“”Is there a better way? Can you avoid printing that page?”
Photograph by Annie Sprat, Unsplash
Many project teams use tablets and television screens to project information during meetings for meeting participants to consider and discuss. And while we have cloud storage and the ability to access and edit or markup files from multiple devices, it appears that printing has not yet lost its appeal for some. If you are not yet ready to consider a working day without a printer, here are some ways to be more sustainable with the way you work on a day-to-day basis.
Removing Waste: Recycling
Have you considered what the end-of-life would be for that page you just printed and may be ready to throw into the trash bin soon? Why not set up a special bin for just collecting paper to be recycled? In some locations, secure bins are available which ensures that sensitive papers are securely stored until they are collected by the supplier and recycled.
Refills
Are you making use of a printer cartridge refill scheme? Instead of throwing used cartridges away, there may be suppliers in your area where you can get refills for your used cartridges.
And talking about printing cartridges – can you use only one colour – black? Having multiple colours may generate additional waste and perhaps you can save the colourful displays for virtual online documents?
Materials used
The paper you use for printing, is it made from environmentally-friendly recycled processes? Why not ask your local suppliers to advise you about recycled paper options available to you?
Habits
If you print on both sides of a page, you could be saving on paper usage and you could be lowering the weight of printed documents being shipped to recipients of your printed materials!
Fewer printers
Do you really need so many printers in your office? Or could you lower the ongoing electric power needs of printers and also encourage more physical movement of people during the day. Asking them to walk a little further in order to retrieve printed pages may be a great way to ensure they move out of a sedentary posture and increase blood circulation. Regular breaks and physical movement are great ways to improve physical and mental well–being at work.
Lower energy usage
Ensure that printers are turned off completely at the end of the working day and over weekends and periods of office closures. This ensures that no power is used in standby mode.
Consider digital solutions
Looking at the processes you use in your office – are you printing notifications or informational posters and is there a way to instead share it with colleagues, suppliers or customers digitally? For example – could suppliers download an electronic file from your website showing how you would like invoices prepared?
Understand your data and set improvement targets
Do you know who prints the most pages in the office? Is there an opportunity to engage with someone on printing more sustainably? Not everyone has been exposed to ways they could lower energy usage or how to avoid creating waste.. It could be great to have a discussion with someone about this.. Improving awareness is often the first step towards more sustainable practices at the office.
Getting together to set targets in your office like “We track our number of printed pages, and we strive to lower it by 10% this month compared to the previous month!” can be great ways to keep everyone focused on lowering your environmental footprint as an office..
In most cases, becoming more aware and conscious of ways that we can become less wasteful and generate less waste can be the first step toward being more innovative and finding new ways to positively impact the world and those around us. What will you do today to lower the waste you generate?
Want to get to know your colleagues or teammates on a project? These may give you ideas for topics to ask about and discuss. Perhaps you are looking for a novel way to get to know your friends or family members better?
Some people have trouble with knowing what to talk about or which topics to ask others about to go beyond the first level of getting to know someone – if we assume the first level would be obvious topics like where are you from, what did you study, what kind of role you are in now, etc.
Pick just a handful of topics at most to avoid the other person feeling interviewed. You could also pick perhaps one to two to ask someone you work with or talk to mostly about work on a regular basis – perhaps just before or after a meeting. It could also be useful during a coffee break. Who knows what surprises you may have in learning to understand someone better?
Be sure to pick the right options for people you barely know – some of the topics are better suited for discussions when you already know someone – like friends or family members. I am sure you will apply common sense and wisdom in selecting fun topics that would match the situation and the person you plan to talk to.
Some of these questions can also be used in group ice breaker exercises or as a fun leg-stretching exercise in the middle of a long day of training or meetings.
Some recruiters like to use a question like these to see how candidates might respond. So, read through these, who knows when you may need to come up with an answer to one of them? 😊
Mentoring usually takes place between someone with experience and someone who needs advice and training in specific areas. Starting the process of mentoring duos sometimes skip the step where they talk about how we agree to go through this process together. What is important to you? What is important to me? What can each of us commit to in order for this to work well for both of us?
This free template below helps you to structure a conversation around what the mentor and mentee specifically agree to commit to. How many hours per month/quarter would we like to spend talking through specific topics?
Feel free to add additional items which would be important to discuss during the first meeting when you (mentor and mentee) agree on how to proceed. This kind of discussion may seem unnecessary, but covering these items upfront can save a lot of disappointment and misunderstandings later when items you might have imagined would be obviously included in your mentoring agreement vary from what the other person may have thought. It is not a contractual agreement as much as it is a summary of what you do or don’t want to commit to for the duration of the mentoring relationship.
When it comes to time commitments, it is also advisable to agree for the mentoring process to have a set time period – 12 months or 18 months. And when that time comes, review what has been achieved and learned and whether it makes sense to continue the mentoring relationship or to agree to end it at that time.
Clearly defining the development objectives to be addressed helps to steer the direction of mentoring discussions. What is it that the mentee needs to know, needs to be able to do, and would like to be able to understand? The more detailed this section is, the easier it might be for either the mentor or the mentee to recognize when the mentoring relationship has helped to achieve those outcomes and it may be time to evaluate whether it makes sense to end the mentoring relationship or continue it with new development objectives.Considering the agreements discussed during the first section, are there any other expectations that each has of the other and which are useful to mention specifically? For example, the mentor may have the expectation that the mentee would devote time to read specific books or articles every week. Are those expectations realistic for the mentee? If he or she has other obligations which may make it difficult to meet that expectation, it is best to discuss them early on to avoid a misalignment later on in the mentoring relationship.
The full template can be downloaded below – it is a *.pdf file and it can be imported into MSWord for edits.
This file can be very useful to ensure that mentors and mentees are aligned early on in their association which gives their mentoring relationship the best chance to be successful!
Working on multicultural teams you may have had moments of wondering what he or she just meant by that comment? Or why will he or she not make a key decision so an activity can move forward? Cultural perspectives and ways of life may be one of the reasons that could explain those incidents.
It is fun to meet people from other cultures and learn about their lives and experiences. And at first it may be interesting to learn how their cultures vary from your own, but once you work on a project together and it is remote working, including long hours and tight deadlines those differences can start to cause friction on the team. This can slow down progress and impact team morale. Being aware of the most common inter-cultural disconnects can prevent team members from blaming it on a person and instead enter into a discussion to unpack the root cause of a lack of action, lack of decision-making or the exact opposite – too many fast actions without thinking or making decisions without considering consequences.
4 Areas of misunderstanding that can impact inter-cultural teams
Some things are smart to do in order to ensure the team understands required project outcomes and approaches to use. Aspects would include clarifying the definition of done, outlining project phases and deadlines, assigning roles and responsibilities and having regular meetings to monitor and understand progress and resolve issues that are hindering progress or pose a risk.
Some aspects may need additional attention if your team consists of a few members from very different cultures.
1. Managing to deadlines
This relates to how important team members believe deadlines are. Some may see them as a guideline while others will suffer anxiety and will work longer hours to make sure the are met. In some cultures, there is a strong emphasis on being for example exactly on time for an appointment while in other cultures it may be okay to be a few minutes late for business meetings and perhaps even a few hours late for a social engagement.
Cross-cultural impact:
Make sure all team members understand the consequences, knock-on effects and penalties which may be triggered if the team missed deadlines. Monitor progress and have follow-up conversations if team members are falling behind to ensure they understand the importance of their activities being completed on-time.
Ensure team members understand the priorities they should place on various aspects of the work that needs to be done by the deadline. Ensure it is also clear exactly what “done” means. Do you expect quality checks to be done too or just a first draft of the outcome to be available? Should it be print-ready or just ready for an internal review or further discussions?
2. Clear Role Expectations
There are differences in cultures around the meaning of “in charge” or the Subject Matter Expert (SME). In some cultures, it is customary to take the word of such a person as a mandate to perform a specific task or action exactly according to what he/she said. In other cultures, SMEs and leaders are considered more “accessible”, and dialogue is welcomed when one does not agree with a requirement or task assigned by the one “in charge.” This difference can cause confusion on teams including many different cultures. To what degree can and should instructions be discussed and challenged vs accepted? Are those in expert roles or roles with authority prepared to deal with challenging discussions and comments – if the project team will operate in a culture of open discussions?
Cross-cultural impact:
Have a role discussion at the start of the project and include what would be great questions to ask each role and how interaction is expected to take place on the project to maximize positive team outcomes.
Be sure to have further discussions highlighting best-practices during the project and as new team members join, who may have missed the original discussions around the different project roles and how to best interact with them.
3. Conflict resolution
Conflict shows up differently in each person – some people speak up and go to the “max ” to be heard and understood while others take their thoughts, feelings and especially resentment underground and do not speak out. This means that conflict can be hard to resolve and to feel comfortable that all thoughts and concerns are on the table and discussed before decisions are made. Some cultures are more likely to speak up and make sure their opinions are voiced while others might patiently and politely wait to be asked for an opinion and speaking out of turn (from their perspective) may be seen as impolite or disrespectful. In some cultures open disagreements are best avoided to maintain a cordial/good relationship with others on the project.
Cross-cultural impact:
Use more than one channel to check in with team members and get feedback – ask in meetings, but also check in with individual team members between meetings to understand if there is any part of the path forward chosen which concerns them.
If any team members are especially aggressive in voicing opinions, perhaps a quiet word might help that person to still voice opinions, but possibly in a less forceful way to avoid antagonizing anyone from a culture where a forceful (overly enthusiastic ) communication style might cause discomfort.
Provide training in non-violent communication and voicing messages with a healthy balance between listening and advocating. Help team members to constantly improve in understanding each other’s styles to help communication and collaboration efforts on the project.
When a conflict does occur, address it in a culturally-sensitive way if the disconnect could be related to a cultural difference in perspective. The objective should be to solve and address project issues in a helpful way without causing negative impacts to collaboration on the project.
4. Navigating with many languages
We all know of situations where people from the same country with the same language find it hard to communicate successfully with understanding and openness. When a team consists of many different cultures, this can be so much more confusing and frustrating.
Cross-cultural impact:
Agree from the start of the project to follow a few guidelines such as: For the chosen project language, native speakers are to slow down and use simple ways to bring their points across. And native speakers of the main project language will be patient with non-native speakers trying to get their thoughts across. If there is a large language ability gap between the native-speakers and other team members consider some language classes to bridge the gap.
Consider asking presenters/speakers at planned meetings to send out specific agenda items and a summary paragraph of the issues to be raised and discussed at least a day before the meeting. That would help non-native speakers to prepare ensuring they understand the issues and are able to fully participate in the conversation at the meeting.
When there are significant differences in levels of language abilities on the team, meetings may take longer, and collaboration may also be a little harder especially in a virtual/remote environment. Be sure to take this into account when planning project timelines and deadlines.
Plan ahead to succeed
Knowing you may be starting up a project with a multi-cultural team, schedule team-building activities for team members early on. This will help them get to know each other as humans/people. Establishing trust early on, can avoid frustration turning into conflict and delays in reaching project team deadlines.
Create team opportunities to get to know more about each other’s cultures. This could bridge the gap in understanding each other’s perspectives and avoid labeling, misunderstandings, and internal team misalignments..
Set continuous learning as one of the core values of the team and live it, encourage it and keep bringing the team back to what can be learned from successes and failure as the project progresses. Having a curious and learning mindset is a great way to avoid major disconnects between team members as they will engage in inquiry and advocacy vs judgment and labelling as a default behavior.
We all had times when we were misunderstood or simply did not feel we truly understood what someone else was trying to say. When you have communicators from different national backgrounds, the chances of misunderstandings increase. If you also throw in the fact that only a handful of people in the room have English as a first language, the chances of misunderstandings are magnified even further.
Here are the top 10 reasons why messages may be understood by your intended audience:
What can you do about it?
Wisdom is realizing there is only so much you can impact or control, other factors you may be able to influence, but not change or control. Focus on what you are able to do.
Culturalimpact: Whereas you may not be able to impact where someone grew up, you can learn more about the cultures of others on your team to correctly anticipate any possible impediments to your messages being understood or interpreted correctly.
Not my Language: Knowing how many of your team members do not have English as a first language can help you prepare your messages using simple sentence structures and more common words to avoid confusion.
Distractions (obvious): Ensure that there are no distractions to people being able to pay attention to and maximize their ability to understand you correctly during meetings. In remote settings, having participants on mute where ambient noise causes a distraction on the video call. You can also ask everyone to turn on their cameras to improve engagement during a remote call.
Fake news – Sourcereliability: Ensure that any data you plan to use is sourced from reliable sources – reputable research companies or institutions. Making the resource material or reports available to team members may further positively impact your ability to avoid your message not being accepted due to doubts about the source of key facts presented during your meeting.
What they know: Ensuring that intended meeting participants have enough pre-reading to help them fully engage with the topics you wish to discuss may avoid spending time filling in knowledge gaps that some may have on the topic. Where your topic may be controversial, do not shy away from mentioning opposing views and why you do not support those perspectives.
What theyprefer: If you have a high number of team members who prefer to have material available earlier to study it and form their opinions, consider sending key reports out before the meeting. This will improve chances of having an engaging discussion about the topics you plan to cover in your meeting. Some intended meeting participants may focus more on the financial data, or operational data etc. Be sure to have relevant information available to address predictable questions in these areas.
Judgement before you said a word: If there is something unusual about your appearance of name, consider mentioning it up front or tell a story about it to neutralize the observation and get their attention. Make sure you dress for the occasion to avoid interfering with your own messages.
The last four categories are not easy to impact since they are closely linked to everyone’s psychological make-up or habits. Based on past experiences, personal beliefs and values, people will naturally be drawn towards or away from agreeing with your perspective on a range of topics. Knowing your team or those who would attend your presentations, might help you avoid the pitfalls. Other than that, you may need to use pre-engagement and post-engagement activities to give your messages a higher chance of being correctly interpreted and understood.
The Checklist
Click below to download an excel checklist to help you do a quick check – where can you be more effective when you communicate? Perhaps the checklist shows areas impacting your communication with a key team member. Talking about specific areas impacting your communication success, you may be able to improve your ability to correctly interpret and understand each other’s messages.
Have your review meetings for a process or a policy document turned into a low-value event where tons of slides are being shown and no real discussion takes place? Do you feel confident about the outcomes from your review meetings? What if you had a way to make the review meetings more structured and action-oriented, making sure everyone is engaged?
This activity will help you do that!
When your review meetings succeed they…
Result in improvements and updates that ensure your plan/policy is fit-for-purpose and comply with most recent business and legal requirements,
Make sure your plan/policy, in addition to fully complying with most recent legal and government requirements, also align with your company’s strategies,
Engage all stakeholders making sure every one of them has an opportunity to suggest ways to improve the policy/plan to better meet business needs and concerns, and
Enable you to get through internal and external audits with confidence.
The process
Divide your meeting participants into two groups and give each group a preparation assignment – Team Blue and Team Red. They are to arrive at the meeting, prepared to either defend or criticize the existing plan or policy and underpin their points with solid arguments based on research (doing homework before the meeting).
The blue team has the assignment to identify fact-based reasons why the existing plan or policy is fit-for-purpose, compliant, and good enough as it is today. While the red team has the assignment to research and come prepared to point out specific areas or aspects where the current plan or policy fails to address specific issues or factors.
Preparation
Each of the teams prepare before attending the meeting. The blue team will prepare in this way:
And preparation by the red time includes:
Members from each team bring their notes to the review meeting – prepared to substantiate their claims based on their pre-meeting homework assignments.
Meeting Agenda
After the meeting has been opened, objectives shared and the process discussed, the review process follows these steps:
The Blue team summarizes the high-level benefits and explains how the current version of the document/policy is fit-for-purpose vs over-the-top in terms of mitigating, avoiding or managing risks associated with why the document/policy was originally created. (10 mins)
The Red team then gets 10 minutes to summarize risks or changes to laws, which means that the current policy or document is not currently fit-for-purpose. They may comment on some aspects raised by the Blue Team too.
The Blue team gets 10 – 15 mins to make their final statements: responding to anything specific that was mentioned by the Red team and also adding to any additional points related to key items they had mentioned during their opening summary. They would make specific mention of aspects that are strongly beneficial and need to remain in the policy/document.
The Red team then makes their final statements in 10 – 15 mins. They would especially summarize key gaps between the current policy/document and aspects that would need to be addressed in the next version.
Path forward
The final part of the meeting consists of all meeting participants discussing and summarizing improvements that would be needed to the next version of the policy/document. In the process, they may assign various meeting participants to do additional research, align with stakeholders not present at the meeting, and/or write the updates or additional segments to add to the current policy/document.
An additional meeting may be needed to check-in on progress and finalize the updates that have been agreed upon.
Tips:
Do not run this with groups larger than 15 people. It would lead to a longer meeting and some people feeling less involved and engaged.
Be sure to state that the meeting is to take no more than 1 hour. If the process is followed for too long a period, it waters down the intent – focus – and gets more into minute details which are often best dealt with in post-meeting assignments.
Be sure to assign someone to be the time-keeper to keep an eye on the process – ensuring the meeting stays focused on the agreed approach and time-commitment. And be sure to note the path forward actions to help the designated coordinator with follow-up actions and close-out activities.
In general, this interactive approach to review meetings leaves participants much more energized and positive about meeting outcomes.
Not shareholders – they are the ones who own shares in the company. Stakeholders are those groups of people who have a keen interest in the initiative or process that you are working on. It could be because your success or your failure will impact their groups or processes in their groups. It could also be because your initiative could generate risks which they would like to keep an eye on. For some reason, these people or groups care more than the average person or employee about the initiative that you are working on.
It is therefore smart to understand who they are and secondly to understand why they care so much about this initiative. And as a result of what you learn, you can plan to keep them happy and informed. If you don’t, you risk them blocking or stalling progress on your initiative, or (if in executive levels) they may put another person in place to supervise you to make sure their interests are well-managed and protected.
For your success as a project manager of an initiative – find out who the stakeholders are, find out what they need and make sure you meet their needs!
Find out who they are
Which groups have processes that overlap or connect to processes you are managing? Who are the receivers or end-users of what you are creating? Answers to these questions could help you start your list of stakeholders.
Tips:
Start outside your organizations – are there any authorities, special interest groups, communities, clients, suppliers who are somehow connected to the product or service that you are providing? They may be stakeholders!
Look at the high-level organization chart of your company. Do any of the groups you see contribute to, receive outcomes, or participate in key processes you are managing? If so, add them to your stakeholder list.
Look for individuals at management levels who may need to give others updates on your project or processes you manage. They may also be stakeholders.
What do they care about?
Once you have your list of stakeholders with their titles and even down to name level. It is time to validate their interest in your project or process.
What they need:
Why would they care about the outcomes of your process or the way you run the project? Do they need information for their role or group? Or do they use the outcomes from your project somehow?
What they want to avoid:
What outcomes or messages would each of the identified stakeholders want to avoid? Think of anything that would cause them to have to do extra work or have to explain unsatisfactory results.
Make a plan
Use the template below to document a plan that you follow throughout the year to ensure each of your stakeholder groups receive required data, updates or opportunities to provide input or suggestions to your project on a regular basis.
Check-in on a regular basis with your stakeholders whether it is a quarterly survey or a personal call from you. Make sure that you have not missed anything they need to know or be informed about and make sure that they are not dealing with rising frustration due to a lack of updates or output from your team!
Learning how to manage the expectations of stakeholders on an initiative is a great way to learn new skills which will become important as you get promoted to take on more responsibilities. People at higher levels in any organization succeed by keeping aligned with a lot of different personalities and groups and they do this by understanding the needs and concerns of these other parties and then managing that (in a similar way as managing stakeholder expectations) on an ongoing basis.
You are invited to a meeting and they expect you to contribute. If this is early in your career or you have not been to those meetings before, the invitation could leave you quite uncertain of how to make sure you at least meet expectations. Where to start?
The questions below can help you
prepare to attend these meetings,
shape your thoughts in the meeting and
prepare to lead meetings.
Preparing for meetings always include looking through the agenda to understand the topics that will be discussed. If you have received pre-reading materials, read through those and note your thoughts and questions for each agenda item.
Three questions that can be helpful at meetings
1. What is the purpose of this topic or this discussion?
Before:
Maybe you can answer this to yourself by reading additional materials shared with you before the meeting. Maybe you can get an understanding by asking someone you know in the company who is involved with the project/issue to be discussed. Be careful to not share any privileged information with others if you were provided with information that is considered confidential. It would be good if you can frame in your own mind what you believe the purpose of this item on the agenda is. It will help you understand how you can help move that purpose forward during the meeting.
During:
If you find yourself listening to the points being made and questions being raised in the meeting which do not seem to be related to the purpose that you have in your mind, ask the question. “Are we aiming to solve X or Y at this time?” If you have not been able to understand the purpose of the agenda item by the time the discussions take place, ask for clarification on the purpose of this item. Is it for information only? Is this topic on the agenda to drive decision-making? What decision are we trying to make at this meeting with this item?
If you are leading:
Be sure to let meeting attendees know ahead of time: What is the purpose of each agenda item? Take the guess work out of the group dynamics and be more efficient with your time together in the meeting by being clear on the purpose of each item on the agenda. [If something is FYI only, consider sending an email instead of having a meeting.]
2. From which perspectives should we be looking at this?
Before:
Consider as many perspectives as you can think of to cover each of the agenda items that will be discussed. Jot down your notes and questions for each perspective – how would this perspective impact the agenda topic?
During:
It is not uncommon for new meeting attendees to be somewhat intimidated by strong opinions of other attendees and they often refrain from offering their own perspectives especially if that is different from those who already voiced different opinions or suggestions. The key is to step back from it (mentally) to look at who is in the meeting. Which function/group does the perspective just offered represent? The answer is often linked to the group that person works in or has been working in for a long time. It could also lay in the part of the organization that this person has worked in for a long time. One’s experiences at work tend to shape the perspectives one sees issues through. Just because there is a different set of perspectives being put on the table at the meeting, does not mean that yours is not valuable.
Frame your perspective and share it. For example: “Based on call-center feedback, I would suggest we reconsider adding XXX feature/functionality to avoid the top 3 issues that our customers currently seem to have with our product.” A path-forward decision could exclude your observation or suggestion after consideration, but that does not make your contribution unimportant. It was most likely a good aspect to review and consider before the final decision is made on how to proceed.
If you are leading:
Make sure you do draw out different perspectives during a meeting to consider and select the best way to proceed with a project. It improves the quality of your decision-making process when you have considered many different alternative perspectives.
3. What are our next steps from here?
Before:
Considering the agenda topics and looking at your notes about the purpose of the agenda items – what do you think each item would or might lead to? It is not always possible to accurately predict how a discussion might go at the meeting, but you could jot down some possible next steps. Then you can review your notes at the meeting and you would be in a great position to suggest a path forward after the discussion.
During:
The next step could be anything ranging from doing nothing at this time, to more research is needed, to a small working group will figure out a solution and propose it at the next meeting, to let’s run a pilot or to let’s implement. It does happen though, that an agenda item is discussed even debated only to be left unfinished before the next agenda item is introduced. It behooves someone, ideally you, to ask this question to ensure clarity about the outcome of the discussion just had.
Your contribution at the meeting may be that you are the one who helps ensure that outcomes are clear, agreed by all and documented.
If you are leading:
Remember to avoid moving to the next agenda item before the decision has been captured and next steps are agreed and documented.
Being invited to join a meeting of experts and senior people may seem intimidating at first, but coming armed with your notes and thoughts in these key areas would help you feel more confident that you too have something to offer and contribute to making it a productive meeting!
If you shine a light on any team you will notice some areas where processes, communication or collaboration can be better. In many cases a team can function well enough even with a few improvement opportunities. Want to do a snapshot checkup on your team? The downloadable tool below can help you identify any specific areas to focus on if you feel your team performance can use a nudge in the right direction.
When teams fail it is usually recognized as a combination of the team not reaching desired outcomes, team members feeling a high level of dissatisfaction and frustration with team processes and other team members and team leaders failing to accomplish their own goals for the team and for their own career growth.
The 7 aspects of teams shown below are classic areas where low performance could lead to team failures.
7 troubles with teams
Taking a closer look
Step 1
The first column to complete is the scoring column. The question would be – how do I know that my team may be experiencing this trouble? The audit list gives you a possible symptom of observable behavior on either side of the scale: desirable (give this a score of 5 if your team shows this behavior) and undesirable (give this a score of 1 if your team shows this behavior). Should your team display behavior that is somewhere between those two opposites select a score between 1 and 5 that you feel is most accurate to describe how far they may be from either end. Perhaps a score of 3 would be appropriate if you see desirable behavior only 50% of the time.
Step 2
Look at the column called impact. When you look at the behaviors defined as undesired and also the other column containing desired behaviors, how much does it impact the outcomes produced by your team when those behaviors are present or not present? Maybe the impact is “high” if you consider how many hours are wasted when that behavior is present? Maybe it is only “medium” which means some time or effort is wasted, but not too much. And it could also be a “low” impact if that particular behavior does not contribute highly to the inefficiencies you experience as a team experiencing a particular aspect from the audit list.
Step 3
Evaluate your results by looking at both the scores column and the impact column. The graphic below shows the way to identify which of the aspects to focus on when it comes to prioritizing an area to address:
The download file above has suggestions for each of the 7 areas that can be addressed.
Remember…
Every team has good times and bad times. Just because your team just did very well, it does not mean it will necessarily continue to go well. And just because your team failed last week, it does not mean there is no way to make it a high-performing team!
Use the tool above to take a closer look at your team and I wish you success in mapping out your next steps; helping your team be even better than it was before!
A learning book is a great tool to use for learners who are keen to capture the key points of learning moments. It is also useful for coaches or trainers who may want to make them available to coachees or class participants to help them along on their learning journey. A pdf version of a learning book is available for free download below – letter size, A4 size an A5 size.
To really learn something new, one must chew on it – write it down, read what you wrote and then consider how it changes your perspective or increases your awareness or understanding. The learning book helps learners to capture ideas and thoughts. It gives them a chance to go back and review what they had written before to remind learners of what they had thought at the time and planned to do about their own continued learning.
“Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.”
– George Iles –
There are many ways that someone can learn something. Classroom sessions are not the only option. See the list of opportunities to learn below: (and this list is not exhaustive)
The learning book is a place to capture all new thoughts, ideas, and areas that a learner wants to learn more about in one place.
Feel free to add additional pages that would help guide the learner along a developmental path.
The book is broken down into 3 parts: Prepare to learn, Learning, and Follow-up. In the preparation to learn section, there is space to capture the topics that the learner would like to know more about.
Prepare to learn
Learning
The learning section has a few pages to prompt learners about aspects that may be important for them to remember later. It covers aspects such as areas to research further after the learning event. Or maybe they want to capture the highlights of their learning journey a particular week. Maybe there were a few statements of quotes that they really want to remember – the learning book has a page for that. There is also a page to capture any favorite speakers or writers that they came across and want to know more about.
Follow up
After a learning event or conference, we often have great plans for new initiatives to implement or people to contact – topics to research. And unfortunately, many of those great ideas dissipate when our normal lives resume. The Follow-up section is about capturing the actions you plan to take and it gives you a section to capture dates or months when you plan to work on it.
It’s a great way to help you check back on how you are doing with follow-up activities.
Reviewing your own learning notes from the last few months can help you pick-up again on an interesting point you still wanted to follow up on. Perhaps you had planned to call someone or to do an internet search, but somehow you forgot about it. Having it written down in your learning book and being able to review it, you can pick up on those points and ensure that you do complete the task that you had planned to do.
The download file links below contain *.pdf versions of a learning book for 3 different printed sizes: letter size, A4 size and A5 size (which is half the size of an A4).
Recycled 