Facilitate Proceedings » Group Dynamics

Are meetings still relevant?

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 21:06:20 +0000

In a webinar earlier this year sponsored by NewWOW (New Ways of Working), David Coleman posed a provocative question: “In the world of enterprise social collaboration, has the social construct of “meetings” become anachronistic? In other words, are meetings obsolete?”

I’ve had a few weeks to ruminate his question. My initial reply: Of course! To have a real conversation, people really have to be talking together, at the same time, in pretty much the same way. Otherwise, we’re just pushing out (or pulling in) a bunch of potentially disconnected thoughts that often cross paths somewhere in the clouds. That’s not the stuff authentic conversations are made of, IMHO.

Develop Your Team’s Cultural Literacy

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:37:35 +0000

A client of mine, a manager of organizational effectiveness for a global services firm, recently posed this question: “Although our corporate HQ is here in the U.S., our company is run by teams of people located all over the world. Perhaps because many have limited experience working regularly with people of other cultures, most of the Americans—who are top performers here in the U.S.—seem to be struggling. I’ve been asked to coach a group of American managers to become more effective global collaborators. Any advice?”

In this post, I’ll share some advice for helping your team develop cultural literacy. Later, I’ll talk about how this translates into good behavior in team communications.

Six Management Practices That Don’t Cut It in a Virtual World

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:19:52 +0000

Do you think that just because you’re a successful manager of traditional teams that you’ll automatically be a hotshot manager in the virtual world? Maybe not. In fact, it’s often those managers who assume their leadership skills are eminently transportable to a virtual team are those who struggle the most. Why? They haven’t taken the time to understand how vastly different virtual team dynamics can be for both leaders and team members, and thus, are less likely to find ways to accommodate those differences.

In this issue, I explore some of the “traditional” management tenets that are most likely to backfire in a virtual world, and offer some alternatives that will yield better results when leading teams who work remotely.

The Magic Number That Helps Teams Flourish

Danuta McCall — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:21:58 +0000

I was patrolling my corner of the blogosphere when I came upon a post that referenced research by psychologists Marcial Losada and Barbara Fredrickson about how positivity impacts team performance. Experiments have shown that positive affect (positive sentiments, attitudes and emotions) makes individuals, teams and organizations flourish – that is function optimally. People and teams who flourish are more flexible, resilient, creative and intuitive. On the opposite side, languishing teams exhibit narrow thinking, boredom, cynicism.

The Magic Number
Now, Losada and Fredrickson hypothesized that people or teams with a positivity ratio (ratio of pleasant feelings to unpleasant feelings) that meets or exceeds a specific threshold would be also characterized as flourishing. Losada studied a large group of business teams during their annual strategy meetings, tracking statements made in the meetings as positive, negative or neutral. He then measured the performance of these teams and determined that there is indeed a positivity ratio, and it’s (drum roll, please)…