Recognize Team Member Quotes

Few teams sometimes fails miserably because team members wish to work in the team but they want to be recognized individualy.

The hands-off approach trusts team members and recognizes their need for autonomy to carry out their roles, as they see fit.

That day was an education for me. I'll never forget it. Standing in teh doorway, watching the reaction of the men and women gathered there, I witnessed the poewrful effect of unwavering, uncomplaining, uncompromising leadership. It changed me. It was one of those moments when you say to yourself, [in italics] That's what I want to be when I grow up. and you know you've grown up a little already, simply because you recognize it. Norman called Ducky-Bob's party supply and ordered chairs while I wheeled the second bed out to the hallway. Mommy, Margaret Valentine, and I rushed around, getting everything we needed to cater the cramped but memorable even, and on Tuesday morning, about three dozen top members of the Chili's team jammed into Norman's room at Presbyterian Hospital. Norman didn't what his people to see him lying down, so I'd helped him get into a jogging suit and robe, and propped him up on one of those rolling carts they use to distribute meals. He was in unthinkable pain, but he spoke to them from his heart about how much he appreciated them, how committed he was to the success of the organization, and how far they could all go together.

One of his first initiatives for the church, for instance, was to set up a “serious evangelistic campaign” that would be carried on throughout his first full year. “This campaign,” he wrote in a letter of recommendation, “shall be carried out by 25 evangelistic teams, each consisting of a captain and at least three other members. Each team shall be urged to bring in at least five new members within the church year. The team that brings in the highest number of members shall be duly recognized at the end of the church year. Each captain shall call his team together at least once a month to discuss findings and possibilities.

Globoforce worked with Cisco to use recognition to boost employee engagement by 5 percent, and with Intuit to achieve and sustain a double-digit increase in employee engagement over a large employee base that spans six countries. Hershey’s recognition approach helped increase employee satisfaction by 11 percent. And for LinkedIn, retention rates are nearly 10 percentage points higher for new hires who are recognized four or more times. Whether we’re leading a group or a member of the team, whether we’re working in a formal or informal recognition program, it is our responsibility to say to the people who work alongside us: “We’ve got to stop and celebrate one another and our victories, no matter how small. Yes, there’s more work to be done, and things could go sideways in an hour, but that will never take away from the fact that we need to celebrate an accomplishment right now.

The hands-on approach takes an active interest on a very regular basis in the members' work. The hands-off approach trusts team members and recognizes their need for autonomy to carry out their roles, as they see fit. It hinges on their self-motivation. When the leader goes too far with the hands-on approach, he is seen as an anxious and interfering type. If he goes too far hands-off, he is seen as abdicating his responsibility or not being interested. Today,

But as a Puerto Rican woman, she belonged to not one but two minority groups. New research suggests that her double minority status may have amplified the costs and the benefits of speaking up. Management researcher Ashleigh Rosette, who is African American, noticed that she was treated differently when she led assertively than were both white women and black men. Working with colleagues, she found that double minority group members faced double jeopardy. When black women failed, they were evaluated much more harshly than black men and white leaders of both sexes. They didn’t fit the stereotype of leaders as black or as female, and they shouldered an unfair share of the blame for mistakes. For double minorities, Rosette’s team pointed out, failure is not an option. Interestingly, though, Rosette and her colleagues found that when black women acted dominantly, they didn’t face the same penalties as white women and black men. As double minorities, black women defy categories. Because people don’t know which stereotypes to apply to them, they have greater flexibility to act “black” or “female” without violating stereotypes. But this only holds true when there’s clear evidence of their competence. For minority-group members, it’s particularly important to earn status before exercising power. By quietly advancing the agenda of putting intelligence online as part of her job, Carmen Medina was able to build up successes without attracting too much attention. “I was able to fly under the radar,” she says. “Nobody really noticed what I was doing, and I was making headway by iterating to make us more of a publish-when-ready organization. It was almost like a backyard experiment. I pretty much proceeded unfettered.” Once Medina had accumulated enough wins, she started speaking up again—and this time, people were ready to listen. Rosette has discovered that when women climb to the top and it’s clear that they’re in the driver’s seat, people recognize that since they’ve overcome prejudice and double standards, they must be unusually motivated and talented. But what happens when voice falls on deaf ears?

Characteristics of the Council 1. The council exists as a device to gain understanding about important issues facing the organization. 2. The Council is assembled and used by the leading executive and usually consists of five to twelve people. 3. Each Council member has the ability to argue and debate in search of understanding, not from the egoistic need to win a point or protect a parochial interest. 4. Each Council member retains the respect of every other Council member, without exception. 5. Council members come from a range of perspectives, but each member has deep knowledge about some aspect of the organization and/or the environment in which it operates. 6. The Council includes key members of the management team but is not limited to members of the management team, nor is every executive automatically a member. 7. The Council is a standing body, not an ad hoc committee assembled for a specific project. 8. The Council meets periodically, as much as once a week or as infrequently as once per quarter. 9. The Council does not seek consensus, recognizing that consensus decisions are often at odds with intelligent decisions. The responsibility for the final decision remains with the leading executive. 10. The Council is an informal body, not listed on any formal organization chart or in any formal documents. 11. The Council can have a range of possible names, usually quite innocuous. In the good-to-great companies, they had benign names like Long-Range Profit Improvement Committee, Corporate Products Committee, Strategic Thinking Group, and Executive Council.

Fox was the most junior member of a group assigned to the Team Disney Building in Burbank. Her first job was typical grunt work, laying out bathrooms in the executive wing. MICHAEL GRAVES: Bernadette was driving everyone insane. She wanted to know how much time the executives spent in their offices, how often they’d be in meetings, at what time of day, how many people would be in attendance, the ratio of men to women. I picked up the phone and asked her what the hell she was doing. She explained, “I need to know what problems I’m solving with my design.” I told her, “Michael Eisner needs to take a piss, and he doesn’t want everyone watching.” I’d like to say I kept her around because I recognized the talent that would emerge. But really, I liked the sweaters. She knitted me four, and I still have them. My kids keep trying to steal them. My wife wants to give them to Goodwill. But I won’t part with them. The Team Disney Building was repeatedly delayed because of the permitting process. During an all-firm meeting, Fox presented a flowchart on how to game the building department. Graves sent her to Los Angeles to work on-site. MICHAEL GRAVES: I was the only one sad to see her go.

One of the biggest benefits I have found in this process, which I didn’t recognize on the front end, is by doing the spousal interview you will discover if your hire is married to crazy. Have you ever hired a great person whose crazy spouse completely took away their ability to win because they were doing maintenance on crazy? I was interviewing a very sharp young man for our broadcast department and explained to him that our final interview would be an informal dinner with his spouse. A few hours later I got a screaming and cussing phone call from his wife. She blew a gasket at the very thought that she had to be involved in her husband’s hiring. After she yelled and cussed for a minute or two she finally asked me, laced with profanity that I’ll leave out, “Why do you do this spouse interview anyway!” To which I responded, “To find people like you.” That poor guy gets his backbone ripped out every morning and maybe she gives it back to him at night if she hears a noise outside. Either he is a complete jellyfish, their marriage will end up in counseling, or they will get divorced. None of those options sounds like a productive team member. So the spousal interview might help you discover if the person is married to crazy; if they are, stay away.

Meanwhile, he continued to speak out on behalf of black citizens. In March 1846, a terrifying massacre took place in Seward’s hometown. A twenty-three-year-old black man named William Freeman, recently released from prison after serving five years for a crime it was later determined he did not commit, entered the home of John Van Nest, a wealthy farmer and friend of Seward’s. Armed with two knives, he killed Van Nest, his pregnant wife, their small child, and Mrs. Van Nest’s mother. When he was caught within hours, Freeman immediately confessed. He exhibited no remorse and laughed uncontrollably as he spoke. The sheriff hauled him away, barely reaching the jail ahead of an enraged mob intent upon lynching him. “I trust in the mercy of God that I shall never again be a witness to such an outburst of the spirit of vengeance as I saw while they were carrying the murderer past our door,” Frances Seward told her husband, who was in Albany at the time. “Fortunately, the law triumphed.” Frances recognized at once an “incomprehensible” aspect to the entire affair, and she was correct. Investigation revealed a history of insanity in Freeman’s family. Moreover, Freeman had suffered a series of floggings in jail that had left him deaf and deranged. When the trial opened, no lawyer was willing to take Freeman’s case. The citizens of Auburn had threatened violence against any member of the bar who dared to defend the cold-blooded murderer. When the court asked, “Will anyone defend this man?” a “death-like stillness pervaded the crowded room,” until Seward rose, his voice strong with emotion, and said, “May it please the court, I shall remain counsel for the prisoner until his death!

Performance measure. Throughout this book, the term performance measure refers to an indicator used by management to measure, report, and improve performance. Performance measures are classed as key result indicators, result indicators, performance indicators, or key performance indicators. Critical success factors (CSFs). CSFs are the list of issues or aspects of organizational performance that determine ongoing health, vitality, and wellbeing. Normally there are between five and eight CSFs in any organization. Success factors. A list of 30 or so issues or aspects of organizational performance that management knows are important in order to perform well in any given sector/ industry. Some of these success factors are much more important; these are known as critical success factors. Balanced scorecard. A term first introduced by Kaplan and Norton describing how you need to measure performance in a more holistic way. You need to see an organization’s performance in a number of different perspectives. For the purposes of this book, there are six perspectives in a balanced scorecard (see Exhibit 1.7). Oracles and young guns. In an organization, oracles are those gray-haired individuals who have seen it all before. They are often considered to be slow, ponderous, and, quite frankly, a nuisance by the new management. Often they are retired early or made redundant only to be rehired as contractors at twice their previous salary when management realizes they have lost too much institutional knowledge. Their considered pace is often a reflection that they can see that an exercise is futile because it has failed twice before. The young guns are fearless and precocious leaders of the future who are not afraid to go where angels fear to tread. These staff members have not yet achieved management positions. The mixing of the oracles and young guns during a KPI project benefits both parties and the organization. The young guns learn much and the oracles rediscover their energy being around these live wires. Empowerment. For the purposes of this book, empowerment is an outcome of a process that matches competencies, skills, and motivations with the required level of autonomy and responsibility in the workplace. Senior management team (SMT). The team comprised of the CEO and all direct reports. Better practice. The efficient and effective way management and staff undertake business activities in all key processes: leadership, planning, customers, suppliers, community relations, production and supply of products and services, employee wellbeing, and so forth. Best practice. A commonly misused term, especially because what is best practice for one organization may not be best practice for another, albeit they are in the same sector. Best practice is where better practices, when effectively linked together, lead to sustainable world-class outcomes in quality, customer service, flexibility, timeliness, innovation, cost, and competitiveness. Best-practice organizations commonly use the latest time-saving technologies, always focus on the 80/20, are members of quality management and continuous improvement professional bodies, and utilize benchmarking. Exhibit 1.10 shows the contents of the toolkit used by best-practice organizations to achieve world-class performance. EXHIBIT 1.10 Best-Practice Toolkit Benchmarking. An ongoing, systematic process to search for international better practices, compare against them, and then introduce them, modified where necessary, into your organization. Benchmarking may be focused on products, services, business practices, and processes of recognized leading organizations.

What is workplace optimism? If you think it’s viewing the proverbial glass half full through rose-colored glasses and thinking positive thoughts, you’re mistaken. It is more than a positive attitude. Workplace optimism shapes attitudes. It shapes a person’s and even a team’s spirit. It is the spark that fuels esprit de corps. It evokes positive emotions in team members toward their work and others. Workplace optimism is a characteristic of climate. The climate feels optimistic. People are inspired by their work and the possibilities inherent in it. Workplace optimism is the belief that good things will come from hard work. Research shows that you can transform the work experience by focusing on the best positive potential realities.9 Rather than spend time focusing on what’s wrong or missing in the workplace, you can choose to focus on what’s right and possible in the workplace. Rather than ignoring the climate, you can observe how it’s influencing work quality and relationships. You can transform the work experience by simply recognizing and leveraging human nature.

Wisdom lies in recognizing a team’s unique potential to deliver results. Project leaders strive to understand the benefits of teams and learn how to optimize team performance by developing individual members, fostering team cohesiveness, and rewarding team results.

When artificial-intelligence guru Andrew Ng joined Chinese Internet pioneer Baidu Baidu last May as chief scientist, he was a little cagey about what he and his team might work on at a newly opened lab in Sunnyvale, Calif. But he couldn’t help revealing better speech recognition as a key area of interest in the age of the smartphone. Today, Baidu, often called China’s Google Google, unveiled the first results of what the former Google researcher, Stanford professor and Coursera cofounder had in mind. In a paper published today on Cornell University Library’s arXiv.org site, Ng and 10 members of his Baidu Research team led by research scientist Awni Hannun said they’ve come up with a new method of more accurately recognizing speech, an increasingly important feature used in Apple's Apple's Siri and Dictation services as well as Google’s voice search.

The coins, known as “challenge coins,” are highly prized awards that recognize the special achievements of team members. Though some coins can be found on the web, the authentic coins have

I often like to talk with candidates in a room with multiple team members. This allows us to debrief more effectively (e.g., “What did you think he meant when he said . . . ?”). This also gives you a sense of how the candidate deals with multiple people at once, which is a critical skill on a team. Some people are much different one-on-one than they are in a group, and you need to know that.

Good leaders know that they need to build teams comprising people with different backgrounds, skills, and perspectives. But as we saw in the last chapter with the teams at the Harvard Kennedy School, if team members aren’t willing to express themselves and their viewpoints, the teams won’t reap the benefits of diversity. In fact, William Swann, a professor of Psychology at the University of Texas. worked with Jeffrey Polzer at Harvard, and found that diverse teams performed worse than homogenous teams when members felt as if their unique strengths were not being recognized.

Perhaps the uproar and the tantrum were the realization of the lack of control she had on the outcome of other team members' performance, that despite her desire to only be the one recognized, other team leads were comfortable praising their teammates.

Hul loitered in the general cabin, and six fellow members of the Fflict species as the rescue team. The Fflict recognized five genders: male, female, zhial, yal, and neuter. Aul was zhial, and ze liked zis pronouns accurately stated. I would too, in zis position.

Jealousy was a too-sensitive teenager’s reaction. If it had been any other week, it would have passed through him like a cool breeze. Instead, it was lodged in his chest like a little chip of ice. He just—wanted to play. Dex, all his life, had wanted to feel that he was part of a team, a member of the cast—an integral member of an ensemble that appreciated his comedic timing, his showboating, his talents, before they withered to dust. Though he supposed the vast majority of humans felt like unpaid extras. Milling about, uselessly waiting to be discovered, recognized for their innate yet invisible value, but doomed never to be anything but human scenery. Maybe that was his team, and he was already on it. Had been on it, in fact, forever.

Build team awareness by explaining the scale. Have everybody read this chapter and discuss it during a team meeting. •​A cultural bridge can help a lot. If you have team members who are bicultural or have significant experience living in different cultures, ask them to take responsibility for helping other team members. •​Understand and adapt to one another’s behaviors. •​Patience and flexibility are key. Cross-cultural effectiveness takes time. Developing your own ability to recognize others’ reactions and adapt accordingly will help you to be increasingly persuasive (and therefore effective) when working internationally.

the grizzly went on the attack not because it was surprised, but just the opposite: because it recognized the members of the Territory Team as easy takings?

The members of the abduction team had grown up, married, had families of their own. This was a cruel twist: some of the children could no longer remember what their mother had looked like, apart from the one surviving photo of her, but they still recognized the faces of the people who took her away. Once, Helen took her children to McDonald's and found herself staring at one of the women who she knew had taken her mother. The woman was there with her own family. She shouted at Helen to leave her alone.

When they have prosocial skills, team members are able to bring out the best in one another. Collective intelligence rises as team members recognize one another’s strengths, develop strategies for leveraging them, and motivate one another to align their efforts in pursuit of a shared purpose. Unleashing hidden potential is about more than having the best pieces—it’s about having the best glue.

On a high-performing team, collaboration and trust work well because all the members are exceptionally skilled both at what they do and at working well with others. For an individual to be deemed excellent she can’t just be amazing at the game; she has to be selfless and put the team before her own ego. She has to know when to pass the ball, how to help her teammates thrive, and recognize that the only way to win is for the team to win together. This is exactly the type of culture we were going for at Netflix.

don’t think this is realistic,” he said. “The CEO would be an older white man.” My colleague and I agreed that might often be the case, but explained that we wanted to focus more on Linda’s needs and motivations than on how she looked. “Sorry, it’s just not believable,” he insisted. “We need to change it.” I squirmed in my Aeron chair. My colleague looked out the window. We’d lost that one, and we knew it. Back at the office, “Linda” became “Michael”—a suit-clad, salt-and-pepper-haired guy. But we kept Linda’s photo in the mix, swapping it to another profile so that our personas wouldn’t end up lily-white. A couple weeks later, we were back in that same conference room, where our client had asked us to share the revised personas with another member of his executive team. We were halfway through our spiel when executive number two cut us off. “So, you have a divorced black woman in a low-level job,” he said. “I have a problem with that.” Reader, I died. Looking back, both of these clients were right: most of the CEOs who were members of their organization were white men, and representing their members this way wasn’t a good plan for their future. But what they missed—because, I recognize now, our personas encouraged them to miss it—was that demographics weren’t the point. Differing motivations and challenges were the real drivers behind what these people wanted and how they interacted with the organization. We thought adding photos, genders, ages, and hometowns would give our personas a more realistic feel. And they did—just not the way we intended. Rather than helping folks connect with these people, the personas encouraged the team to assume that demographic information drove motivations—that

There is an expectation that a trip into the wilderness—even just for the weekend—entails certain risk not found in daily life. A good trip entails a lot of physical effort and teamwork. People expect to be able to cope with the usual demands of the wilderness, and, thus, they develop unusual coping mechanisms. Sometimes, however, for some or all of the people on the trip, events surpass standard coping mechanisms. Then a wilderness-style critical incident has occurred. A critical incident is almost any incident in which the circumstances are so unusual or the sights and sounds so distressing as to produce a high level of immediate or delayed emotional reaction that surpasses an individual’s normal coping mechanisms. Critical incidents are events that cause predictable signs and symptoms of exceptional stress in normal people who are having normal reactions to something abnormal that has happened to them. A critical incident from a wilderness perspective may be caused by such events as the sudden death or serious injury of a member of the group, a multiple-death accident, or any event involving a prolonged expenditure of physical and emotional energy. People respond to critical incidents differently. Sometimes the stress is too much right away, and signs and symptoms appear while the event is still happening. This is acute stress; this member of the group is rendered nonfunctional by the situation and needs care. More often the signs and symptoms of stress come later, once the pressing needs of the situation have been addressed. This is delayed stress. A third sort of stress, common to us all, is cumulative stress. In the context of the wilderness, cumulative stress might arise if multiple, serial disasters strike the same wilderness party. The course of symptom development when a person is going from the normal stresses of day-to-day living into distress (where life becomes uncomfortable) is like a downward spiral. People are not hit with the entire continuum of signs and symptoms at once. However, after a critical incident, a person may be affected by a large number of signs and symptoms within a short time frame, usually 24 to 48 hours. The degree or impairment an event causes an individual depends on several factors. Each person has life lessons that can help, or sometimes hinder, the ability to cope. Factors affecting the degree of impact an event has on the individual include the following: 1. Age. People who are older tend to have had more life lessons to develop good coping mechanisms. 2. Degree of education. 3. Duration of the event, as well as its suddenness and degree of intensity. 4. Resources available for help. These may be internal (a personal belief system) or external (a trained, local critical-incident stress debriefing team). 5. Level of loss. One death may be easier than several, although the nature of a relationship (marriage partners or siblings, for example) would affect this factor. Signs and symptoms of stress manifest in three ways: physical, emotional, and cognitive. Stress manifests differently from one person to the next. Signs and symptoms that occur in one person may not occur in another, who has responses of his or her own.

We’re all members of one tribe or another—bonded by culture, family, religion, class, education, employment, team affiliation, or any number of other criteria. An essential first step in discerning the cultural from the human is what mythologist Joseph Campbell called detribalization. We have to recognize the various tribes we belong to and begin extricating ourselves from the unexamined assumptions each of them mistakes for the truth.

Scrum recognizes only three distinct roles: product owner, scrum master, and team member

What we, as team members, want from you, our team leader, is firstly that you make us feel part of something bigger, that you show us how what we are doing together is important and meaningful; and secondly, that you make us feel that you can see us, and connect to us, and care about us, and challenge us, in a way that recognizes who we are as individuals. We ask you to give us this sense of universality—all of us together—and at the same time to recognize our own uniqueness; to magnify what we all share, and to lift up what is special about each of us. When you come to excel as a leader of a team it will be because you’ve successfully integrated these two quite distinct human needs.

Recognition In addition to top ratings, a great way to recognize people in a rock star phase is to designate them as “gurus,” or “go-to” experts. Often this means putting them in charge of teaching newer team members, if they show the aptitude for it. Bosses can be reluctant to use a top performer this way, wanting them to do the job rather than to teach others. However, this attitude prevents an organization from getting as much leverage out of experts as they otherwise would.

While some siblings accept, and even embrace, their destiny as members of the 'team,' others are (mostly privately) outraged, having experienced the obverse of the soothing stereotype in their own families. A graphic designer whose autistic brother tried to strangle her when they were children, and who struggled for years to get her parents to recognize the danger he presented, is acutely aware of the discrepancy between the illusion and the reality of damaged families: I'm trying to eradicate the Hallmark Hall of Fame Special myth - 'how I learned the meaning of life by having a disabled sibling.' The cover of Newsweek on autism had a beautiful blond good boy. People just want to look at the pretty kids on Jerry Lewis, the sanitized version, not the ugly cases like my brother. The severely disabled aren't telegenic.

Principle 1: Leaders Embrace Extreme Ownership. "On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame." Principle 2: There Are No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders. "When leaders drive their teams to achieve a higher standard of performance, they must recognize that when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate." Principle 3: Mission Clarity. "Everyone on the team must understand not only what do to, but why." Principle 4: Keep Your Ego in Check. "Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism." Principle 5: Teamwork. "Each member of the team is critical to success, though the main effort and supporting efforts must be clearly identified. If the overall team fails, everyone fails, even if a specific member or an element within the team did their job successfully. Pointing fingers and placing blame on others contributes to further dissension between teams and individuals. These individuals and teams must instead find a way to work together, communicate with each other, and mutually support one another. The focus must always be on how to best accomplish the mission." Principle 6: Simplicity and Clarity. "Leaders eliminate complexity in problems and in situations. Leaders bring clarity to a situation. They keep plans simple, clear, and concise." Principle 7: Prioritize and Execute. "Leaders must determine the highest priority task and execute. Prioritize and Execute." Principle 8: Decentralized Command. "Good leaders delegate. They trust their teams to execute. They provide freedom to execute by giving them clarity in the mission and clear boundaries." Principle 9: Manage Up and Manage Down. "As leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team." Principle 10: Discipline Equals Freedom.

Principle 1: Leaders Embrace Extreme Ownership. "On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame." Principle 2: There Are No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders. "When leaders drive their teams to achieve a higher standard of performance, they must recognize that when it comes to standards, as a leader, it’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate." Principle 3: Mission Clarity. "Everyone on the team must understand not only what do to, but why." Principle 4: Keep Your Ego in Check. "Ego clouds and disrupts everything: the planning process, the ability to take good advice, and the ability to accept constructive criticism." Principle 5: Teamwork. "Each member of the team is critical to success, though the main effort and supporting efforts must be clearly identified. If the overall team fails, everyone fails, even if a specific member or an element within the team did their job successfully. Pointing fingers and placing blame on others contributes to further dissension between teams and individuals. These individuals and teams must instead find a way to work together, communicate with each other, and mutually support one another. The focus must always be on how to best accomplish the mission." Principle 6: Simplicity and Clarity. "Leaders eliminate complexity in problems and in situations. Leaders bring clarity to a situation. They keep plans simple, clear, and concise." Principle 7: Prioritize and Execute. "Leaders must determine the highest priority task and execute. Prioritize and Execute." Principle 8: Decentralized Command. "Good leaders delegate. They trust their teams to execute. They provide freedom to execute by giving them clarity in the mission and clear boundaries." Principle 9: Manage Up and Manage Down. "As leader, if you don’t understand why decisions are being made, requests denied, or support allocated elsewhere, you must ask those questions up the chain. Then, once understood, you can pass that understanding down to your team." Principle 10: Discipline Equals Freedom.

Meet the knowledgeable dentists and approachable office team members of Pine Street dental. We recognize that all patients are exceptional, and deserve dental care that reveals their individual needs.

To manage the performance of such specialists the team leader has to adopt a delicate balance between the hands-on and the hands-off approach. The hands-on approach takes an active interest on a very regular basis in the members’ work. The hands-off approach trusts team members and recognizes their need for autonomy to carry out their roles, as they see fit. It hinges on their self-motivation. When the leader goes too far with the hands-on approach, he is seen as an anxious and interfering type. If he goes too far hands-off, he is seen as abdicating his responsibility or not being interested.

To manage the performance of such specialists the team leader has to adopt a delicate balance between the hands-on and the hands-off approach. The hands-on approach takes an active interest on a very regular basis in the members’ work. The hands-off approach trusts team members and recognizes their need for autonomy to carry out their roles, as they see fit. It hinges on their self-motivation. When the leader goes too far with the hands-on approach, he is seen as an anxious and interfering type. If he goes too far hands-off, he is seen as abdicating his responsibility or not being interested.

I would argue that a leader must first know what motivates each of their team members before he/she can set out to recognize them. This is because not all forms of recognition are effective for or desired by every person.

I know from personal experience and the vast amount of available research on emotional intelligence that people who can understand and manage their own and others’ emotions make better leaders. Leaders who possess a high level of emotional intelligence recognize and regulate their behavior, embrace open communication and show a greater ability to adapt to different work situations. They are also able to express empathy for others and collaborate more effectively with their executive team members and their boards.