Book review: The Power of a Positive Team

HRZone has a range of books available for review. If you would like to receive one of our business books, free of charge, please contact the editor on editor at hrzone dot com and we can send you a list of what’s available. In return, we ask for a 400-700 word review of the book, its […]

Follower-focused leadership: how to become a better manager

Effective leadership does not come from being an expert in business theory but from paying close attention to your followers and closing the perception gap between what leadership is and what it should be. A great deal of leadership training involves encouraging managers to think of themselves as leaders. Perhaps you yourself have been encouraged in […]

A new way to unleash creativity and innovation

Advances in technology mean it’s possible for an organisation to measure individual creativity using AI, but that doesn’t guarantee innovative ideas. In order to have the competitive edge you need to nuture a team of creative innovators. Innovation is essential in today’s organisations. When your competitors have access to the same technology and resources as you – and they can quickly […]

Book review – The Business of Excellence: Building High-performance Teams and Organisations

HRZone has a range of books available for review. If you would like to receive one of our business books, free of charge, please contact the editor on editor at hrzone dot com and we can send you a list of what’s available. In return, we ask for a 400-700 word review of the book, its […]

Communication skills: what your team say, and what they really mean…

Getting feedback from your team is a key part of employee engagement, but it’s what you do with that information that really counts.  Feedback is an incredibly powerful tool; it’s something that can help uncover issues your team might be facing or on the flip side, to better recognise the things you’re doing well. As […]

Collaboration: the three questions you should be asking

When global business leaders from Virgin’s Richard Branson to Apple’s Steve Jobs say collaboration is at the heart of their success, then you know it is more than just today’s buzzword. They are in good company. PwC’s annual ‘CEO Survey’ reports that 86 per cent of global business leaders now view collaboration as a very […]

Leading remote teams: how to deal with conflict

At the other end of every computer, every mobile device, there is a person. Every person holds a range of thoughts, a range of assumptions, and a set of preferences about how they want to be treated and how they should treat others. In the third and final article of this series on leading virtual […]

Leading remote teams: the role of performance management

“At the core of effective performance management are frank, yet supportive performance conversations that include ongoing feedback. Occasional processes, such as annual performance reviews and pay setting, can be useful, but shouldn’t be the main focus.” This is a quote from the CIPD Factsheet  of 31 July 2017. The essence of performance management remains the […]

Leading remote teams: why you need a different mindset

The good news is that, in essence, leading remote teams is just like leading any other team. The bad news is that if you’re used to managing by watching what people are doing, you will need a shift in mindset. “Work is far less meaningful and pleasant than it needs to be because well-intentioned leaders […]

What to do about team conflict

There’s conflict and there’s conflict – the productive conflict that energises us when we’re grappling with complex tasks together (we often see that in winning teams)   – and the non-productive, energy-draining conflict which is something different entirely. The latter causes people to dread Monday mornings; to loathe team meetings   and to focus on survival (which […]

The reality of performance: no team is an island

In my last three articles, I’ve spoken about the things a team needs to focus on to become a winning team – with the main emphasis being on the team itself and its members. It’s fair to say that some people object to the term ‘winning’ to describe a business team because the implication is […]

The six habits that help teams win

In my last article I outlined the five steps to building a winning team. There are some meaty things to do and it’s not a quick fix. But if you focus relentlessly on those five things you’ll see significant progress and a stronger, more successful team will emerge. In this article I want to focus on six […]

5 steps to building a winning team

In my last article I described five different team types including the Winning Team. The Winning Team is the one that gets exceptional results. Results which benefit the organisation(s) and clients they serve. (And they get results without exhausting themselves. That’s an important distinction as many teams get great results but at significant personal cost).  These teams pay equal […]

Team types – which one are you?

Six years ago my colleague Lois Burton and I identified five different team types – this was not an academic exercise – (goodness knows, there’s enough theory about teams out there to last a lifetime) – but one based on our experience of working with numerous leadership teams across all sectors over a ten year […]

Is all anger in the workplace bad?

Around 65% of office workers have experienced office rage, and 45% of staff regularly lose their tempers at work say statistics for National Anger Awareness Week which takes place 1-7 December. Of all the emotions, studies suggest that anger is the one that we most easily recognise through facial expression and body language and academics […]

How to align your team with good co-ordination

Better managers recognize that the art of management is something they need to learn. No one becomes a fully competent manager overnight. There are, of course, many ways of learning how to be an effective manager. There is no doubt that experience is the best teacher – the time you have spent as a manager […]

Work teams need these six things to be successful

Historically, when it comes to people performance, we’ve always focused on the individual, forgetting about the importance of teamwork. Human beings are naturally social creatures and the impact that team dynamics can have in the workplace is huge. Research shows that employees who fit well with their job, team and organisation have greater job satisfaction, […]

Priming teams: to do it or not?

There’s so much rich insight coming out of the academic sector that HR professionals need to know. At Academics’ Corner we feature the best HR researchers that tell you what they’ve found and what you need to do differently on the back of the research. Get connected to the academic sector through Academics’ Corner and make sure […]

Evidence-based agony aunt: “I want to give more responsibility to people. How do I get them to step up?”

Our evidence-based agony aunt, Jan Hills, uses findings from neuroscience and psychology to tell you how to solve your organisational problems in brain-savvy ways, that work with the mind's natural tendecies and not against it. Got a problem you want her to look at it? Drop us a line at editor@hrzone.com. We'll get back quickly. Question: […]

The office choir: can music revolutionise the boardroom?

Tessa Marchington is the Founder of Music in Offices, an organisation which works with some of the UK’s top employers, using music as a means of engaging and motivating their people. Earlier this month, Music in Offices launched the campaign #RevolutionisetheBoardroom, calling on employers to make music and the arts an integral part of the strategy […]