Managing Teams: Putting All the Pieces Together

You can assemble the most dedicated, talented and hard-working employees available and still fail to reach your department's goals. Why? Because individual effort will only get you so far. True success requires a team effort ... and making that happen is what separates top managers from the rest of the pack.

The best managers know how to structure teams for maximum productivity. They know how to encourage open communication and control conflict. And they know what it takes to motivate a group of individuals to work together, to generate ideas when new thinking is required, and to flawlessly execute strategy when it's time to act.

The kit contains 3 complete training modules

1. Team Productivity: The Power of Brooks' Law
2. Managing Team Conflict
3. How to Get More and Better ideas From Brainstorming Sessions

Why "Quick Take" modules?

Short-form: Just six to 10 minutes long. Today's adult learners can't sit for extended periods of time absorbing training material.

Single-Concept: Teaching people just one concept at a time vastly increases the likelihood that learning will be retained and deployed successfully. Each program delivers a single "aha moment".

Research-based: Learners that perceive their training as credible drives a higher level of behavior change.

The research says you’ll get high engagement and high knowledge retention if you structure training events in short segments that focus on one, research-based concept, not three, or four or five.

Here’s a summary of what you’ll learn in each of the modules:

Team Productivity: The Power of Brooks' Law (6:56)

What do managers often do when projects start falling behind deadline? They ask for more resources. Adding a few more good people to the project seems a logical solution to the problem. In some cases, however, that's not the best course of action. In fact, it could make things worse. In this Quick Take you'll learn about "Brooks Law" and what it means to team productivity. You'll find out what his landmark research revealed and how you can apply it in your organization.

Managing Team Conflict (9:43)

Conflict is absolutely essential to a well-functioning team. When getting along is more important than getting it right, hard questions don't get asked. Tough decisions don't get made. The challenge for managers is keeping productive conflict from turning into a disruptive force that can crush morale and team alignment. In this Quick Take you will learn why conflict is a powerful tool that team leaders must use to their advantage, what's going on under the surface when disagreements become toxic, and the ACES method of conflict resolution - a straightforward approach that can turn destructive conflict into constructive solutions.

How to Get More and Better ideas From Brainstorming Sessions (8:48)

The #1 rule in brainstorming sessions is no judgments. Everyone knows that if you let team members criticize each other's ideas, you'll discourage people from putting forward new concepts - and you may not get the best answer to whatever problem you need to solve. In this Quick Take, you'll learn why traditional brainstorming techniques are actually counterproductive, an improved technique for brainstorming that DOES work, and how to prime people to generate problem-solving ideas.