A Few Notes From Cheryl

New Look: InSights has a new look this month (and new functionality) – you’re invited to try out the new “Forward to a Friend” feature!

What do you think of it? We’d love to hear your feedback at insights@goalsinsight.com – please let us know!

Holiday Season: Looking for a sp^ecial g*ift this year for your team members, friends or family? Help them achieve their most powerful goals and live a more balanced life by giving them the tools they need – click here for details!

Enjoy this month’s edition of InSights!

Warmest regards,

Cheryl

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Feature Article: Mission, Vision & Values – Where does your team stand?

In The Wisdom of Teams by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith, a high-performance team is defined as “one that delivers performance well in excess of similar teams and far greater than reasonable expectations.”

When you think about your team’s performance, how well would you say that your team is doing? I would encourage you to look at all of the aspects of your team that are not working as well as they could in order for your team to be high performing, and ask yourself “what areas does this team need to improve upon in order to be high performing?”

Teams come to us for development help for many reasons, as you’ve read about in previous editions of InSights. What we haven’t yet discussed is that many teams request our help because they realize they are not high performing and when we dig a little deeper, we find that these teams have no defined mission, vision or core values. In other words, these teams are less effective than they could be because they have not yet clearly defined their purpose, direction or their guiding principles. A team who has not yet defined these elements will likely have a tough time becoming high performing, because these are the elements of a solid foundation for a team. It’s like building a new house -- in order for the house to be solid and able to provide the shelter its residents are counting on, it must have a solid foundation underneath it, and the foundation must be checked regularly to ensure it has no cracks.

Let’s take a look at each of these aspects briefly so that you can apply these principles to your team:

MISSION:

I believe that the easiest way to define your team’s mission is to look at basic questions such as: What is your team’s purpose? Why does your team exist? What are the results your organization is counting on for your team to achieve?

VISION:

Where is your team headed for the next 5-10 years? 1-3 years? What is possible for your team to accomplish? What will it look like for your team to be successful and high performing? What will it feel like when you get there?

CORE VALUES:

What are the principles that guide your team on a daily basis? How does your team know when a core value is not being honored? How does your team know when a core value IS being honored? What happens when your team’s actions are aligned with your team’s values?

All of the above questions are a starting point for you to help your team to start building a more solid foundation in working together. It is also important to build in accountability for your team once they’ve developed these critical components, so be sure to create specific accountability criteria to ensure your team is on the road to sustainable change and success!

Once you’ve completed this important experience with your team and your team is meeting regularly to evaluate their process in using these tools, you will likely see a tremendous difference in the performance of your team. Teams who go through this process and are held accountable to “living” their mission, vision and values regularly THRIVE because they have a solid foundation beneath them and are focused on turning the vision they created into reality!

The questions above are only the beginning – there are a lot more questions to explore with your team, along with some experiential exercises, that can be done if you want our help in facilitating a solid creation of mission, vision, values with accountability. If you’d like to explore what this could look like for your team, please let us know.

In the meantime, I invite you to share this article with your team members today so that everyone can start understanding how important these aspects are to your team’s success. It’s easy to do this now with our new newsletter template – just click on “forward to a friend” so that you can start having meaningful conversations about how your team can excel!

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Upcoming Workshops

Public Workshops (private/corporate events are not listed here)

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 6:45 to 8:15 pm
"Communication Skills for Excellence at Home and at Work!"

Learn the tools needed to enhance your communication skills so that you can be more effective with your team at work as well as your friends/family at home. By the end of this seminar, you will have specific "next steps" designed to make sure your messages are being received in the way you intended at work and at home.

See details: http://www.goalsinsight.com/speaking.html

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Team Building Events and Off-Site Meetings:

Could your team use some help to be more cohesive?
Is it time to enhance your team's relationships and productivity?
Now is the time to plan for Q4 2007 and Q1 2008 meetings!

Some teams know that something isn't working, but they don't know exactly what that is or how to improve it. Some organizations hold team building seminars and employee retreats because they know it's time to enhance their teams' productivity and relationships. Do either of those statements describe you/your team? If so, and if you haven't already contacted us to discuss your needs, feel free to give us a call to see if we can help you.

We offer a variety of programs to enhance the performance of your teams as well as improve the ways in which your teams interact, so we invite you to visit http://www.goalsinsight.com/programs/team_training.html. This is a great way to show appreciation for your team and enhance their productivity, thereby improving the bottom line for your organization!

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About Goals InSight, Inc.

Goals InSight, Inc. helps organizations achieve their desired results in the following ways - click on any of the links for details:

• Team/Department Coaching to help your team achieve its goals with focus and accountability
  
  
• Team Development Seminars/Diagnostic Assessment to measure the productivity and positivity of your team and help your team improve these factors to yield their desired results
  
  
• Strategic Program / Meeting Facilitation to increase the effectiveness and value of your meetings
  
  
• Seminars/Workshops to help your group learn new tools, practice new skills and start taking action
  
  
• Audio CD / Workbooks to create what you most desire using self study, step-by-step guides

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