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About Jo Wright

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So far Jo Wright has created 19 blog entries.

Breaking down Silos and creating a sense of One Team – No. 2 in our Top Tips for Team Leaders

Our first article covered how we worked with a Management Team to build trust/relationships, the first pillar of a high performing team, based on Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team model. This post focuses on building understanding and empathy across sub teams within a team, helping to break down silos and creating a sense of One Team. Many functions or departments in organisations are made up of sub-teams, and frequently there can be a pattern of working in silos. To start to break that down, and get everyone focusing in the same direction, it’s important to understand the different team’s perspectives. A key activity we ran to build relationships, trust and empathy was Lands Work™ to help the different sub teams, previously working in silos, to stand in each others’ shoes, and hear from each team (then play back) for example: –         What is important to them? –         What challenges they face –         What help or support they need […]

Top Tips for Team Leaders – Building relationships and Trust in your team (No. 1 in our Top Tips series)

How did we get HERE? – Top Tips for Team Leaders                               “Empowered”   “Connected”   “Encouraged”   “Bolstered/supported”   “Safe space so can ask for help”    “Better alignment on priorities” “Another level of trust”  “Stronger as a united team”   “We have each other’s backs”   “I feel more appreciated/valued” What would it be like to have YOUR team saying these things about each other and how they are working together? These ‘closing out’ quotes came at the end of a recent team coaching day, following a year working with a Management Team in a challenging industry. This short series will take you through what we did over 4 full day sessions, and some things that YOU can implement in your teams to move the dial towards even higher performance. Based on Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team model, we always start by focusing on building trust and relationships in the team. And we mean real, vulnerability-based trust, rather than just the predictive or transaction-based trust that many operate on in the business world. That means getting to know the human behind the role. Trust/Relationships – How? –         We start every session with the team with a proper check in: How are you, really? What do you need? It grounds people, gives them permission to be fully themself, whatever state they’re in, and helps teammates be aware of what’s going on for each other.  […]

Are you living the life you really want?

Think about your future retirement date, whenever that will be for you. Mine is likely to be in around 20 yrs time (2040.) Imagine you're at YOUR retirement age now, looking back over the past 20-30 years or so. How will you feel at that point, looking back at how you lived your life till then? Will you feel like it went by in a flash/haze of working crazy hours, spinning multiple plates and juggling everything else in your life order to satisfy your employer or image of success? Perhaps you will feel like you slept-walked (or sprinted) through it, head down, just focusing on whatever was next to meet the demands of your busy job. Perhaps you will feel like you've only just woken up, at retirement age, to the choices you made during your working life that got you here? All good if you actively and consciously made those choices, and are happy with the outcome. For those who are frightened they'll arrive at retirement and not yet have lived the life they really want, maybe now is a good time to pause and reflect. What do you REALLY want? Is the career ladder and financial success the only thing? Stop putting off things till tomorrow (life, family, real joy.) Instead, find out NOW how you can live the life you really want. Call a coach. hashtag#DesignYourLife hashtag#Coaching hashtag#LifeChoices

Successful Partnership Working – Top Tips video series

We often work with teams and partnerships.... and we've noticed some common pitfalls in how they operate, meaning that the road to success can be a lot bumpier than you'd hoped. So we produced a series of videos with some Top Tips on how to make your partnership and team working more effective.   Intro video Watch the rest of the series of 7 Top Tips below, plus the wrap up video.   Tip #1 for Successful Partnership Working - on the subject of the project/team/partnership mandate   Tip #2 for Successful Partnership Working - on the subject of the shared vision for success   Tip #3 for Successful Partnership Working - on HOW you work as a partnership/team   Tip #4 for Successful Partnership Working - on making sure your team really does add up to more than the sum of its parts   Tip #5 for Successful Partnership Working - on understanding your stakeholders   Tip #6 for Successful Partnership Working - on team vs. individual results   Tip #7 for Successful Partnership Working - on effectively reviewing or checking in with progress - without micro-managing!   Wrap up - and how we could help YOUR partnership/team   That's it - do message us on [email protected], or comment below, if you'd like a FREE no strings 30 minute call to explore your needs and ask us some questions.        

Difference, differentiation and diversity.

Diversity of uniqueness As Garry Turner’s (The Listening Organisation) recent newsletter to subscribers pointed out, there is a lot of pressure in modern society to be ‘different’ or to stand out to be ‘the best’. ‘Differentiation’ has emerged alongside this, with companies and technology now seeking to tailor make their products or services to particular groups, subsets, demographics or even at the extreme to individual needs. We’re being told from so many angles that ‘being different is good.’ And yet as Garry points out, being different can also be polarising and separating. He goes onto explore connection as the antidote to difference or differentiation. I had a different thought when I read his views. Whilst I wholeheartedly embrace the importance of connection as an antidote to difference or differentiation, it also made me question whether there was another way to achieve it. What I get excited by is ‘diversity of uniqueness.’ This is where we have the possibility of celebrating everyone’s unique gifts and talents, accepting and welcoming our diversity of physical and mental ability, sexuality or gender, ethnicity, thought, cultures and backgrounds etc. And more than that – the possibility of acknowledging all of these as varied and valid expressions of humanity, whilst rejoicing in our connection as humans and our common humanity. Commonly, current diversity programmes and initiatives seem to focus primarily on ensuring there is equal (or at least more diverse) representation in the workplace of genders in particular, with increasing focus on ethnicity. This is hugely important and needs tireless work on this and extensions of the principle (LGBTQ+ inclusion as one example.)What seems to be less in the spotlight is the simpler act of celebrating the diversity of thought, experience, [...]

Partnership challenges – which of these issues do you recognise?

Common challenges in partnership relationships Which is your biggest pain point when working with partners? Let us know.... When you're working with partners within or external to your organisation, how many of these issues are you familiar with? What impact have these issues had on the success of your partnership or project? We'd love to hear your experiences - comment below or send us a private message. And....If you recognise more than 3 of these issues, you could benefit from a conversation with us about how to launch, manage or reset your partnership more effectively. As partnership coaches, we work with the whole system to improve alignment, performance and impact. FREE 30 min discovery calls available to discuss your needs. Contact us.

A Systems approach to team success: Lessons from the Thai cave rescue

Recently I worked with a team who are working to deliver a joint project together.  They had a project plan, actions and Leads for each area.  Good progress was being made.  Then an unexpected absence by one Lead meant that certain actions weren’t completed, and the project fell behind. I was curious about this from a Systems point of view. In Systems work, Roles belong to the system (team in this case) and not to individuals.  So, the role of performing this Lead task belonged to the system rather than the person who took it on. What’s interesting is that when the system was disrupted in some way, the role was not taken up by anyone else in the system, with consequences for the project.  Systems are regularly disrupted for a variety of reasons:  People joining or leaving a team, sickness or accidents, new information or priorities, etc. So, I wondered about what had happened in my client team when their system was disrupted and came up with some options which I later explored with the team. Lack of clarity on team purpose – what they were here to do Lack of buy in to the team purpose (not unifying or compelling enough?) Lack of awareness of what each Lead was doing and where they were up to (was there a process in place to keep each other updated?) Focus on individual vs. the team objectives/results (so that perhaps a heavy workload for other members of the team/system may have meant they didn’t stop and check, or have time to pick up additional tasks as they prioritised their own projects.) And then I wondered what would have happened, or perhaps DID happen, in the recent [...]

If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything

This is so true both on a personal and professional level. How often do you reflect on your core values? The things that are really important to you and that without, you wouldn't be you? If we don't understand what we stand for, it's easy to get pushed around or trodden on by others - who may do it unintentionally, but do it nonetheless. We might not push back because we're not standing on the firm ground of our own values. One of my core values is about fairness - at an individual and global level. It's one of the reasons why working with so many charity clients who strive to create positive change in the world fits so well with me.  And perhaps that's why I seem to be attracting more clients to me that want to work on their values and organisational culture. At a global level, it's becoming more and more important to both understand and stand for our values. We have to create the world we want to live in. No one else will. What will you stand for?    #humanity_to_wk

Bring your whole self to work

I passionately believe this - it's the reason behind the Phoenix mission of Bringing Humanity to Work. We are all whole, complete beings - and the sooner we can freely access all parts of ourself in both professional and personal environments, the less effort we will have to put into being 2 separate identities (and boy, does this cost effort - I've done it!) Which means you have more energy to put into the important stuff - building relationships, solving a tricky business problem, being available and supportive to your kids, family and friends. #humanity_to_wk

Connect and then lead

"Connect and then lead" - what a great message. Great leaders build trust with their teams, backed up by strength and competence, to build connections so they can inspire and lead. I think that in days of old (and in just a few of today's organisations), we forget that leadership is about PEOPLE first - not strength or competence. Leadership is actually followership, if you think about it. How good are you at inspiring followers?

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