by Esther Derby | Feb 22, 2011 | Collaboration & Teams, Leadership & Management
Do you really have a team when someone keeps messing with the membership? One summer, long ago and far away, I was on a softball team. It would be an exaggeration to say I played softball, but I did participate in practices, showed up for games and imbibed of...
by Esther Derby | Feb 17, 2011 | Collaboration & Teams
A team is a social unit, a group of people who work collaboratively to accomplish some goal. Every team is a group of people, but not every group of people is a team. I hear the term applied loosely–describing anything from a collection of individual...
by Esther Derby | Feb 15, 2011 | Collaboration & Teams
One of the traps people fall into on teams is withholding information –feedback– that’s critical for the team to function. Sometimes the information is about friction between team members. When team members don’t have a way to talk about small...
by Esther Derby | Feb 7, 2011 | Coaching
Agile coaches are expected to help teams learn agile methods, engineering techniques, and improve the productivity of the teams they work with. But before they can do they need to be ready to coach. Being ready to coach means that you have coaching skills, relevant...
by Esther Derby | Jan 11, 2011 | Collaboration & Teams
Trust is a foundation for effective team work (and effective organizations). Some managers attempt building trust with ropes courses, sailing, or cooking events. Such activities like these may fun (for some). Indeed, people may develop a level of camaraderie through...