoming proactive now will serve you well if you embrace it as a normal stage of change not wallow in “I should have been doing this all along”
  3. Just say no to Piers. Have a start time, put some structure into your day to give you the reason you need to be at your desk. Maybe Piers can be recorded and be your treat at the end of a productive day?
  4. Are you really faffing? Review your work at the end of the day and recognise the things you have achieved. You may have been grappling with some technology you have never used before which feels like faffing but at the end of the day, you’ve nailed it – tick on your to do list.

If you do need to fill some time how about volunteering to help busier teams? Accessing online learning to skill yourself up, refresh and consolidate your professional skills. Finally doing that not urgent but important progress task you have shuffled around your desk for the last three months – now that would be a huge surge of productivity!

You have the power within you to overcome your natural guilt, proactivity rules!

More resources:

We have created two free online modules to help both managers and staff adjust to working remotely.  They are short, punchy and packed with ways to stay focused, motivated and connected whilst working away from the office. Click on the links below to watch.

It looks like we might be seeing less of each other for a little while.  We didn’t need a virus to tell us that remote teams are a thing – many of us have been part of remote teams for years. But for the immediate future, we may all be part of a remote team.

Time is short and you may be feeling fraught so let’s keep this simple. Here are five things you can do if you are the team’s leader to ensure you don’t lose connection with colleagues, during times apart.

  1. Find ways to recreate the water cooler moments. Teams who work in the same physical space are used to catching up informally when they are in the kitchen, making a coffee or walking to get lunch.  The natural socialising happens without trying.  Remote teams have to make the time to speak about things other than work; otherwise it can all feel too transactional and robotic.  Include in your meetings and one to ones time at the beginning and end, just to engage and chat.
  2. Use video conferencing as much as you can.  It’s the nearest thing to the warm body experience and it allows you to see body language that may indicate how people are feeling.  Granted you can’t wear your onesie and have your cat wandering in and out of the room but the gain is worth the effort.  It also keeps people attentive.  Ban all other technology at the meeting in the way all good face to face meetings do, so that the only screen folks are staring in to is the one that connects them to you.
  3. At one to one catch ups, ask the most powerful question any manager can ask: “How are you?”  And allow time for the answer.  You may need to ask it more than once with people, to get beyond the standard response.  Isolation and loneliness can creep up on even the most independent remote worker.
  4. Make opportunities equal.  It is easy to overlook people who are self-sufficient and forget to tell them stuff or offer them chances to be involved on tasks and projects.  Some team members just stay in contact more, but it shouldn’t mean they hear about everything before others.  Be inclusive in your communication and don’t leave some people of things just because they’re out of sight.
  5. Encourage your team to manage their time differently. Remote working means you get more done in a shorter time. Fact. You don’t have the office traffic to contend with and so there are fewer interruptions. This means the day is likely to be shorter (or broken up a bit more than the typical 9-5) and that’s fine. Don’t clock watch or micro-manage. It’s unlikely they’re using the time to redecorate the spare room or watch box sets so a bit of self-management on expectations is important here. Remote working allows for periods of concentrated time that you don’t get in an open plan office. There has to be a payoff and the payoff is a shorter day.

And finally, when you are physically together again, make the most of what was learnt from remote working.  There may be some practices that work so well and lead to better results and happier people that they’re worth keeping. And for you as a manager, you can say that you have gained experience of managing remotely.  That’s one for the CV.

Do any of the following sound familiar to you?

 If you recognise some of these symptoms you could be suffering from the underuse of the operational management levels in your organisation. The layer of management under the senior team contains a rich seam of knowledge and skills that needs to be mined by an organisation for growth and success yet so often is ignored, wasted and undermined.

If we look at the big picture around leadership and management we see a clear difference between the two. Leaders concern themselves with high-level strategy, scanning the horizon and keeping an eye on the next big thing and what the competitors are doing. They also have a huge role to play in getting the right people in the right place, removing obstacles in their way so they can deliver results and feel good about doing so.

Managers concern themselves with operational planning, objectives, delivery and creating a motivational environment for people to release their potential, achieve and grow. They need to understand and know the people they work with to get the best out of them and use their skills for the benefit of all.

There are, of course, crossovers.  Sometimes leaders need to manage and managers must lead when the situation demands but broadly speaking if each layer can do what they need to do most of the time the organisation gains huge advantages.

We work with organisations that have worked really hard to strengthen the individual teams of senior leaders and middle managers. Then they bring the two together to agree boundaries, cross-team project work and the exchange of information vital to their success. Leaders know things middle managers do not and vice versa so together they get the whole picture and success emerges.

Another list for you, this time one that highlights the advantages of the gap being closed at the top:

Are you bridging the gap or falling into it?

…because they fail.  In fact by the time this read this, you’re probably on the downward slide with some of your best intentions.

Instead, an article about new beginnings.  January is a great month for a do-over.  You get a chance to do better at things that didn’t go quite to plan the previous year and to make a start on things you know will propel you to success this year.  If you’re looking for small changes to invest some energy in and see a quick return – here are some ideas we see successful people taking on and flying with, time and time again.

  1. Get your head right and everything else follows.  The right mind-set is essential before you get going with any actions.  Attitude breeds behaviour – we all have an attitude (some more irritating than others) so it’s worth exploring yours before you unleash it on the rest of your world.  We favour a mind-set high on both support and challenge.  Support means you encourage care, a sense of belonging, shared responsibility, a good atmosphere and general feeling of fabulousness all round.  Challenge means you encourage active and constructive debate, ask searching questions, look for better ways and hold people to account for results, rather than speaking with one voice and nodding furiously like those doggies that hang in cars when what you’re really thinking is the opposite of what you’re agreeing to.  That way you create a high support and high challenge team environment and encourage commitment and energy.  Easy to say, harder to do.  Too much challenge without support and you create stress, tension and people watching their backs.  Too much support without challenge and you wade through a marshmallow field of loveliness, missing trick after trick as your competitors clean up.  So think about what you may consider doing to nudge your attitude to where it needs to be.
  2. Triggers and reinforcers.  Sometimes, we unwittingly encourage the very behaviours we wish we didn’t have.  Have you ever told someone you welcome new ideas and then laughed like a drain when they came up with one?  Or asked someone to deputise for you at a meeting and act autonomously after which you hound them for a word-for-word account of what they did and why?  If so, don’t be surprised if they’re reluctant to come forward with another idea or volunteer for a delegated task.  If you really want certain behaviours think first – “How can I trigger these behaviours?” then “Once I get them, how do I reinforce them so I get them again?”  This is a good process for encouraging and bedding in effective behaviours.  So, let’s say you do want ideas, first you need to think of ways to trigger them – at a meeting or in a conversation, let’s say.  And then if and when you get them, you welcome them, critique them intelligently and if they get used, you credit the creator of the idea with that success.  Voila – you’ve just reinforced the behaviour you wanted.  So identify what behaviours you want around you and look to yourself for the right ways to get them and keep them.
  3. Get your own house in order.  You can’t lead, manage or work well unless you’re fighting fit yourself.  This is not a cue to recommend healthy diet and exercise and the odd early night.  It’s a plea to invest time and yes, sometimes money in support for you.  This is second nature to the best out there.  They all have a place to go where they can sound off, discuss problems, solve them and come back stronger.  They all have coaches, mentors, chief confessors – call them what you like, they are experts at listening, asking powerful questions and creating space for people to recover, talk and plan.  If you don’t have a place to go to get this sort of support, consider it and make it a priority.  That way, you get to restore any depleted resources away from the eyes and ears of people who might judge you for being off your game.  And in turn, your fellow team members and colleagues get the best of you which frankly, they are entitled to.

So this January consider these and other ideas and what they might do for you in the year ahead.  Anything that makes you wiser, swifter and yes – happier – has got to show up in your results.  It’s all about staying current – New Year’s resolutions are so last year.

In our September newsletter, we explored one subject we love to present on, when we speak at conferences.  And we promised a second theme so here it is.  Something key, that is making our audiences sit up and listen.

This one is about leadership and our thoughts on what leaders need to grasp to thrive in changing times.  Our thoughts are many, so here are just a few.

  1. Learn to think big and small – often at the same time.  We call it “head in the strategy, hands in the kitchen sink.”  It’s the ability to know when to look up and think ahead and when to look down and embrace the detail.  You may go out and do some ground-breaking work for your organisation to lead it in to the next phase, but you still need to deal with some mundane but necessary tasks when you get back.  The art of leadership is knowing when to do what.
  2. Get your head around 21st century motivation.  This is the battle of the extrinsic and the intrinsic and it is a battle that has kept the motivation theorists theorising since the 1950s.  Here’s the bottom line.  The extrinsic motivators are front of mind when they’re wrong.  So just get them off the table.  This means you pay people properly, have decent benefits, a workplace fit for purpose and managers who know how to manage well.  Once you’ve dealt with all that, you leave the way clear for the intrinsic motivators.  They’re so much more valuable to you as a leader, because they’re about having fulfilling work,  a sense of achievement, growth, purpose and accountability.  Create an environment full of those where people can motivate themselves and you’ll have something worth putting your leadership energy into.
  3. Let them bite at your ankles. Leaders should be thinking about succession, often and in a positive way.  That doesn’t mean that everyone has to get or even want your job.  It means you should be thinking about how everyone can grow in their role and beyond.  Expose them to new challenges, involve them on projects, and stretch their thinking.  Do it now, don’t wait until you need it.  Ask yourself what you want former team members to say about their time with you.  That you were a great example and role model (good).  Or that you enabled them and propelled them to greater things (better).

Whether you’re a leader already or aspiring to be one, there are always new thoughts on leadership.  To sit up and really listen though, you have to get your head out of the kitchen sink.

The beach towels are folded and stored, the suitcases are back in the loft and we’re panicking about work we didn’t finish before escaping to the sun – it must be autumn.  This is a time of high activity at work, no more excuses and a chance to shine.  And for us it’s conference season.

So what are the hot topics making people sit up and listen? Resilience, wellbeing at work and managing the next generation have been big this year but there are two subjects that never go out of fashion.  And one of them is about the dark art of creating a team from a group.

Some teams aren’t teams at all, they are just a group of people who happen to report to the same manager and come together for meetings and updates.  Just because you call yourselves a team it doesn’t mean you are one.  Members have to work to become a truly cohesive; effective joint force and certain conditions need to be in place for this to happen.  High performance teams create magic (and get rather fantastic results) so if you’re the team’s leader, it is your job to identify what that magic is and how you work it on your team. 

You may be coming to hear us speak on the subject this year, and if so, we’ll be revealing our top tips for team transformation.  If not, here is a sneaky peak – our top three.

  1. Craft a team mind-set.  No amount of skill, knowledge and experience will paper over the cracks of people whose heads are in the wrong place.  So work on developing a team attitude that values support and good relationships, alongside challenge and a focus on results.
  2. Value differences but find some common ground. Some teams attract people who are similar in work style, some are a bit wider ranging.  Either can work really well if you have the same sense of commitment and focus on the end shared goal.  But you do need to agree some communal ways of behaving.  It helps you co-exist and know what to expect from each other.  It also helps those outside of the team to have a consistent experience of you and recognise how someone from your team operates and contributes.
  3. Develop a taste for change.  High performance team working is all about adaptability.  If you crave stability and sameness in all things, change is going to hurt.  So, encourage each other to see change as energising.  We’re so used to telling ourselves and each other that no one likes change, we’ve lost sight of the fact that lots of us love it.  And if you’re not one of those people, you can still learn to love it, but making change a part of your way of working.  High performance teams do just that.

So whatever this season has in store for you, everything works better when groups become teams.  What of the other conference subject in making people sit up and listen?  Too much on the autumn “to do” list for now, so more on that next time.