Oxenrider is an uncommon name, a Fourteenth Century trade designation. My ancestors were road builders using teams of oxen to move trees, earth and rocks for road construction. Just as modern day highway contractors are often seen in their pickup trucks, my ancestors rode their teams of oxen to their work, carrying the tools of their trade; thus, the name and my affinity to this quaint metaphor and the icon created for this blog. You could say leading and working with teams is in my “DNA.

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A team is two or more people working together to accomplish a common purpose. If two or more people are seeking to work together, successful communication is critical.

The Team Communication Cycle is an effective way to facilitate communication within the team. Teams are a resource of tremendous potential, and tapping the genius, insight and potential in any team is the challenge of team communication. Individuals who make up the team can bring a vast knowledge, understanding, ability, expertise, insight, intuition, access and energy to the team, yet these assets are not immediately obvious or easily accessible. We have an unmined deposit.

While the team contains the untapped resources of great knowledge and energy, it also harbors misperceptions, partial understanding, blind spots, invalid assumptions, irrational responses, prejudice and bias. The key to successful teamwork is to separate the two,utilizing the former and discarding the latter. Just as the prospector panned for gold and carefully sorted the gold from the mud, a team must select the genius of insight from the mud of misinformation.

The Team Communication Cycle, which is a specifically designed communication method, facilitates the team’s gathering of information and the sorting of the valuable from the worthless. It is a very specific method used to facilitate teamwork by managing communication. It utilizes the same probing questions that drive the team process to stimulate each team member to draw on the pool of resources he/she brings to the task in order to utilize the collective resources to work as a team.

The challenge of an effective team facilitator, like a prospector of old, is to separate what is valuable from what is not. While teams generate a great deal of information, not everything is useful to the team. To collect and sort information, effective teams follow a five-step process, the Team Communication Cycle.

The five sequential steps are:

1. Ask a probing question.

2. Provide time to find potential answers.

3. Report all potential answers.

4. Discuss and analyze all potential answers.

5. Agree as a team on the answer.

The single, most powerful method in facilitating effective teamwork is the Probing Question. The most effective way to involve people in problem solving, strategic planning, or informational dialogue is to ask Probing Questions.

What are the six elements  of a Probing Question? Read the whole story…

In the previous post (The Three Phases of Problem Solving) I discussed the three common and universal phases of effective problem solving. Though the phases are common, the steps used to process these phases are as varied as the number of problem solving processes available. I have seen methods with as many as 24 steps. It is my opinion that the process should be “user friendly.” Using a method should not be problematic in itself. Therefore, I have identified six simple steps to effective problem solving. These steps guide an individual and team effectively through the three phases. Read the whole story…

Problem solving is by its very definition a reactive activity, meaning it is focused on events that have already happened. Unlike planning, which is a proactive activity that is forward looking, problem solving is investigating something that happened in the past. The existence of a problem implies that an expected outcome has been foiled. Problem solving is focused and directed on correcting an unacceptable situation that already exists and threatens the desired outcome. Problem solvers are “reacting” to actual factors that block the expected results. Read the whole story…

1.  Effective Facilitators are experienced in team participation and team facilitation.

2.  Effective Facilitators believe that the team can and will generate a synergistic result.

3.  Effective Facilitators lead teams with an optimistic expectancy and attitude that gives the team a
performance edge.

4.  Effective Facilitators find the balance in the team dynamics. Read the whole story…

Our work and research have identified nine rational, emotive categories regarding the thinking of effective leaders. These categories represent 100 specific, uniquely powerful ideas that drive the thinking of effective people. We have summarized these into nine clusters/categories in the acrostic, PRO-ACTIVE: Read the whole story…

Re-Active

While “In-active” people are frustrating and “Neg-active” people are exhausting, “Re-active” people are useful. Leaders need  constructively “Re-active” people on their teams. They are problem-solvers and fire fighters; they perform triage. These are the people who jump into action, are at their best under pressure and excel when faced with a challenge. Read the whole story…

What was I Thinking: “Neg-Active”

What about negative people? While inactive people are frustrating, negative people are exhausting.

As leaders, we work hard to inspire and motivate our staff and move the team forward, and with a sigh or a smirk (let alone a disparaging comment) a negative person can cripple our best efforts. Negative people are so frustrating that an entire business has developed around countering the negative person. Read the whole story…

What was I Thinking: In-Active:

In-Active

I am sure you have people under your sphere of responsibility who can perceive a project, problem, conflict or task, obviously think about it and make choices but the outcome is to be inactive, do nothing at all, or do the bare minimum. These folks consume 80% of our management time. It is interesting. Only about 3% of people are like this. We think the group is larger because it is too time consuming. Read the whole story…

Dierks Bentley sings an upbeat country/rock song lamenting a series of choices that cause problems. As he relates the scenario, he asks himself, “What was I thinkin?” \”What Was I Thinkin\” It is a common question people ask themselves when they have made choices that cause them problems. DB is a country singer, but his psychology is right on. Our actions grow out of our thoughts. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The ancestor of every action is a thought.”

Leaders repeatedly ask me: “Why do people act/behave as they do?” (The question is typically asked in the context of problematic and counter-productive actions.) But I would expand the question to, “Why do I act/behave as I do, for good or ill? What drives effective, productive actions? What drives ineffective, counter-productive actions?” Read the whole story…