When it’s a group of people with no common purpose. I know, I know, I never stop talking about ‘clear, common purpose’, but it’s true: if a group of people goes about its work every day and no-one asks themselves how what they are doing contributes to an overall goal, they are not working as a [...]

I have a new niece, just one week old (that’s her on the right). Talking to my sister, brand new mother, has made me think just how much many aspects of our lives resemble Tuckman’s team development process. My sister and her husband have been a happy little team of two for about three years [...]

Your votes have meant that we have made it to the shortlist for ‘Best Business Blog’ in the Irish Blog Awards 2007. The full list of finalists is available here and is well worth a look – I never knew there were so many great blogs around. That said, I didn’t know what a blog [...]

Today is St. Valentine’s day, and the origins of the feast are much disputed. One version lies in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, where young men would draw from a jar the name of a young woman with whom they would then be partnered for a year. It is said that later the Christian church [...]

We are delighted (and very excited) to have been nominated in the ‘Best Business Blog’ category for the Irish Blog Awards. If you like what you’ve been reading these past few months, please click on the link here and vote for us by 5pm on Friday 16th February. You’ll need to put in your name [...]

People are different; we all know that. So why is it that many of us go out looking for clones of ourselves when recruiting new team members? Steve Portigal quotes the New York Times in his ponderings about how to make different working styles compliment each other rather than creating friction. It’s an interesting question, and one [...]

Somebody asked me the other day what I meant when I said ‘team’ – did I mean the leader’s direct reports, or the whole team? What if the person was responsible for hundreds of people – would that be the team? What if the team meant the whole organisation? He wanted me to put a number [...]

Something occurred to me today: people tend to think about teambuilding and team development activities as stand-alone events that take place periodically through the year and serve to boost morale, reward success or solve a problem. And they do these things.  But why wait?  There’s no need.  You can, and should, be building your team [...]