Working Resources for Leadership - Bay Area Executive Coaching

Assessing an Existing Team: 6 Probing Questions To Ask

Assessing an Existing Team

Work today is frequently accomplished in teams. You want to create a winning team in the first 90 days. Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent leaders assess team members by asking each person powerful questions. Everyone needs to quickly and honestly know where they stand regarding the mission and goals of the team and organization.

In my executive coaching work with leaders, I help them formulate the right questions to ask team members. It takes a lot of interpersonal skill to formulate and ask questions that will provide a comprehensive assessment of team members and the team.

Can you think of any questions that you might ask to assess an existing team?

Prepare to meet formally with each person by reviewing available personnel history, performance data and other appraisals. During your meeting, ask probing questions. Michael Watkins, in his excellent book The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels suggests the following for a comprehensive evaluation:

1.  What do you think of our existing strategy?

2.  What are the biggest challenges we face in the short term? In the long term?

3.  What are the biggest opportunities we face?

4.  What resources could we leverage more effectively?

5.  How could we improve the way the team works together?

6.  If you were in my position, to what would you want to pay attention?

Be on the alert for nonverbal cues. While a person’s actual words have merit, much is revealed by body language, as well as what a person omits and the way in which he communicates:

• What doesn’t he/she say?
• Does he/she volunteer information or wait until he/she’s asked?
• Does the person reveal areas of weakness or only strengths?
• Does the team member blame others or take responsibility for specific things?
• Does the person make excuses?
• How consistent is his/her body language with his/her words
• Which topics evoke a lot of energy?
• What is this person like outside of meetings, when he/she interacts on an informal level with others?
• Does he/she tend to be cordial, polite, tense, competitive, judgmental or reserved?

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the BarOn EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more inspiring and happy team leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

How To Lead A Team In The First Ninety Days: 6 Criteria to Assess an Existing Team

Work today is often accomplished by self-managed high performing teams. Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent leaders are learning agile at building high performance teams by quickly assessing talent. Everyone needs to quickly and honestly know where they stand regarding the mission and goals of the team and organization.

How do you assess your existing team as quickly as possible? How do you reduce your learning curve and jump start your team’s performance in the first 90 days? What are the most common mistakes leaders in a new position make?

How to Assess an Existing Team

When performing your evaluation, you’ll find some excellent, some average and some unsatisfactory people in place. You will inherit a group with its own dynamics and habitual ways of working. You cannot afford to make one of the most common errors: gathering them in a room, telling them that you’re in charge now, and that you’ll be making some changes. Instead, you will need to sort out who’s who, the functions people perform and how the group has worked in the past.

Go in and shake the tree, and you’re guaranteed to lose some of the best leaves along with the rotting ones. Always evaluate thoroughly before acting. Hasty action compromises trust and credibility. You may inadvertently lose valuable team members.

If you are like most leaders, you will form an impression each time you meet someone. Hold onto those thoughts, but don’t hold them as truths. Remember: They are merely first impressions. Allow them to register, don’t suppress them, and then allow other factors to influence your ultimate appraisal.

You also must decide which criteria to use when evaluating your people. Michael Watkins, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard and author of The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels suggests using the following:

o    Competence – Does this person have the technical skills and experience to do the job well?

o    Judgment – Does this person exercise good judgment under pressure or when faced with sacrifice for the greater good?

o    Energy – Does this team member bring the right kind of energy to the job, or is he/she disengaged, burned out or unfulfilled?

o    Focus – Does this person stick to priorities, or is he/she easily distracted and scattered?

o    Relationships – Does this person get along well with other team members, supporting team decisions?

o    Trust – Can you trust this person to be honest, consistent and reliable?

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the BarOn EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more inspiring and happy team leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

Team Leadership in the First 90 Days - Wisely Assessing a Team

Work today more often than not is being done in teams. Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent leaders are learning agile at quickly building high performance teams by assessing talent. Everyone needs to quickly and honestly know where they stand regarding the mission and vision of the organization.

A Winning Team in the First 90 Days

“The most important decisions you make in your first 90 days will probably be about the people on your team. If you succeed in creating a high-performance team, you can exert tremendous leverage in value creation. If not, you will face severe difficulties, for no leader can hope to achieve much alone”.
— Michael Watkins, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, Harvard Business School Press, 2003.

Assessing a team—deciding who should stay and who should go—is one of the most critical tasks an executive faces when transitioning into a new position. It can create or destroy leverage—and leadership is ultimately about leverage.

Each year, about 25 percent of managers in typical Fortune 500 companies change jobs. Most spend an average of four years in a given position. High-potential leaders in mid-senior ranks move more frequently: every 2.5 to 3 years. These statistics demonstrate why leaders must build strong teams, composed of the right people in the right jobs, as quickly as possible.

The first weeks are crucial for learning and evaluating. Leaders must maintain the right balance of confidence and humility, while asking probing questions and actively listening. During this time, leaders are most vulnerable. Without a firm support network in place, they must learn everything they can about the organization, its strategies, customers and team members in the shortest possible time-frame.

Leaders must dedicate a large percentage of learning time to getting to know existing team members. If you are promoted to a new position from within the organization, you are likely acquainted with some of its key people. Transition from the outside, and you face the task of identifying and placing the right people into the right positions—a much greater challenge. Either way, you must choose wisely, without disrupting short-term performance.

How do you assess your existing team as quickly as possible? How do you reduce your learning curve and jump-start your team’s performance in the first 90 days? What are the most common mistakes leaders in a new position make?

How would you answer the above three questions? They will be addressed in the next few posts.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the BarOn EQi and CPI 260 can help you become a  more inspiring and happy team leader.
You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

Building Healthy Companies - Elements of Happiness

There is a great deal of exciting research in the area of happiness including findings from positive psychology, brain physiology, appreciative inquiry, and emotional intelligence. You might find further reading in these areas enlightening.

A great deal of my executive coaching with clients is informed by focusing on clients strengths and improving emotional intelligence and social intelligence. Positive psychology and appreciative inquiry focus on what is right with people and organizations leveraging strengths for achieving success. There is a great deal of attention to gratitude and appreciation.

Are you leveraging your strengths?

How Leaders Can Motivate Younger Workers - Questions to Ask Younger Generations

Great leaders know how to inspire and motivate all kinds of people. Workers are motivated in different ways.

You need to discover what is meaningful to each employee on a deep level. Why do they come to work? Why do they stay? I coach a number of "older" leaders who are sometimes baffled by the "inner workings" of their younger colleagues

Do you feel that you know your younger workers? Taking a coach approach and learning to ask powerful questions can often reveal what truly matters.

Boomers Versus Gen Xers - Hours and Input

Boomers  and Gen Xers have different work habits. Boomers value putting in long hours and Gen X employees are concerned with completing work and less on the time it takes.

I am the executive coach of a young executive in a privately owned company. The Baby Boomer owners value "face time". The company culture strongly encourages hard work and long hours. The Gen X executive gets her work done, but has other priorities. There is a clash between how the generations view work.

What coaching suggestions would you have in this scenario?

Managing Different Generations: Inspiring and Motivating Gen Xers

I was born in 1946 right after World War 11. I am definitely a Boomer!

I often find it fascinating coaching clients across different generations. What motivates one person is very different for another. Each person is unique, but there are some interesting generational themes and patterns.

Do you see the various generations having different values and beliefs about workplace success ?

Emotional Intelligence and Team Building: How to Handle a Disruptive Executive

The workplace is  full of great people wanting to work collaboratively with others. However, as we know life is not simple and some people are difficult. Of course this could describe me or you! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I am currently coaching an executive team.  One of the executives is very disruptive. The team leader  realizes the team is dysfunctional but avoids conflict and enables "bad behavior".

What would you do with a disruptive team member?

Creating Loyalty in Your Workforce: Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions

Employees want to know where they stand. It is the job of leaders to provide feedback and create a culture where in the moment feedback is modeled and encouraged.

I am currently working with an executive coaching client who wants to improve his emotional intelligence. As part of the process we are incorporating multi-rater 360 degree feedback. In my interviews with raters, it is clear that  some of the raters view my client as entitled, sometimes disrespectful and aways seeing her priorities as more important than that of others.

My client has blind spots related to these behaviors. She is open to feedback to get better. However, her co-workers are not comfortable having a conversation with my client about the behaviors they observe. The boss of my client likes to "leave well enough alone" and models not having difficult conversations unless absolutely necessary. The culture reflects this mind-set.

Are you comfortable giving and receiving feedback?   

Retaining Top Talent: Why They leave, Why They Stay

Engaged employees want challenging, meaningful work, a boss that cares, and an opportunity to learn and grow on the job. Some fun wouldn't be a bad idea either!

I work with a lot of high potential clients in my executive coaching programs.  In my experience, the leaders who are looking elsewhere report feeling under appreciated not necessarily under compensated.

What are the main reasons people choose to leave your organization? Why do they stay?