Currently, I am reading Daniel Goleman’s book, Social Intelligence. He begins his book with a story from the early days of the second Gulf War. For me, this story is a remarkable example of strong team leader and a well developed team.

The story involves Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Hughes and a local mosque. His mission was to ask for help from the cleric in organizing the distribution of relief supplies.

However, fearing the soldiers were coming to arrest their spiritual leader or destroy their mosque, a holy shrine, a mob gathered. As hundreds of devout Muslims surrounded the soldiers, waving their hands and shouting, pressed in toward the heavily armed platoon. Hughes thought fast.

Never Too Young
My grandson has a passion for the Disney movie “Cars.” I’m sure you know the movie well but as a quick reminder, the story centers on a rookie car, Lightning McQueen, who is so intent on winning a cup race to get a big name sponsor that he ignores everything and everyone. In the movie, he learns to care for more than just his immediate dream. After he understands what it means to be a team member, he willingly gives up his win in order to help a competitor cross the finish line.

Raw unfiltered feedback really sheds light on people or organization issues and often comes out in full force during organizational assessments. A few years ago, CMOE was working with an organization to improve the performance and effectiveness of its managers. We provided an assessment tool to specifically help draw out insight and feedback as to how effective the managers were in their roles, skills, and competencies. Overall, the managers scored well. However, one department wasn’t doing as well as the rest. As we sifted through the data, I came across some general comments provided by an individual in this department. Let me share with you this rare glimpse of someone truly opening up and sharing.

You’ve probably heard jargon such as “He’s got a short fuse,” “I’ve had it up to here,” “She is going to blow up,” or other phrases that equate to irrational behavior and poor emotional control. It is safe to say that many of us, likely all of us have felt this way at one time or another. At some point we have blown our tops and acted irrational in one way or another.

The Tool
For organizations, teams, products, and services to be successful in the business world, continuous improvement is necessary. However, far too often organizations fail to achieve the benefits of change because they don’t know what to change or where to start. The Plus/Delta assessment and feedback tool is quick and effective for both individuals and groups. This brainstorm-type format creates a comfortable atmosphere for openness and honesty. As an added benefit, when people give feedback they often experience a sense of responsibility to the changes and solutions to their feedback.

Organizations invest significant amounts of money, resources and time into training and developing their teams. Skills such as teamwork, coaching and strategic thinking have proven to be invaluable to creating a positive and successful work environment. Training like this can be intimidating because there are so many options and it can be hard to determine what will best fit your organization.

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Many people feel that coaching and mentoring are the same thing. Whenever you ask a group what makes a good coach, someone inevitably says “mentor” or “mentoring.” Likewise, if you were to ask a group what makes a good mentor, you would probably hear someone say that a mentor helps to coach people.