Creating Engaged and Effective Teams

Team engagement is a common rallying cry in leadership and organizational development circles. But there is often disagreement regarding the precise team engagement formula. This is because, in my experience, there is not any one team engagement formula but rather a number of critical variables.

In Teamwork, Larson’s and LaFasto’s book about the critical elements of effectively functioning teams, they identify the eight variables:

1.     Clear-elevated goal

2.     Results-driven structure

3.     Competent team members

4.     Unified commitment

5.     Collaborative climate

6.     Standards of excellence

7.     External support and recognition

8.     Principled leadership

These elements are the what of engaged and effective teams. But the how is a little more nuanced. There is no one size fits all method or practice to create or enhance these eight elements in your team. But through inquiry, evaluation and focused attention, it is possible to improve any or all of them.

If you are interested in improving team engagement and efficacy to advance team outcomes, please contact me for an assessment and strategic game plan.

Best Practices for Leadership and Life: Clearing Out the Old and Making Way for the New

With the turning of the year, our thoughts usually turn toward annual goal setting, to establishing financial, client or project targets. But more than a decade of experience with coaching leaders and consulting in organizations has taught me that before creating the new, it is critical to clear out the old.  

The reason is simple. Over time, things build up. They build up on our desks, in our inboxes, in our practices and processes, and most of all they build up in our teams. Like plaque­—which settles and hardens on the surface of our teeth and, if left to its own devises can result in a cavity—individual and organizational build-up is initially benign, but if left uncleared, eventually has a detrimental impact on the entire ecosystem.

Following are some easy to recognize markers of old build up and residue that needs clearing:

• Every time you think about or encounter it, you say to yourself, “I should really do something about….”

Yes, you should. Usually the “doing something about” takes somewhere between 15 to 45 minutes. But the amount of time and energy you spend thinking about “doing something about it” can take hours or more over the course of a months. And that time is only ever wasted.

• It is an activity you engage in frequently, and yet every time it is unnecessarily complex or cumbersome. Often you think, “someone should do something about this…”

Flex your leadership muscle. Assign someone on your team to look into getting it addressed, or pick up the phone and call someone involved in the process who has the power to correct it and help them understand what impact it’s inefficiency is having on the rest of the organization. If it is an internal process or procedure, and it is wasting the team’s time overall, then get a work group together to assess the situation and make recommendations.

• Often, when the team gets together there is friction, or tension, or even an unspoken resistance to working together. There is no overt conflict, so everyone, including you, pretends that everything is fine...

Tension, distrust, disengagement is one of the most expensive problems leaders and organizations have. Since there is not an obvious dollar amount to the dis-ease, it often is avoided or otherwise left alone. Consider this: Gallup puts the cost of interpersonal tension and lack of team cohesion at 34¢ on every payroll dollar. And this is only the negative costs of the problem. What about the missed opportunity costs, all those collaborations and innovations that did not occur because the team is poorly aligned?

One of the most effective ways to clear out old baggage and rebuild and align the team, is to bring in a professional facilitator and take the team through a team alignment, visioning and performance process. The benefits of such a process are evident in all aspects of the team from improved relationships to increased productivity.

By taking the time to clear out the old, you will not only make space for the new but also ensure the health and vitality of the team and larger organizational system.

“Yes, Thank You, And:” A Powerful Practice for Leadership and Life

This afternoon, as we slip headlong into winter, I find myself in southern Baja or Baja California Sur, the southern tip of the peninsula originally part of Las Californias, which included the Baja peninsula and the upper mainland territories including California, Arizona and Wyoming. Las Californias were most likely named after a mythical land described in a 16^th century Spanish romance novel. In the novel, California is an island inhabited by women and ruled by queen Calafia. The peninsula may have been mistaken for an island and the population of cardón cactus, the largest cactus in the world, may have been mistaken for its female warrior inhabitants.

To the west of me are the Sierra de la Laguna mountains—a tropical dry forest with salmon colored earth and green scrub pine, cactus and mesquite trees. To the east are the turquoise waters of the Sea of Cortez. But what is most extraordinary about this moment, beyond its immense beauty, is how I came to be here. It is the result of a practice that I call “yes, thank you, and.” Or to put it another way: acknowledgement, gratitude and invitation.

I learned this practice in a number of contexts, through coaching, through meditation, and again more recently, in conversation with a wise colleague and mentor. The practice is so simple, so effortless—almost deceptively so—and yet when I engage in it regularly, the most amazing shifts occur in my business and my life.

I have slowly been sharing this practice with some of my coaching clients, and they too have experienced the extraordinary power of “yes, thank you, and.” So in the spirit of the holidays, I wanted to share the practice with each of you.

1.  YES: Acknowledge What Is Challenging
   
   
   Yes, I am short staffed.
   Yes, I am overwhelmed with the number of thing I need to get done this week.
   Yes, the organization has rejected my last two requests for additional funding, or I have lost a major client, or…you get the idea.
   
   
   2.    THANK YOU: Express Gratitude for What is Working
   
   
   I am grateful to have an incredible amount of talent and skill on my team.
   I am thrilled to have such an interesting and demanding position.
   I am grateful for the number of creative solutions generated in response to this financially challenging time.
   
   
   3.    AND: Ask for What it is You Want More of
   
   
   I’d like to have more support from my team in accomplishing _______.
   I’d like to be able to come home earlier a few evenings a week to have dinner with my family.
   I would like to transform my department’s or company’s financial situation so that we can _______.
   
   
   4.    Spread the Word
   
   
   Tell others what you are trying to create. Ask for support. Focus your energy and effort in affecting this change. When everything and everyone is aligned in the same direction, there can only be one outcome: the one that you want. 

In my own example of creating this wondrous winter vacation, I started with the acknowledgement that a dear friend had just died and moving into the holidays was engendering an even greater level of grief and loss. Then I expressed gratitude for her friendship, for all the amazing friends in my life. Then I asked that my winter holidays be filled with time with friends and, if possible, a warm body of water. The next few weeks I told all my friends how much I loved them and asked what they were doing for the holidays. Then, quite suddenly, I got an invitation to spend a week in Cabo Pulmo with an old friend and her entire family.  And what a lovely vacation it has been.

You will notice that what is missing in this practice (and from my personal example) is complaining, nay-saying, criticism, resentment, apathy and disbelief. These absences are as important as the steps outlined above. We all go through challenging experiences, personally and professionally. What matters is that we acknowledge what is, express gratitude for all we have, and ask for more of what we want.

Complaining and negative thinking are part of the human condition. But they do not advance our personal or professional lives. On the other hand, “yes, thank you, and,” can bring about wondrous shifts in our experience. Give yourself a gift this holiday season and make this practice your own.

Transformational Leadership Practice

Leadership is not only about influencing the behavior of others, it is about aligning your own purpose and focus to achieve impactful results.

To this end, there is one simple leadership practice that is absolutely critical: “reflection in action.”

After spending the last few weeks coaching a number of leaders in various roles and sectors, I was struck by the commonality of each of their needs. “I just need time to step back and think more strategically,” was the refrain I heard over and over again.

It seems simple enough: give yourself some quiet, focused time to think and strategize. Certainly research identifies reflection as a critical practice for successful leaders. Schon, a leadership scholar, defines “reflection-in-action” as a process that consists of developing strategies of action, understanding phenomena, framing and reframing situations encountered in day-to-day experience. Something truly effective leaders actively engage in.

At its root, reflection requires time. And here is the rub. Who has the time? The answer is of course that we all have the same 24 hours in a day. It is how we use it, what we attend to, that makes or breaks us. If sleep was optional, there are some who would skip it. They would of course get seriously injured or ill, but they would have a few extra hours over the rest of us. Reflection is like sleep in its criticality. Unlike sleep, it is optional. But without it, we often find ourselves on the reactive rather than proactive side of the equation. We can certainly survive. The question is, will we thrive?

To be an effective leader, to be a strategic leader, we need to carve out some time each day, or, at a minimum, each week to take stock of things, to look out toward the horizon, to anticipate what’s coming and make preparations, to define where we are going and forge the path ahead. 

Three Essential Ingredients for Expanding Your Influence and Increasing Your Impact

Having worked with countless leaders and organizations, I have found three ingredients stand out as essential to being an influential and impactful leader: focus on relationships, communicate strategically, and be intentional.

In a recent study, the most influential leaders, those top 5% who succeed consistently at influencing profound and essential behavior change, spent as much as half of their time thinking about and actively influencing the behaviors they know will lead to top performance. Influential and impactful leaders spend their time doing the following, they:

Focus on Relationships
While telling people what to do may have some short-term efficacy, history shows even the most powerful dictators loose influence eventually. In order to have sustained influence over other's behaviors, you must spend the time and effort to establish trust and credibility. This requires getting to know the people you want to influence, understanding their goals and motivations, knowing "what makes them tick."

Communicate Strategically
Communication is your most valuable tool and listening is the foundation of communication. Ask open-ended questions to better understand the needs and motivations of others. Be sure to provide clarity and consistency in any messages (written, verbal or behavioral) that you send. Think of your messages as an arrow designed to land in the most impactful place. That location has everything to do with the person and/or people you are communicating with. Your message, your arrow, should be shaped to land in just the right spot.

Be Intentional
We steer in whatever direction we are looking in or focusing on. We've all had the experience of steering slightly into the right hand lane while looking at or speaking excitedly to our front seat passenger.  In our interactions with others, we direct our interaction toward whatever we imagine to be the outcome, even if that outcome is precisely what we don't want to happen. This is a variation on the expression, "a self-fulfilled prophecy." Educational research literature is filled with examples of how teachers play this out with their students. We do precisely the same thing in organizations, we create negative beliefs about others and we ensure the precise outcomes we hoped to avoid. If you have a particular outcome you are looking for with a person or in an organization, then steer in that direction. It is amazing how much more likely it is that you will arrive at your desired destination.

Great Manager Profile: Stuart Gansky

this profile is reposted from: http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/01/13398/great-manager-profile-stuart-gansky

By Aja Couchois Duncan on January 15, 2013

With his ubiquitous smile and passion for public health, it is not surprising that Stuart Gansky, MS, DrPH, was recently selected to serve as the director of UCSF’s Center to Address Disparities in Children’s Oral Health (known as CAN DO).

“I am here to make a positive impact on people’s health,” he says. It is his life’s work.

Gansky attributes his commitment to public health to his parents’ modeling of the Golden Rule and his undergraduate experience working with the Campus Y — the center of social innovation, student engagement and social justice at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. “It [The Campus Y] awoke the social responsibility in me. We worked on hunger relief, served as big brothers/big sisters for kids without mentors, campaigned for divestment from South Africa.”

He also benefitted from working with great mentors who steered him toward public health such as Gary Koch, PhD, at UNC and Jane Weintraub, DDS, MPH, who previously ran CAN DO and has since left UCSF to take the position as dean of UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Dentistry.

This commitment to the well-being of others is also evidenced in how Gansky manages his team. “I focus on helping people identify their strengths and supporting them in their professional efforts,” he says.

“He’s there to support you. He’s also there as an example. When you work with someone who works so hard and is just so pleasant, it is hard not to want to do that yourself,” says Sarit Helman, MPH, a clinical trials specialist with the Data Coordinating Center.

Beyond modeling excellence, Gansky also coaches his team. “He holds your hand as long as he thinks you need it. Then when you don’t need it anymore, he moves away,” Helman says.

Connecting Work to the Larger Mission

Gansky has found that another critical element to managing a high-performance team is connecting people to the mission and vision of the organization. “It is important that everyone has buy-in. I want everyone to be able to connect their work to the mission,” he says. 

As the center’s associate director in 2011, Gansky and then-director Judith Barker, PhD, brought everyone together to revisit and refine CAN DO’s vision and mission statements. As a result of the retreat, the team was engaged and had a clear strategy for the work ahead. He says they were “in a good position to weather any bumps in the road later because all were working for the same purpose.”

Peggy Rasmussen, project manager for the Data Coordinating Center, describes the impact of Gansky’s engagement with his team. “He makes people feel that he’s interested in their feedback, opinions and ideas. This helps create an environment where more creative ideas can come up.” It is also ensures that people are comfortable pointing out errors or identifying problems. “Overall,” she says, “it improves the quality of our work.”

As a result of the team’s efforts, CAN DO has become a national coordinating center, focusing on community-based, participatory research at UCSF and the elimination of health disparities among low-income individuals and communities.

According to Elaine Cooperstein, a clinical trials specialist with the Data Coordinating Center, Gansky’s management practices have not only earned CAN DO national recognition, but also created an environment in which the team works collaboratively to move CAN DO’s projects forward. “He [Gansky] hires competent teams and then has the confidence that we are pulling in the right direction,” she says. “He has a nose for building a good team.”

Notes Gansky, “I make a point of recognizing people when they do something extraordinary or even when they achieve success with a particular milestone.” To do so, he uses Bear Hugs and the Star Program. “It’s a little thing,” he says, “but I make a point of filling out the paperwork.”

Gansky ensures his people get the training they need to do their work well. “I take advantage of local conferences to be cost effective in keeping people abreast of the cutting edge of their field,” he says. This practice is evidenced by the most recent Employee Engagement Survey, in which Gansky’s team scored one of the highest in terms of “having the opportunity to learn and grow.” 

George Taylor, DMD, MPH, DrPH, chair of Preventive and Restorative Dental Sciences, sees Gansky as a model of inclusion, transparency and resourcefulness. “He is very supportive and serves as an advocate [for his team] as appropriate.” Notes Taylor, “you can see members of his team taking on some of his positive characteristics, so he is creating a pipeline of new leadership.” The ingredients of Gansky’s successful people management are, according to Taylor, the extra portion of care and nurturing he provides through the provision of information, resources and opportunities. “His antenna is always on for opportunities for growth for his team.”

Professional Development for the Manager

Gansky also prioritizes his own professional development. He participated in the first year of UCSF’s Faculty Leadership Collaborative, and he is also a graduate of CTSI’s Mentor Development Program, for which he now serves as one of the program’s assistant directors.

Susan Hyde, interim division chair of Oral Epidemiology and Dental Public Health, notes that “he puts his learning into practice.” In addition, she says, “he recognizes that by encouraging people to take classes and to join professional associations, that they grow their skills.” Everyone benefits as a result.

In addition to professional development, Gansky makes sure to get regular input from others, talking to peers and his direct reports to ensure he makes the best decisions possible. He also relies on his wife, Karen, to talk through various organizational challenges. “She is a great sounding board for managerial ideas or dilemmas I face,” he says.

John Featherstone, PhD, dean of the School of Dentistry, sees Gansky as a shining example of a talented academic and manager. “His research is impeccable,” Featherstone says, “and he is highly collaborative. Beyond that, he does what the best managers do: he creates an environment where his team can thrive, where they can use their best creative skills, where they can be happy, where they feel they can contribute to the world.” Gansky supports the learning and growth of his team, and in so doing ensures the excellence of their work and its significant impact on reducing health disparities among low-income communities. “If we could, we would clone him,” Featherstone says.  

For Gansky, the prescription is simple: “Hire the best people you can find, talented, creative people; treat them the way you want to be treated; take advantage of programs and trainings that are available to support ongoing learning for yourself and your team; and finally, get out of your team’s way so they can do their jobs.”

Photo by Susan Merrell

Great Manager Profile: Doug Eckman

this profile is reposted from:http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/08/12602/great-manager-profile-doug-eckman

Doug Eckman, MBA, works at the intersection of dual bureaucracies. As director of operations for UCSF School of Medicine, Dean’s Office at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH), Eckman must navigate both the university and the city’s Department of Public Health, which oversees patient care and operations at the public hospital.

Despite the complexity and perhaps because of it, Eckman loves his work. He excels at helping people find common ground and at bringing out the best in his team. “I think it is important that people enjoy what they do,” he says. “Also, I think it should be challenging, as people do better when they are challenged.”


Eckman has been honored for his strong commitment to encouraging his staff to reach their fullest potential, receiving the 2005 Chancellor’s Award for Exceptional University Management.

Born and raised in Grand Forks, ND, Eckman is the son of a locomotive engineer and a non-practicing nurse. When he was 17, Eckman, the oldest of seven kids, won a full scholarship to Columbia College and moved to New York to study philosophy. Following a series of “adventures” that included stays in Hawaii, Colorado and Minnesota, his migrations ended in 1976, when he came to San Francisco and got a job at the former Children’s Hospital (now part of California Pacific Medical Center).

From there, Eckman moved to SFGH, where he worked as a respiratory therapist on the night shift and eventually became the manager of the department – a place where he says he made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot. He worked in the emergency department and in intensive care units, which served as an excellent training ground for Eckman’s operational and people management skills. He also earned an MBA in Management from San Francisco State University.

On-the-Job Development Encourages Creative Solutions

During the recent Employee Engagement Survey, Eckman’s team scored highest in the area of learning and growing on the job. Notes Eckman: “I’m a big fan of education. If there are courses or classes or professional meetings they want to go to, I don’t say no. I will even suggest, and sometimes insist, they attend these activities in their performance appraisal for professional development.”

Guide for Great Managers

A Great Manager Resource Guide outlining some strategies for setting expectations and providing feedback and recognition is available here [PDF].

But true learning takes more than courses or conferences; it requires on-the-job development. And it is this aspect of Eckman’s management that’s most often cited by his team members as the source of their growth. Eckman says “people should be allowed to make mistakes because that is how we learn.”

Mark Addis, director of biomedical engineering who came to SFGH over three years ago and was new to both UCSF and his role as a manager, has benefited from Eckman’s management style. “He takes a mistake I’ve made and offers suggestions about how to do better in the future,” Addis says. “He doesn’t tell me what to do, but offers some examples of how people have done it effectively.”

As a result of this approach, Addis has grown a great deal. He’s gone from heading a department regularly threatened with outsourcing to running a successful and cost-effective unit with highly trained employees.
And the benefits continue on to the hospital and its patients. Back when the anesthesia machine servicing was outsourced, the contractor wouldn’t report the machines during a procedure. Now that the work is being done in-house, the team can work with the anesthesiologist during an operation and “technicians are getting feedback about what a great job they are doing,” Addis says.

Eckman describes it this way: “If people can figure out how to get their needs met and serve the goals of others, it is amazing the creativity they can tap into. As a manager, it is my job is to be sure that creative solutions on one side do not have negative effects on others down the road.”

To further challenge his team and support its growth, Eckman engages them in group problem-solving activities. “If people are complaining about something, I say OK, let’s get a small group together to examine the problem.” After allowing them time to truly analyze the problem and develop recommendations, Eckman observes that “they come back with ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of and because they came up with them they supported the [resulting] change.”

Eckman is deeply committed to the learning and professional growth of his team. “To the extent possible, let them [your staff] pursue their interests. Don’t put constraints on that. [There] should be a really good operational reason to say no. To the extent possible, let people create their job, by building on the foundation of the original job description. If you restrict them to the minimum, the job description, then you are only going to be getting the minimum from them,” he said.

Theme of Respect, Trust and Support

The same philosophy is held by Eckman’s manager, Cathryn Thurow, MHA, the School of Medicine’s Assistant Dean of Administration and Finance for SFGH. She sees her role as supporting Eckman in his professional interests and growing his responsibilities. Since they have been working together, Eckman has become a mediator and a hearing officer and more recently was asked to provide administrative oversight for the clinical labs.

Equally important to Thurow is supporting Eckman as a person. She ensures the Dean’s Office is a supportive work environment and provides flexibility, when possible, to accommodate personal needs. “Doug really appreciates that,” says Thurow, who adds with a smile, “I let him do his job. I am not a micromanager.”

This theme of respect, trust and support is repeated over and over in the Dean’s Office. The key ingredients being: managers who respect one another’s skills, trust one another to do their jobs effectively, and support and encourage their teams to apply their interests and talents in new ways.

Sue Carlisle, MD, PhD, the School of Medicine’s vice dean for SFGH, sees the benefits that trust and respect have on the overall operations at the public hospital. “We are an interesting intermesh of city and university. Because he [Eckman] is trusted, the people who report to him see him as a role model of how to do their work. The trickle-down effect both from trust and modeling in the staff makes us a much more cohesive team with the city staff and much more effective in achieving our goals.”

Mary Clancy, clinical laboratory manager at SFGH, outlines the successful elements of Eckman’s management style. “Doug is very fair and thoughtful. He gives guidance and lets you follow up. I trust him very much. If I need help, he’ll be right there.”

When asked how Eckman’s management style affects the results of his direct reports, Andy Brunner, UCSF Risk Manager at SFGH, says “he has enough confidence in my abilities to let me work independently, but he is always available for advice and ensures that I have the resources I need to do my job.  He recognizes me as a professional and is more result- than process-oriented, which I appreciate.”

As Curt Denham, director of finance and a member of the dean’s office management team, describes it: “Everyone is treated well. Everyone is considerate and appreciative.”

Perhaps the key to Eckman’s effectiveness as a manager is that he measures his own success by the level of enjoyment his team members have in the work they do. He believes that his role is to cultivate the sense of enthusiasm and enjoyment that comes from being engaged. He says his years of experience have taught him that “good problem-solving doesn’t come from unhappy people.”  

Photo by Susan Merrell