team

The best teams use these six tactics…

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The best teams use these six tactics to separate substantive issues from personalities and resolve conflicts.

  • Focus on the facts – Arm yourselves with a wealth of data about your business and your competitors. This encourages you to debate critical issues, not argue out of ignorance.
    • Example – Star Fisheries’s top team “measured everything”: bookings, backlogs, margins, engineering milestones, cash, scrap, and work-in-process. They also tracked competitors’ moves, including product introductions, price changes, and ad campaigns.
  • Multiply the alternatives – In weighing decisions, consider four or five options at once — even some you don’t support. This diffuses conflict, preventing teams from polarizing around just two possibilities.
    • Example – To improve Triumph Computer’s lackluster performance, managers gathered facts and then brainstormed a range of alternatives, including radically redirecting strategy with entry into a new market, and even selling the company. The team combined elements of several options to arrive at a creative, robust solution.
  • Create common goals. Unite a team with common goals. This rallies everyone to work on decisions as collaborations, making it in everyone’s interest to achieve the best solution
    • Example – Start Electronic’s rallying cry was the goal of creating “the computer firm of the decade”. Premier Technologies’ was to “build the best damn machine on the market.”
  • Use humor. Humor – even if it seems contrived at times — relieves tension and promotes a collaborative spirit within a team. Practical jokes, Halloween and April Fool’s Day celebrations, and “desert pig-outs” relax everyone – increasing tactfulness, effective listening, and creativity.
  • Balance the power structure. The CEO is more powerful than other executives, but the others wield substantial power as well — especially in their own areas of responsibility. This lets the whole team participate in strategic decisions, establishing fairness and equity.
  • Seek consensus with qualification. If the team can’t reach a consensus, the most relevant senior manager makes the decision, guided by input from the others. Like balancing the power structure, this tactic also builds fairness and equity.

Write Notes of Appreciation to Your Team

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Expressing gratitude to your employees can feel awkward or uncomfortable. But celebrating your team members, especially around important holidays, can be a powerful, generous, and motivating gesture. Try writing a card or email that goes beyond a simple thank-you note.

To write an impactful note of appreciation, focus on your employees’ strengths.

Start by highlighting a specific characteristic that you admire about them. Then, explain why you value that attribute, and provide a real-world example of how it positively impacted the team. For example, you might write: “I value your ability to creatively solve problems, turning challenges into opportunities for growth. This ability routinely helps our team unlock innovative ideas.

For example, you found an opportunity to create an entirely new product when our subscription numbers were down.” Notes like these will help your team members see their own abilities through your eyes. They also focus your employees’ attention on what’s going well and signal to them that they really matter.

Delegating to your Team…

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Giving employees autonomy to make decisions and solve problems is critical for your team’s innovation, performance, and motivation. But for many managers, trusting your team’s ability to self-manage is easier said than done. 

Here’s how you can mentally prepare to delegate. 

Reflect on what’s holding you back from empowering people to make decisions in the past. Is a specific failure haunting you? Are you a controlling person by nature? What were your feelings when you delegated in the past, and what can you learn from them? 

Next, plan for a gradual transition of responsibilities. Start by giving low-risk decisions to capable people. This approach will help you build up confidence in yourself as a delegator—and in your employees as decision-makers—before you distribute responsibility more widely. Think of this as an opportunity to grow. 

As you develop as a leader, it’s natural to shift your focus from small, in-the-weeds decisions to bigger-picture ones that inform strategy, innovation, and growth. Embrace these newer, higher-stakes responsibilities. 

Finally, remind yourself that increased autonomy is good for your team’s morale. The best leaders give their people opportunities to develop and harness their own insights.