Introverts are often observant and insightful, but extroverts tend to shine more radiantly because of their tendency to engage directly with people. If you’re chairing a meeting or involved in an intense team discussion, you’re more likely to hear from extroverts, who talk easily and gregariously. Introverts, who are quiet and tend to feel uncomfortable in large groups, may shrink from comment and engagement in these settings. But, don’t rule introverts out because you don’t see them engage in group settings. Introverts can be very valuable in business. They tend to listen carefully and think about what’s being said. This enables them [...]

Remote work has become more and more common in U.S. businesses. Currently, 25% of all U.S. employees work remotely, and it is routinely cited as a perk more employees would like, at least some of the time. Recently, however, IBM moved to decrease its remote workforce. The announcement applied to its nearly 3,000-member marketing department, who were told to re-deploy to one of several physical locations. Those who choose not to work on-site in one of the offices will be let go. Similar moves have taken place in other departments.The move attracted attention in the tech-focused press such as Fast Company in part [...]

Are meetings where ideas go to die? If your meetings have let you down, you're not alone. Employees often resent meetings: a study by the American Psychological Association showed that people "who tend to be highly task and goal oriented were most negatively affected by meetings." It is true that sometimes we need to meet: not all decisions are easy to make over other methods of communication. If meetings are a necessity for an organization, how can you make them less painful and more productive?Send Out Information Before the MeetingPreparation is key for most important actions in life, so why would you [...]

Managers need to be perceived as not having favorites in the workplace. It’s a key part of business leadership. If your methods are viewed as favoritism, that perception can erode morale and trust on your team and negatively impact productivity.Of course, the more crucial part is not having favorites among your team. Frankly, that can be difficult to pull off entirely. Whether it’s because of similar interests or one person’s stellar performance, it’s human nature to like some people more than others or to see some people as better for key roles than others. The goal is establishing an environment where no one is [...]

You’ve stacked your virtual team with competent, reliable individuals. You’ve designed your team’s core values. The machine has been built, now how do we get it to start churning? Equipping your team with the proper technology and collaborative platforms could make or break your virtual team. Slow or distracting systems mean workflow and productivity will suffer. At the same time, if you’re unable to compare your team’s progress and outcomes with the time it takes them to complete their tasks, you will not be able to measure or assess outcomes and outputs. Forbes contributor, Michael Batalha, founder and CEO of [...]

A growing number of articles are addressing the downsides of today’s culture of collaboration. Common symptoms are unproductive meetings and individual work groups driving a proliferation of apps as some of the main causes of the “collaboration overload.” Knowledge workers are being hit especially hard.A recent piece from the Harvard Business Review proposes that this phenomenon, making collaboration more burdensome than beneficial, is a symptom of a more deeply rooted organizational problem. It identifies organizational complexity and a “collaboration for collaboration’s sake” culture as the underlying issues.Pinpointing the larger issues within your organization is a big task and not one [...]

CEOs, company managers, and directors can often feel they’ve lost control or insight into their employees work habits and preferences. If the company is instituting new policies or trying out new company culture-building techniques but cannot see the real-time advantages of these investments, it could be a waste of time and money.To make up for the human contact lost by going virtual, CEOs now have the option to receive regular and constant feedback from their employees. By adorning a virtual team with wearable devices and badges, like the Humanyze  badge or Virgin Pulse device, employers and managers can monitor outputs, physical activity, tension, ease, [...]

Collaboration is good business. Wired quotes a study by Aberdeen Next-Generation Communications observing that companies who prioritize collaboration increased their performance substantially over companies that did not. Moreover, Wired argues that collaboration, in addition to being a good team performance strategy, makes good practices visible, further driving performance. It is, therefore, an optimal business strategy.Trends in CollaborationSo collaboration as a method is here to stay in the workplace. There are four key trends.The first is technology news: Technologies abound that enable sharing and networking.The second is demographics: Millennials, who are tremendous users of digital, will make up 75% of the workforce by 2025. Generation Z, coming [...]

“At the core of most successful organizations are people who work well together,” Adrienne Sanders writes in Stanford Business. “Happy collaborators are typically more productive and are less apt to look elsewhere for employment. But what are the circumstances that lead people to want to team up over and over again?” New research by Stanford’s Daniel McFarland suggests that the reasons people continue to collaborate with others in their professional networks are quite different from the motives that led them to begin those relationships in the first place. “Relationships, including professional partnerships, often begin because two (or more) individuals who work [...]

Despite some resistance from middle management and the occasional exception like Yahoo, remote work is becoming the norm — and for good reason. A 2014 study conducted by researchers at Stanford University found that remote employees experienced greater contentment, increased productivity and were less likely to quit. The author of the study, Nicholas Bloom, states, “The more robotic the work, the greater the benefits, we think. More research needs to be done on creative work and teamwork, but the evidence still suggests that with most jobs, a good rule of thumb is to let employees have one to two days a week at [...]

The average full-time American employee spends one third of their day working, five days a week, according to the Center for Disease Control. That means your coworkers, your daily tasks, and the work culture you surround yourself with can be just as important as the relationship, activity, and environmental decisions you make with the other two thirds of your life. Think of yourself when you were younger - when a child goes to school each day, is it just a place where they spend a third of their day, being watched after, or is school a fundamental building block [...]

Collaboration drives so much in a workplace. Collaborative teams have a deeper sense of trust, are more willing to take risks, and are supportive of each other more consistently. It’s a powerful trait to infuse into any work team. How best to collaborate depends on many factors: the teams, the work, the need and the project. Yet there are common traits every effective collaborative workplace shows. Business Strategy and Types of Collaborations In a recent book, Heidi K. Gardner, a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School, describes “smart collaborations” as falling into one of three categories: Employees use individual and specialized [...]