As the New Year gets underway there is a lot of focus on resolutions, goals, and intentions, which makes sense and can be both important and impactful. However, what we’re usually wanting to experience with whatever healthy practices or desired achievements we focus on is feeling good about ourselves. And what can often get in the way of our success and fulfillment is being harsh and critical of ourselves. What if we started with self-kindness and made a commitment to be kind to ourselves, regardless of the circumstance, situation, or outcome? On this episode, I talk about how important this is and I share some specific techniques for how to accept, appreciate, and have compassion for ourselves.
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Four Keys to Creating a Team Culture of High Performance, Trust and Belonging
Creating a strong team culture of high performance, trust, and belonging is essential to success, although it can be incredibly challenging to do, especially these days.
When I was working on my latest book a few years ago, We’re All in This Together (which is just about to come out in paperback), I had no idea about the devastating global pandemic that would change the way we live and work in just about every way.
Now more than ever, for our teams to navigate these continual uncertain times successfully, we must come together, connect authentically, and lean on each other in an ongoing, healthy, and sustainable way.
For the past two decades, I’ve been studying, researching, speaking, and writing about the qualities of great teams. I’ve been honored to partner with organizations like Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Schwab, eBay, Genentech, Gap, the NBA, the Oakland A’s, and so many others—helping them enhance the culture and performance of their teams.
In addition to these large, well-known brands, I’ve also worked with small businesses, government agencies, educational institutions, nonprofits, local school districts, and more.
And while each team and organization have their own unique challenges, goals, and dynamics, there are some universal qualities that allow teams to effectively collaborate, trust each other, and perform at the highest level—even and especially amid change, challenge, and uncertainty.
4 Keys to Creating a Team Culture of High Performance
Here are the four key traits of high performing teams that I’ve learned through my research and experience:
1. Create psychological safety
Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for risk-taking. People on teams with psychological safety have a sense of confidence that their team will not embarrass, reject, or punish them for speaking up or taking risks.
The team climate is characterized by an atmosphere of interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves without fear of negative consequences to their self-image, status, or career.
Essentially, psychological safety is trust at a group level.
Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson has researched and written extensively about psychological safety over the past 20 years. “It’s not enough for organizations to simply hire talent,” she says. “If leaders want to unleash individual and collective talent, they must foster a psychologically safe climate where employees feel free to contribute ideas, share information, and report mistakes.”
A 2017 Gallup study found that only three in ten employees strongly agree with the statement that their opinions count at work. Gallup calculated that by “moving the ratio to six in ten employees, organizations could realize a 27 percent reduction in turnover, a 40 percent reduction in safety incidents, and a 12 percent increase in productivity.”
2. Focus on inclusion and belonging
An essential element of creating a safe environment that allows people to trust each other, collaborate with one another and perform at their highest level as a team is inclusion and belonging.
There are countless studies linking inclusion to higher profits, increased engagement scores, and enhanced business results.
For example, according to a study of 140 U.S. companies by Accenture alongside the American Association of People with Disabilities, those that offered the most inclusive working environment for employees with disabilities achieved an average 28 percent higher revenue, 30 percent greater economic profit margins, and twice the net income of their industry peers between 2015 and 2018.
Inclusion means “having respect for and appreciation of differences in ethnicity, gender, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, education, and religion.” It also means “actively involving everyone’s ideas, knowledge, perspectives, approaches, and styles to maximize business success.”
And, as important as it is for us to focus on both diversity and inclusion, the ultimate goal is to create an environment on the team and in the company where everyone feels as though they belong, regardless of who they are, the role they have, and their background.
3. Embrace sweaty-palmed conversations
Great teams embrace conflict and feedback as natural and important aspects of growth, collaboration, and success. This means they must be willing to have those awkward, uncomfortable, sweaty-palmed conversations with each other.
The problem is that because conflict and feedback can be hard, most teams aren’t very good at it.
However, when team members create an environment conducive to having healthy and productive conflict, they can connect more deeply, navigate challenges effectively, give each other feedback in a way that makes everyone better, and innovate in ways that allow them to thrive.
Research conducted by CPP Inc., publisher of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, has shown that in the U.S., workplace conflict costs companies more than $350 billion a year. And that figure reflects just the time people spend dealing with conflict; it doesn’t include the emotional, psychological, and physical toll it takes on people personally.
Nate Regier, author of Conflict Without Casualties, whom I had a chance to interview on my podcast, says, “The purpose of conflict is to create, not destroy.”
4. Care about and challenge each other
What I’ve seen, experienced, and learned about high-performing teams over the years is that they understand and have a balance of two important things at the same time: Caring About Each Other and Challenging Each Other.
Both of these are essential and must be focused on with the same level of intensity for the team and all of its members to perform at the highest level.
For a team to thrive, there must be a deep level of trust that everyone has each other’s backs, has good intentions, and is moving in the same direction together.
In a piece published in the Harvard Business Review in 2017, neuroeconomist Paul Zak writes, “Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report 74 percent less stress, 50 percent higher productivity, and 76 percent more engagement.”
In other words, creating a strong culture of trust, as well as an environment where people know they’re cared about and supported by their teammates, leads to significantly greater engagement and performance.
In addition to building and maintaining this level of trust and care for one another, great teams commit to challenging each other respectfully and passionately to be their absolute best, both personally and collectively.
The Importance of Embodying These Teamwork Traits Right Now
When teams understand, practice, and embody these four key traits, they can create a team culture of high performance, trust, and belonging. Doing this allows them to thrive, even and especially when facing significant uncertainty and challenges as we are these days.
This is an adapted excerpt from the book We’re All in This Together by Mike Robbins, published by Hay House Business, March 2022 (paperback)
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Wrapping Up the Year and Setting Ourselves Up for Success in the New Year
I love this week between Christmas and New Years…it’s usually a time to rest, reflect, and prepare. On this episode, I talk about how we can consciously complete the year that is ending. This past year has been challenging for me and so many of us. And, if we’re intentional about it, we can bring real closure to this year, which can create the freedom and space to create something new in 2022. I also talk about how we can set ourselves up for success in the new year with how we think about our intentions, goals, and habits.
[Read more…] about Wrapping Up the Year and Setting Ourselves Up for Success in the New Year
The Importance of Flexibility
Flexibility can help improve every aspect of your life – your work, relationships, health, family, creativity, success, and more.
How flexible are you? For me, it often depends on my mood, how much fear or resistance I have about something, how attached I am to a particular outcome, and various other factors.
The Importance of Flexibility to Reach Fulfillment
Flexibility directly impacts fulfillment in all areas of your life.
As I look throughout my own life (now and in the past), I realize that the situations, relationships, and experiences that cause me the most significant stress and frustration are almost always the ones where I’m not flexible. On the flip side, the more flexible I am, the more peace, ease, and fulfillment become available.
The massive changes brought to our lives due to COVID-19 have also put us to the test. These changes have challenged us to be flexible in every aspect of our lives. As a leadership consultant and executive coach, I see that now, more than ever, we are facing challenges that force us to be flexible – in our work, our relationships, and in every other important aspect of our lives.
However, due to our fear, resistance, stress, and obsession with being right, we often end up being inflexible to our own detriment and frustration of those around us (or so I’ve been told).
On my podcast, we discuss this a lot. I talk about how being flexible is not about being weak or passive. Flexibility is a conscious choice, a powerful skill, and a practical approach to the ever-changing, always-evolving world we live in.
We must be a positive force for change. We can be firm in our convictions, passionate about our beliefs, and clear about our intentions, and at the same time be flexible enough to make significant changes and be open to new ideas along the way.
Key Elements to Understanding the Importance of Flexibility
Here are some critical elements to understanding the importance of flexibility and expanding your capacity for flexibility in your life, which will lead you to greater peace, joy, and fulfillment.
Let Go of Your Attachment
Whenever we develop an attachment to something – a specific outcome, a particular way of doing things, a rigid opinion, etc. – we are, by definition, inflexible.
Letting go of our attachment to something doesn’t mean we negate our desire or intention. It simply means we let go of controlling every aspect of it, forcing the action, and our fixation on it is precisely the way we think it should be, which is a process of conscious “non-attachment” (letting go), as opposed to detachment (not caring).
Be Willing to Be Wrong
To reach fulfillment, we must be willing to be wrong.
Most of us love to be correct and will do and say just about anything to avoid being wrong. Our obsession with “rightness” and fear of “wrongness” often gets in the way of going for what we want, saying what’s on our mind, and letting go of our fixed ideas about how things should be.
When we’re willing to be wrong (not necessarily interested in or intending to be wrong), we free ourselves up and permit ourselves to take risks, try new things, and approach things (even essential things) with a creative, innovative, and flexible perspective.
Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously
Taking ourselves too seriously (something I know a thing or two about) creates unnecessary stress, pressure, and worry.
When we’re able to laugh at ourselves (in a kind way), keep things in perspective, and remember that most of what we deal with daily in life is not life or death – we can take ourselves less seriously and thus have a more balanced, peaceful, and creative way of relating to things.
When we stress out all the time, it puts us in a negative headspace. Being able to keep things in a positive light can bring a lot of peace into your life. You can learn more about how to do that here.
Go With the Flow
If we pay attention to life, there is a natural flow that exists (although it may not always look like it or feel like it). The more we’re able to tap into the natural flow of life, trust ourselves and others, and believe that things will work out – the more likely we are to allow things to roll off our backs and manifest with ease. As Esther Hicks says, “Most people are rowing against the current of life. Instead of turning the boat around, all they need to do is let go of the oars.”
Get Support and Feedback From Others
The support and feedback of others are invaluable in so many aspects of our life and growth, especially related to us being more flexible. We can learn from and model others who are more flexible than we are. We can also give people in our life permission to remind us (with kindness) when we get rigid, uptight, over-attached, and start taking ourselves too seriously.
Being flexible is something that’s often easier said than done for many of us. However, just as with our physical bodies, the more attention we place on expanding our flexibility, we are more likely to do it. As we enhance our ability to be flexible, our life can and will expand exponentially.
How can you practice being more flexible in your life right now? Share your thoughts, ideas, insights, actions, and more on my blog below.
I have written five books about the importance of flexibility, authenticity, appreciation, and more. I deliver keynotes and seminars (both in-person and virtually) to empower people, leaders, and teams to grow, connect, and perform their best. As an expert in teamwork, leadership, and emotional intelligence, I teach techniques that allow people and organizations to be more authentic and effective. Find out more about how I can help you and your team achieve your goals today.
Feel free to leave any comments here. You can also listen to my podcast here.
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The Important Difference Between Positive and Negative Competition
The Power of Gratitude
Love is the Secret Sauce of High Performing Teams
This article was originally published on January 20, 2011, and has been updated for 2021.
The Power of Creation
While the calendar has turned from 2020 to 2021, we still find ourselves in difficult and uncertain times. We do have the opportunity to tap into the power of creation as we start this new year. On this episode, I talk about how important and powerful it can be to create this new year with intention. I also provide a specific process and series of questions we can answer as we set our goals for 2021. Conscious creation is essential and can help us both manifest what we truly want and focus on what matters most.