Coach Dan's Blog

📖 “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” -Friedrich Nietzsche Nietzsche's thinking about how individuals interact when in a group closely aligns with the concept defined by Irving Janis in 1972 called "groupthink." ✏️ Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon in which people strive for consensus within a group. In many cases, people will set aside their own personal beliefs or adopt the opinions of the rest of the group. Individuals with differing opinions, or even opposed to the group's decisions frequently remain quiet in order to keep the peace rather than disrupt the crowd's uniformity. This phenomenon is common in the workplace, as the decision-making cycle continues to compress, and the pressure to deliver increases. It's a danger to leaders and managers because it reduces the likelihood of teams identifying and mitigating risk. Creativity and innovation is pushed to the side in favor of "goin...

"I want my team to be more accountable." "I wish my team took initiative more often." "It would be great if my team thought more 'out of the box.'" Teach your team HOW to think, instead of WHAT to think. Teams follow your lead, so if you're looking for improvements in them... why not start looking at how you're leading? Start by turning the statements into questions. ❔ How can I make my team more accountable? 💡 Give them a stake in solving problems. Encourage them to design AND build solutions. People tend to feel more ownership when they have a hand in designing what's being built. For example: -- Conduct brainstorming sessions around solving a specific problem. -- Gamify problem solving ( such as rewards for the most creative solution to a sticky problem.)   ❔ What am I doing to keep my team from taking initiative? 💡 Be clear about the results you are looking for, and reward your team for identifying ways t...

  “Do not give them a candle to light the way, teach them how to make fire instead. That is the meaning of enlightenment.” ― Kamand Kojouri   It's a fine line- balancing between helping your partners achieve a goal, and teaching them the skills (and building the experience) necessary to achieve their goals over and over and over again.   ⛔ "Just tell us what to do, and we will do it." ⛔ "Provide us the steps or the checklist." ⛔ "How do you want us to do this?"   This language is common, and it suggests to me that the team (regardless of level) has been conditioned to not take risks. To me it means they have learned through experience that their safest course of action is to have someone else solve the problem and instead just do as told.     In other words, they are doing exactly what they have been trained (and incen ted) to do.   Sure- some problems need to be solved right now! There can be an immediate benefit ...

Happy Monday. As you set your goals for the upcoming week, why not challenge yourself to try one small thing? Leaders who ask questions instead of giving instructions create an enviornment where team members feel empowered and passonate about solving problems. 💡 "What are your ideas about how to solve this?" 💡"If you were me, how would you address this?" 💡"If you could solve this problem right now, what would you do?" Give your team members the space to be creative, and the support to implement their own solutions - and they will thrive! What's stopping you from making a small change today? We all win together.  

The key to unlocking your team's full potential? Balancing the 3 Es - Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Engagement. While many organizations focus solely on efficiency, measuring and optimizing for results, this approach can lead to limited long-term value. By inspecting and balancing the 3 Es, leaders can enable cross-functional teams to achieve their full potential indefinitely. Don't limit your team's success - prioritize effectiveness and engagement alongside efficiency.

One of the most important contributions that leaders can make in any transformation is to model the types of behaviors that we want teams and team members to adopt!  Modeling our target behaviors sends a very clear message that we are invested in not only changing the way we approach work, but also the culture that enables and reinforces those target behaviors.  Making small but thoughtful changes in the way you present yourself to your teams and partners can go a long way in creating the kind of organization we need.  As you’re working with your teams and partners, consider incorporating just one small thing from the following ideas. Pro tip – Don't have time to read this whole document right now?  Check out the “tl;dr” (Typed Long; Didn’t Read) section at the bottom of this post for an executive summary. Emphasize outcomes and put a premium on achieving business results rather than focusing on output.  Agile minded leaders view results in terms of achieving b...

  I ' ve heard a lot of talk about empowerment lately, so I thought I might offer a perspective (and maybe some advice) on the topic.  Let's start with a definition we can all rally around, shall we? "Empowered employees believe they have the tools, resources, autonomy and support they need to act independently and be held accountable for the decisions they make" - Society for Human Resources Management. As much as we'd like, this doesn't just magically happen..... If you show up on a Tuesday and say " OK team, you're empowered ".  I'm sorry to tell you, you will be pretty disappointed in the results. You see, for employees to actually act independently -  to make decisions on behalf of the company - to help them achieve their objectives, people have to feel  safe .  Employees have to feel like they have the ability, but also the backing by their managers and leaders, so if a mistake is made, the don't find themselves under a bus.  Empowe...

 Empowerment begins with your team feeling psychologically safe. This week's blog post is specially crafted for leaders, managers, product managers and product owners.  Don't let that slow you down if you have a different fancy job title, of course, but today I'm speaking directly to the leaders of teams! One of my favorite definitions of empowerment comes from CEQ, Collaborative Equalit y: “Empowerment is defined as …the largest amount of voluntary and discretionary action in support of the company’s goals.  It is people proactively, and habitually, doing the right things at right time; people working out what’s needed and acting without instruction; people looking within the team for support, not looking upwards for answers." Sounds pretty great, doesn’t it?  Problem is, it doesn’t just happen!  You have to work every day at creating and maintaining an environment where your teams feel safe to “work out what’s needed and act without instruction.” Here are some...