A Few Notes From Cheryl

Gratefulness During the Holidays:   Thank you so much, our loyal readers, clients and friends, for being part of our online community. It is your support of the work that we do that helps us continue growing and coming up with new programs to better serve you. It is truly an honor to do this team development work, and I am so grateful that I get to do work that I love every day. Thank you for your continued support of Goals InSight!

Best wishes for a happy and safe holiday season,

Cheryl, Sharon, Susan and team

Cheryl

return to top

Feature Article: How Will Your Team Celebrate This Year’s Accomplishments?

It is that time of year, where we’re winding down toward the end of another twelve months. This is a time for completion and reflection, so that you can complete the current year, and then begin the new year with specific intentions and goals that are important to you and your team.

As I work with teams, one of the biggest challenges that I see is that teams forget to celebrate their accomplishments! Most teams complete one project and then move on to the next project, often without so much as taking a breath in between! Does that sound familiar?

One team that I’ve been working with recently is now putting “celebrations” on their weekly meeting agenda, so as not to forget the importance of acknowledging their accomplishments and reflecting on what they learned during the process.

Here are a couple of places to look to measure how well your team is celebrating:

1.  Pause: How often does your team pause between projects or initiatives? When was the last time your team hit the “pause” button when a project or initiative was completed? Or, does your team typically say “whew, glad that’s over” and then move on to the next project almost without even thinking? In the work that I do with teams, we make sure to build in time to pause so that the team literally gets to breathe a bit before moving on to the next project or initiative.

2.  Reflect: When was the last time your team held a meeting to reflect on the learnings of your project or accomplishments? During that meeting, what did your team do – look at all of the things the team did wrong, or the things that went well, or both? I would suggest that you do both. First, look at all of your successes – not only is that fun, but it helps your team recognize its “wins” which then helps your team continue maintaining their momentum.) Then, look at the things that your team could have done differently – where could they have taken different actions? Where could they have interacted better together in order to enhance the team’s relationships (particularly trust, respect and camaraderie) in order to be a high-performing team? Where could the team have executed better on the team or organization’s mission, vision and values?

3. Get Specific: This is the time to be very specific about not only your team’s “wins” and successes, but also your team’s challenges and “failures” (in team coaching, we use that word “failure” lightly and actually celebrate the “failures” because there is lots to learn from them!). I invite you and your team to brainstorm a specific list of ALL of the wins/successes as well as challenges/failures so that you can really see the year for what it was.

4. Celebrate and Learn: For each item on your list, find a way to celebrate and learn from both your successes and failures! This is a fun way to acknowledge everything that your team did as well as who they were during this past year. If you’re stuck on ideas or examples of ways to help your team celebrate, you’re welcome to read a previous article I wrote on this topic that contains a list of possible ways to celebrate at http://www.goalsinsight.com/newsletters/2006-10.html .

5. Don’t Jump Into Getting Ready for Next Year: As you bring your celebrations and learnings with your team to a close, invite them to be present with their celebrations for right now and not worry about next year in THIS moment. There will be plenty of time to get ready for the new year very soon….NOW is the time to bring the current year into completion first. This can often be difficult for teams, which is why this topic of acknowledging and celebrating is so important – enjoy what is here right now, in this moment, and there will be plenty of time for scheduling a planning session for next year!

Enjoy this special time with your team! We at Goals InSight wish you all the best as you complete this year, and want to thank you again for your continued support of the work we do.

return to top

Upcoming Workshops

Our 2008 Workshops will be announced very soon!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 your 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!

return to top

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

return to top