One of the most powerful, simple, and unique team-building tools in my arsenal is actually a mindset. This mindset is powerful enough to create breakthrough communication and thinking. Its uniqueness comes from the fact that so few people have it -- or know they have it. It's so simple it took me a long time even to realize I had...

Christopher Avery: Leadership Gift Skills – Recognizing Mental States in the Responsibility Process

Is it easy for you to grant a small favor to someone you've just met? Are you just as willing to ask a favor of someone you've just met? Most people are much more willing to grant a favor than to ask for one. However, when I teach people about the Leadership Gift, I let them know that asking for...

“I thought 'as soon as you get a team together, half of the job is done and everything else will systematically fall into place'… until now it never occurred to me that everyone in the team must take responsibility to make the project a success.” Had I known this was one of my students, I would have contacted Christopher Avery...

I recently was contacted by a university professor asking for some success tips in giving team assignments to university students. When I was a visiting faculty member I experimented to find out what worked best. My students were generally Juniors and Seniors at The University of Texas at Austin. Here's what I learned and shared with the fellow who asked. Conditions for...

In my recent post, we looked at what to do when we're left in the uncomfortable position of "holding the bag" and I suggested a straightforward 7-step process for calling others on broken agreements. It's a great process. And it's simple. But it can be very difficult to apply. Why? Many of us have one or more emotional blocks to...

"Constructive" criticism is still criticism. Instead of criticizing, "feed back" your responses with compassion. A huge block to giving others feedback effectively is our addiction to criticizing (i.e., providing criticism). When we criticize, our tonality (if not our words) assigns others to a potentially harmful status of being -- i.e., being "wrong." No one likes to be labeled as being...

Most leaders have the motivation process exactly backward! For who knows how long, when you (a leader) wanted me (a follower) to commit to high performance, you and I both expected YOU to tell ME what's in it for me to work with you. It's much smarter to tap into my existing motivation by asking ME to tell YOU what's...

Ronica Roth (public profile), Agile Coach and CST who leads coaching strategy at Rally Software, answers the question, "What comes after scrum training?" Click the video below to see what Ronica says. [hana-flv-player video="http://ca-files.s3.amazonaws.com/ktl-RonicaRoth.flv" width="480" height="270" description="Ronica Roth, team, leadership, development, training, scrum" player="5" autoload="true" autoplay="false" loop="false" autorewind="false" splashimage="http://www.christopheravery.com/images/ktl-RonicaRoth.jpg" /] Want to know when and where you can attend Creating...

Do you know exactly what you want? Do your partners know exactly what you want? Do you know exactly what they want? Over the years, I have been fascinated and focused on the power of outcome thinking. For instance: Why do we--smart people--spend so much time dwelling on what we don't like or don't want instead of discovering and specifying...