[caption id="attachment_2711" align="alignright" width="309" caption="Dan Mezick"][/caption] Last week Dan Mezick (agile coach, CEO of New Technology Solutions Inc., and AgileBoston volunteer extraordinaire) and I sat down "together" (on the phone) to talk about people and interactions at work. Dan wanted to pick my brain about the Creating Results-Based Teams workshop -- why technical professionals should attend and what they will take away. Listen...

How often does one of your colleagues let you down? Such situations happen way too often, but you can turn them around. The key is your response (not the other person's actions). I recently enjoyed the opportunity to decide how to react to a co-worker who was bailing out of a conference call for the second time in a row. "Steve"...

I don't know why people seldom end relationships well. Maybe it's because we all want so much to win -- and endings threaten us with losing. Maybe we're annoyed that we don't know how to derive any more mutual benefit from a partnership. Maybe we're embarrassed about promises we implied and haven't kept. Maybe we're upset that another didn't live...

Wow!  A second group of IT leaders from a major retailer in the San Francisco Bay area AGAIN valued the Creating Results-Based Teams workshop they attended. Here's their internal survey results. Here's the results from the first group.

In the first part of this series, 3 Keys to Extraordinary Collaboration - Part 1, we examined three keys to collaboration: Exchange + Expansion + Integrity. Remember, we can't successfully collaborate until we're "in exchange." To be in exchange, each party to a relationship must be providing and receiving fair value -- as each perceives it. Beyond the issue of...

In my experience, competition and collaboration are neither opposite ends of a some relationship continuum nor alternating conditions. They are actually complimentary forces. In fact, competition and collaboration are precessionary, that is, each is a naturally occurring, unintended consequence of the other. For example, I might play a game with my boys where I encourage them to outdo Dad on...

Wow!  IT leaders from a major retailer in the San Francisco Bay area valued the Creating Results-Based Teams workshop they attended. Here's their internal survey results. Check the results from the second group. Download a PDF of this presentation. This workshop was part of a Managed Leadership Gift Adoption program to develop an culture of responsible leadership so agile and...

To prevent ourselves from spewing judgements and harm in productive relationships, traditional wisdom admonishes to "not judge." But not judging is an improbable -- if not impossible -- action for all but the most emotionally and spiritually developed of us. It's my practice -- and recommendation -- to experience judgement fully. Then let it go. Here's an example from my...

Do you want to learn the four most important principles of team building and how you can put them into action immediately in your team, for results you can count on every time? It's the most straight-forward approach to building any team any time. I promise. (If you find a better approach, please let me know.) I've written plenty about these...

How do you avoid losing trust in your team? It is as simple as cleaning up all broken agreements at your earliest opportunity, but how do you manage that? If the recipe for TRUST in team building is to make and keep incrementally larger agreements, then what happens if you break an agreement? One of two things can happen: your...