Weekend Reading: June 2018

Weekend Reading: June 2018

Happy Friday! We’ve compiled our favorite articles and essays from the last month for you to browse and enjoy over the weekend.

What makes a team exceed expectations? Brett Steenbarger, a professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Upstate Medical University, argues for three tested and research-driven strategies that enable teams to function at the highest level in creativity, innovation and productivity. In addition to “distraction-free concentration” and opportunities for mentorship, Steenbarger’s Forbes piece highlights the importance of psychological safety – for groups and individuals. So what does that look like?

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The Elephant in the Room: Healthy Companies Address Workplace Problems

The Elephant in the Room: Healthy Companies Address Workplace Problems

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on the importance of social interactions in the workplace at the International Conference & Exposition of the Association of Training and Development in Atlanta. Over four days, 10,000 attendees chose from 400 presentations on a broad array of topics.

In a session on culture, Joseph Grenny, author and co-founder of the social science research firm VitalSmarts, asserted simply: “The health of a relationship, team or organization is a function of the average time lag between identifying and discussing problems.”

We’ve all worked with someone who excels at finding all the things an organization does wrong. Maybe we’ve even found ourselves doing it too. Identifying problems is easy. Talking about them? Not so much.

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