This works for all businesses! If you’re in marketing, consulting, or coaching, this applies even more to your field!
Critical Thinking Hack – It’s Called the blue team red team! What happens when companies pick two teams? The blue team represents the main concept or idea, and then the red team’s job is to poke holes and find weaknesses in the concept or business idea. The idea is to uncover the problems, and more importantly the red team gets to sharpen their skills because they have to represent the opposite viewpoint to where they started and see if those arguments have merit! This is a great exercise to do with your team or even with people who know the concept, to pick the exact opposite and argue why it won’t work and what are all the holes! 😊👍
Team Building Hack – Gerard Adams – owner of Foundr – Still calls once a week and ask entrepreneurs and others what they have done that week that works and what is something that they’re struggling with, and have them talk openly about it and then get feedback from other people in the group to help them. Most of the time just them talking about it will give him the psychological release of venting and it will be therapeutic so they can move forward. Second, most of the feedback has been this is awesome. It’s just cool to have somebody believe in what I’m doing and support it so that will give them the energy they need as well as the motivation to continue to move forward!
Building Team Vision or Big Company Hack – people won’t care about the vision until they realize the vision cares about them. So makes sure!
Build a Movement Hack – Russell Brunson – How do you get your customers to buy into your vision? When you look at some of the best brands, they get their clients and team to buy into a bigger vision where they take ownership of becoming part of that brand. So, build a movement. Something that people see their identity in you and what you’re doing. Either their current self or their future self! And they have a place where they feel they belong.
Praise Effort, Not Abilities Hack – Carol S Dweck – What to focus on when building teams – When you’re building a team and you’re wanting to praise them, always build them up by praising their effort, not their abilities. On tests that we’ve done, we discover the presence of one based on their abilities puts pressure and makes them feel they are entitled to get results. Whereas someone being praised based on their effort will always see it as conditional and see it as a positive, as the more effort they put, the better results they get! This makes a big difference because they realize that the results are not inherent but based on what they do! I will have them generally feeling more fulfilled throughout any task or goal they set out to accomplish!
Groupthink Hack – Carol S Dweck – How to build productive teams – One of the biggest things to build in a team is trying to avoid groupthink. Groupthink is when everyone on the team thinks the exact same way or is encouraged to think the same way and to not oppose with the majority or what their superiors are thinking.
John F Kennedy dealt with this and that is what led to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Kennedy had been so used to winning and his team seeing him win that they believe he had a Midas touch and could do no wrong. Had a single one of his advisers suggested not to move forward with the plan on attacking Cuba, which ended up being a major disaster, Kennedy would not have move forward with it.
Whereas Winston Churchill knowing that group think would be very destructive, created a department that would always share with him the worst news! That’s why he could sleep well at night knowing that he thought and prepared for everything that was to come. One other example is Hewlett Packard. When a company engineer was told to stop working on a display monitor because it would not be in demand, he decided to take a vacation and go visit customers of Hewlett-Packard to get their feedback. It was overwhelmingly positive, and he was able to make some necessary revisions and then sold his boss on being able to get it into production. Hewlett Packard ended up selling over $35 million worth of those monitors. And the CEO gave him award exemplary courage to go beyond the call of duty in defiance of his instructions to do what was in the best need above the company and its clients. One of the reasons why groupthink is so popular is because it’s easy to agree, and everyone wants to belong and very few want to be on the opposing side.
Enron had the same issue and when asked what makes your company vulnerable, most of the executive team couldn’t come up with a single thing. So, it’s always important to avoid groupthink and foster a team that looks for everything they could be missing and encourage dissent and healthy constructive feedback. It would lead to more creative ideas because the team is open to showing them and avoid critical mistakes that could be made when people are more worried about how they look versus doing what’s in the best interest of the company.
How to Train Managers Hack – Carol Dweck – Is Employee Potential Born or Made? – Studies have shown that most managers make a first impression with their team members based solely on talent and what they believe their employees are capable of. So much so that when an employee shows considerable improvement, they are not recognized for it. What’s even worse, they’re not inspired to continue to grow. So, is employee potential born or made? What we discovered is managers with a fixed mindset believe that an employee is limited to his talent and there’s no room for growth if they do not show potential at the very beginning. Whereas managers who have a growth mindset realize that every employee has a potential for growth. And this is not just based on merely talent, but also on a lot of effort.
The difference between the two will make the difference between a successful company that fosters innovation, growth, and constructive feedback vs one that is fixed just on talent and stays stagnant. So, one of the hacks for teaching managers is for them to realize every employee has a potential for growth, and how they grow is based on how they are inspired to grow and those managerial leadership skills. One of the best ways for the manager to realize this is to go through leadership growth exercises themselves so they could see their own potential increase. So, leadership is not born, it’s created. The difference is whether your manager has a fixed mindset or a growth mindset when training the employees.
Power of Acknowledgment Hack– Tom Bilyeu – Why praise and acknowledgement is so important – when you acknowledge someone for something they’ve done, you’re not only lifting them up and being positive. You’re reinforcing the trait you recognize in them and want to see more of because it’s had an impact on you! So, what you acknowledge they will see as positive and it will reinforce that behavior. They’ll continue it until it becomes a habit. This is great for team or really anyone you communicate with! Whatever you want to see more of, acknowledge it!
