Pacific 
1
Serious Game on Leadership
and Team Management
Compilation of lessons
Game-based learning
platform for corporate training
www.game-learn.com
Soft skills
training
through video games
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Pacific 
2
Compilation of lessons
--- Congratulations --You have just completed the course-video game
Pacific®
In these pages, you have your “reference guide” on leadership
and team management
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Pacific Index
Index
3
Lesson 1: Delegate Effectively
Lesson 2: Give Feedback Effectively
Lesson 3: Manage Conflicts Effectively
Lesson 4: Define Objectives
Lesson 5: Work with Objectives
Lesson 6: Define Team Rules
Lesson 7: Define Roles and Responsibilities
Lesson 8: Give Meaning (Conclusion)
Lesson 9: Communicate Effectively
Lesson 10: Develop People
Lesson 11: Develop Processes and Tools
Lesson 12: Motivate your Team
Lesson 13: Recognize and Reward
Lesson 14: Fun at Work
Lesson 15: Pygmalion Effect
Lesson 16: Ideas for Recognizing and Rewarding
Lesson 17: Team-Building: Mutual Knowledge and Trust
Lesson 18: Teambuilding: Team Identity
Lesson 19: Team-Building Activities
Lesson 20: Coach Effectively
Lesson 21: From the Inside Out
Lesson 22: From one Leader to Another
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Pacific Lesson 1: Delegate Effectively
4
Lesson 1: Delegate Effectively
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself”
Andrew Carnegie
Pacific
This course is a step-by-step guide to managing high-performance teams. It provides hundreds of ideas that you
can put into practice with your team immediately and skips philosophies, definitions, models, and theories with
no practical application.
The content of this program was created over 12 years based on experience in executive training and coaching. To
develop it, hundreds of interviews were conducted with CEOs and executives of companies and institutions, and
it contains the wisdom of some of the greatest leaders in history.
Pacific is Gamelearn’s third product: A video game, course and simulator that will allow you to learn by practicing
and having fun. You’ll have to put some time into it, but real learning doesn’t happen in five minutes.
Gamelearn is a world leader in corporate training through video games. It has trained over 100,000 people on five
continents and in more than 600 corporations (many of them in the Fortune 500), and it has been recognized
internationally with a multitude of prizes and awards.
Delegate
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it”.
Andrew Carnegie. Founder of modern-day philanthropy.
Managing a team is a full-time job with hundreds of associated tasks and responsibilities. Over the course of the
program, you’ll discover all the things it involves. Having the time to do all of them means that you have to delegate.
By delegating:
-----
You’ll have more time for tasks that have greater added value.
You’ll multiply your capacity to get results (through people).
You’ll develop your team members’ self-confidence and skills.
You’ll demonstrate your confidence in them, motivate them, and earn their loyalty.
“When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out”.
Napoleon Bonaparte. French general and governor.
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Pacific Lesson 1: Delegate Effectively
5
Tips for effective delegation
-- Delegate more. You are most certainly doing things at the moment that someone else could be doing.
-- Don’t expect your team members to do things as you would: It’s not going to happen. But that’s not
necessarily a bad thing. What interests you is the result, not how it is achieved. Does the difference really
make up for the time and effort you would have to invest to do it yourself?
-- Specify exactly the result you expect: Lack of detail in this point is the main reason for problems, conflicts,
delays, and inefficiencies in the delegation process. Explain how you want to report to be, the design you
need, the proposal, the presentation... Visualize the final result with the person you’re delegating it to before
asking them to start work. Define how success will be evaluated at the end of the process.
-- Each task must have just one responsible party: When the responsibility is unclear, there is a high probability
that the task won’t get done. You should avoid diluting responsibility. If you want something done, clearly
define who is responsible for it.
-- Each task should have a deadline: Otherwise it probably won’t get done. Agree on this date with the person
you’re delegating to; this will increase their commitment to it. Don’t worry, the other person will be much
more ambitious than you are when it comes to defining a deadline. Later, it will be much easier to be strict,
since, after all, the other person proposed it.
-- Provide the necessary resources: If you expect the task to be done right, you’ll have to make sure that the
person has the information, training, tools, and budget necessary to do it.
-- Give the person the freedom to decide how to do it: Ask for a specific result, define some basic lines of
action, and let them decide how to carry out the task from there. Don’t work “through” the person. A puppet
will always need you to move the strings. You want each person on your team to work with true autonomy.
-- Trust the person to be able to do it: If you transmit this trust, the person will do everything possible to
deserve it. [See the lesson on the “Pygmalion Effect” on the motivation sheet]
-- Define a tracking plan: The goal is not to monitor what the person is doing but to analyze progress, detect
deviations, and to be able to fix them in time. If the person understands from the outset that review meetings
are planned, they will see them as part of the work system and not as meddling.
-- Don’t solve the person’s problems: Problems will arise along the way. You can solve them faster and better.
But if you do, each time a new problem arises, you’ll have to come to the rescue again. Help the person think
of solutions. Don’t answer their questions. Help them come up with the answers on their own. At first, it will
take longer, but in the medium term, you’ll make them learn to do things independently and you won’t have
to step in again.
-- Give feedback: During the process you should provide feedback, both positive and negative. You should
understand what the person is doing right and what they are doing wrong. [We’ll go into greater depth in
the lesson on feedback] Recognize and celebrate achievements and progress along the way. Feedback is not
something you give at the end of the project; it’s an ongoing and evolving process.
“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish”.
Sam Walton. Founder of Walmart and Sam’s Club.
[This lesson will enable you to activate the “Delegate” button in the game so that you can use it, by clicking on the
characters, to ask them to execute tasks for survival and building the hot-air balloon to get off the island. You can start
to delegate now; there’s no need to take any other action. From now on, delegate tasks to every person, everyday. It’s
important, but not essential, that the characteristics of the task fit with those of the person. Try not to leave anybody idle.]
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Pacific Lesson 2: Give Feedback Effectively
6
Lesson 2: Give Feedback Effectively
“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.”
Bill Gates
Your primary management tool is feedback. It’s how the people on your team know what they’re doing right and
what they’re doing wrong. If no one tells them, how will they know?
You will use positive feedback to reinforce behaviors and attitudes that help the team, and negative feedback to
correct ones that don’t.
You should explain to all the members of your team at the outset that they are going to receive feedback, that it’s
a work tool, and that it’s necessary to keep the machinery running smoothly. You will also ask them for feedback,
and they will also give it to you. They should understand that it’s a normal and necessary process in the team’s dayto-day work. It’s something you should do continuously and not just once a year, during the performance review
meeting.
If you’re not capable of asking for and receiving feedback yourself, it will be more difficult for
your team to accept it from you. [See the lesson “From the inside out”]
You should create a team culture in which feedback is not only welcome but solicited. Everyone has to believe that
receiving it is the best way of growing and improving (you first). When your team discovers the enormous benefits
of feedback, they will ask you to give it.
Positive feedback
This is the more effective of the two. Positive reinforcement has a much greater impact on people and, moreover,
increases their self-confidence, motivation, and commitment to the team.
Your natural tendency will be to talk to people when they’re doing something wrong (correcting seems more
urgent than giving reinforcement), but you should make an effort to find situations where you can use positive
feedback.
Don’t limit yourself to giving positive feedback only for good results. Also give it for behaviors that engender good
results.
Positive feedback (recognition) is a powerful tool for motivating people that we will also address in the lesson
“Recognize and Reward.” These are the rules for doing it correctly:
-----
Give praise immediately. If you let time go by, the recognition will have less impact.
Be sincere. Never pretend, because people can tell. You have to really mean it.
Describe exactly what the person did well. Specify the act, behavior, or specific achievement.
Never invalidate the praise: Avoid expressions like “better late than never,” “but,” “although,” “for the first time,”
“finally”…
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Pacific Lesson 2: Give Feedback Effectively
------
7
Describe the positive impact it has on the team, on the company, on customers...
Express your satisfaction.
Thank the person for their effort.
Encourage them to keep up the good work.
Consider doing it publicly.
Download your checklist to give positive feedback.
Negative feedback
“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It
calls attention to an unhealthy state of things”.
Winston Churchill. Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom..
No one likes to receive negative feedback, but it’s much easier when:
-- You’ve explained to your team in advance that they should expect it and what purpose it serves.
-- They know how you are going to give it.
-- It’s another tool for improvement that is used naturally within the team.
-- You preach by example by requesting feedback and thanking people for it.
-- You give negative feedback correctly.
Don’t forget that negative feedback serves to correct or improve something. If it won’t change anything,
maybe you should think twice about giving it.
The rules for giving negative feedback correctly:
-----
Explain to them that they should expect it and what purpose it serves.
Teach them to receive it (see the next section).
Make them see it as something useful that will contribute to their improvement. Get them to ask for it.
Give it immediately: When something is done wrong, it should be corrected right away. Never give negative
feedback if a long time has gone by. It won’t be understood as an attempt to improve things but rather as a
reproach.
And, the impact of feedback is always greater the more immediate it is.
-- Every event, one feedback message: If things pile up, you’re not following the previous rule.
-- Prepare it carefully before giving it: Good feedback cannot be improvised. Everything you say has to be planned
down to the last detail, because it’s a situation in which every nuance counts. Sometimes, the difference between
good and bad feedback is just a single word.
-- Always in private: Never give negative feedback in front of other people.
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Pacific Lesson 2: Give Feedback Effectively
--------
-------
8
Be clear and direct: Go straight to the point. Don’t complicate the message.
Don’t be condescending: Don’t be paternalistic. Talk to the person as a colleague.
Make it constructive: It should serve to improve something and explain how to do it. If not, why are you giving it?
Avoid discussion: Talk about “indisputable” things.
Talk about facts, not about the person: “You’ve been late three days in a row” (indisputable) instead of “you’re lazy”
(disputable).
Don’t qualify, describe: “This report is missing the January sales figures” (indisputable), instead of “this is a bad
report” (disputable).
Don’t judge, speak in the first person: “It really bothers me that you say…” (indisputable), instead of “It’s rude to
say…” (disputable). Your emotions, your feelings, your perceptions, your beliefs can’t be disputed. Use expressions
like “I believe,” “I feel,” “it seems to me,” “I get the feeling,” “it hurts me,” “I feel bad,” “I’m worried,” “it makes me mad”…
Talk about things that can be changed: Talk about things that are under the person’s control, about behaviors
that can be controlled. Focus on what can be improved.
Never attack or discredit the person. Always with maximum respect.
Show the person that you’re on their side. Make it clear that the problem is with the specific event and not with
the person.
Show your optimism: Express your conviction that things are going to improve.
Follow up: Make sure that the situation was corrected. If so, congratulate the person. If not, you should give
negative feedback again.
Move on: Once you’ve addressed the issue and it has been resolved, never bring it up again.
Don’t use the sandwich technique (Start and/or end with positive feedback to soften the negative
feedback). if they get used to this technique, you won’t be able to give positive feedback because they’ll
always be waiting for a “but.”
Download your checklist to give negative feedback.
How do you receive feedback?
To make the feedback process effective, you not only have to know how to give it, they have to know how to
receive it.
Make sure that all the members of your team know the rules for giving and receiving feedback.
The lesson “From the Inside Out” explains in detail how to receive feedback.
Download your “How to receive feedback” sheet here.
[This lesson enables you to activate the “Give feedback” button in the game which you will use, by clicking on
the characters, to give them positive or negative feedback. When events pending feedback exist, the button will
display a little red dot]
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Pacific Lesson 3: Manage Conflicts Effectively
9
Lesson 3: Manage Conflicts Effectively
“Don’t find blame. Find solutions.”
Henry Ford
Conflict is inevitable within a team. Handle it naturally and resolve it immediately so that it doesn’t negatively
affect your team’s motivation and synergy. An unresolved conflict tends to grow and can end up causing serious
problems in the team.
The existence of the conflict in the team is necessary and is even positive (if properly resolved): it helps the team to
improve, it strengthens communication, and it improves the relationship.
An absence of conflict produces inertia. Lack of confrontation means fewer alternatives generated, increases
complacency, and with it, undermines efficiency and competitiveness.
Too much conflict distracts the team, adversely affects motivation, and erodes collaboration and cooperation.
Negotiation and conflict management is a topic that requires an entire course to cover. Discover “Merchants,” our
video game on negotiation and conflict resolution by clicking here.
In this lesson, we’ll try to give you some of the keys to addressing conflicts on your team.
Minimize sources of conflict
-- Confusing responsibilities: make sure that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined.
-- Incompatible objectives: try to ensure that long-, medium- and short-term objectives are compatible. Align team
objectives with individual ones.
-- Expectations: be very careful about managing expectations. Avoid generating unrealistic expectations. Don’t
promise things you can’t deliver.
-- Communication errors: make sure your team has the communication channels and mechanisms necessary to
avoid misunderstandings.
-- Stress: too much pressure, tension, a negative environment, or overly ambitious deadlines can result in a constant
level of stress that can end up generating avoidable conflicts.
-- Personal relationships: behaviors, attitudes, and interactions are a frequent source of conflict. One of the ways of
minimizing conflict is to create team rules. [See the lesson on defining rules]
-- Internal competition: try to avoid competition within the team. Make everyone feel that they are contributing to
something bigger than themselves. Build team spirit. Encourage collaboration. Define shared objectives. Align
team objectives with individual ones.
-- Competition for resources: distribute resources equitably. Explain clearly from the beginning how this distribution
will be carried out. Try to make the team participate in distributing resources.
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Pacific Lesson 3: Manage Conflicts Effectively
10
Confront conflict naturally and immediately
“Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.”
William James. Psychologist.
Whether you’re directly involved in the conflict or you have to mediate between two people on your team, follow
these recommendations:
-- Address the conflict immediately: you should confront conflicts as soon as they arise.
-- Treat the conflict as something completely natural. The parties should understand that conflict is an inherent
part of working on a team and of coexisting.
-- Get all the information: you want to understand the concerns, interests, and needs of the parties perfectly. Always,
above all, you should listen to all parties and their versions. Before you even begin to think about proposals, you
should first understand the needs of each person (the proposals should resolve these needs). [See the lesson
“Communicate”]
-- Build trust: the willingness of the parties to resolve the conflict and to do so by meeting the interests and needs
of both parties has to be clear from the start. We will be hard on the problem and easy on the person.
-- Be positive: transmit unequivocally that it’s possible to find a solution and that this solution will make the team
better. Conflicts are natural, and all of them have a solution.
-- Don’t look for blame: concentrate on finding solutions and not guilty parties.
-- No one is right: always avoid discussions about who is right and who is wrong. There are always three realities:
my reality, your reality, and objective reality. The important thing is to concentrate on the solution and not on
the problem.
-- Build based on what unites: start the negotiation by talking about the things the parties agree on. They’re usually
the majority. Often we make the error of starting by talking about the issues that separate us (a minority) and not
from the points on which we agree (the majority).
-- Don’t defend positions: what’s important aren’t the opinions, ideas, or positions that each party is defending. The
important thing is that a problem exists and there are a series of interests that need to be satisfied. The important
thing is not how they are satisfied but that they are satisfied for both parties in the end.
-- Work as a team: you should all work as the team that you are when thinking about and creating a solution that
resolves the conflict. Present the conflict as a new challenge for which the team must find a solution.
-- Think creatively: new ways, original solutions, non-traditional proposals are almost always the solution to the
most complex problems.
-- Always think long-term: the two parties should feel that the solution is fair. No one is interested in winning at
someone else’s expense, because this will damage the relationship in the long run. You should never forget that
you’re colleagues on a team and that you will have to keep working together after this conflict is resolved.
“It takes two to quarrel, but only one to end it.”
Spanish proverb.
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Pacific Lesson 3: Manage Conflicts Effectively
11
Guarantee commitment to the solution.
Once a solution has been identified or an agreement has been reached, you have to demand that the parties
commit to it. Make sure that this commitment is met, because if it’s not, any future negotiation to resolve a conflict
will be at risk.
Follow up and evaluate the eventual solution to the problem.
[With this lesson, you’ll activate the “Resolve conflicts” action which you’ll be able to use in meeting mode. Resolve
conflicts right away to keep them from adversely affecting your team’s synergy and motivation. When pending
conflict resolution exists, the conflict resolution button will display a little red dot]
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Pacific Lesson 4: Define Objectives
12
Lesson 4: Define Objectives
“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable”
Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Roman philosopher and statesman.
The first step in transforming your team into a high-performance team is to define objectives.
Dozens of scientific studies have confirmed that defining objectives improves results at both the individual and
organizational level.
“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”
Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Roman philosopher and statesman.
Why do you need objectives?
“People work better when they know what the goal is and why.”
Elon Musk. Founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX.
-- The only way to measure the success of your team is to define, beforehand, exactly what “success” means for
everyone.
-- Only if you know exactly what you want to achieve can you understand what you need to do to achieve it and
create the corresponding action plan.
-- Objectives stimulate creativity and help the team generate ideas for reaching them.
-- They facilitate decision-making enormously. If you have to decide between doing something and not doing it,
or between making one thing or another, you simply need to ask yourselves: “Does it contribute to any of our
objectives?”
-- Having a clear idea of what you’re looking for makes you much more alert to any opportunities that might arise
in your path related to these objectives.
-- Avoid uncertainty. Uncertainty is a factor that fosters conflict, undermines performance, and erodes motivation.
-- A list of objectives is a permanent reminder of what needs to be done and why it needs to be done. It’s also an
essential tool for making decisions, defining priorities, and motivating the team.
-- Objectives motivate, encourage action, and push people to get moving. They oblige us to make decisions and
assume risks we would never assume otherwise.
-- They generate commitment and facilitate team cohesion.
Would you be able to list the objectives of each of the members of your team? Would each of them be able
to list their own objectives?
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Pacific Lesson 4: Define Objectives
13
How should your objectives be?
“A goal properly set is halfway reached.”
Zig Ziglar.
-- Specific. Your objectives cannot be generic or vague. You should define them to the maximum level of detail.
-- Measurable. It has to be possible to measure them. Objective and not subjective. Something that can’t be
measured can’t be evaluated or improved.
-- Have a deadline. An objective without a deadline is incomplete. Deadlines motivate, energize, and increase the
level of effort.
-- Have a responsible party. If you don’t define someone to be ultimately responsible for it, responsibility is diluted
and the objective is not achieved.
-- Be in writing. If the objective is not written down, it’s as if it didn’t exist. The simple act of writing them down
“crystallizes” objectives and becomes the first step towards achieving them.
Why not sign an objectives contract with each of the members of your team? It will significantly strengthen
each person’s commitment to achieving the objectives.
-- Always be visible. A human being tends to forget. You should remind your team of their objectives every
day. Every instant. Objectives should always be present and serve as a guide for making decisions, defining
priorities, and giving meaning to the team’s efforts.
Construct a panel, draw a thermometer, design a website, or create an application... that shows the
team’s objectives and the progress made towards meeting each of them. Put it in a visible location where
everyone can see it.
You have to guarantee that your team has the necessary resources to achieve the objectives. It’s your
responsibility to obtain the information, tools, budget, processes... that your team needs to achieve its
objectives.
How should you define objectives for your team?
Define the objectives as early as possible. Ideally before the team starts to work.
Each of the members of the team should understand and internalize the objectives of the team. Likewise, each
member should have his or her own individual objectives that contribute to the objectives of the group. Write
down these objectives and make sure the conditions we discussed above are met.
The objectives of each of the members of your team should fit on a single page and be readable in less
than one minute.
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Pacific Lesson 4: Define Objectives
14
The simple act of having shared goals and objectives facilitates commitment. But if the members of the team help
define them, their commitment will be even greater (don’t worry, people typically demand more of themselves
than you ever could). If the team doesn’t accept the objectives or doesn’t agree with them, you’ll have to convince
them, negotiate, or change the objectives. If the team doesn’t believe they can be met, they won’t try.
You should have a document handy that contains all the objectives of your team and its members. Use it
as a guide for your meetings with them (both as a team and individually). Never make important decisions
without having this document in front of you. Always ask yourself: “Does this contribute to achieving my
objectives?”
“An average person with average talents and ambition and average education, can outstrip the most brilliant
genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals.”
Mary Kay Ash. Founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics
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Pacific Lesson 5: Work with Objectives
15
Lesson 5: Work with Objectives
“The game has its ups and downs, but you can never lose focus of your
individual goals...”
Michael Jordan
Some managers define objectives at the start of the year and don’t use them again until the end of it, when it’s time
for the performance review. That’s like not having any objectives at all.
While they work, the members of your team need to have their objectives in mind at all times. They have to see
them, touch them, talk about them, see progress towards them. So, you need two fundamental tools: a visualization
system and a system for tracking objectives.
Visualization system
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”
Alexander Graham Bell.
You want all the members of the team to remember the objectives every day, every hour, every instant. You need
for them to see them. To keep them in mind.
When your team works with the objectives in view, their motivation, focus, and effort increase. Having them in
sight at all times is key for making the right decisions, optimizing the work, and prioritizing correctly.
Make it possible for them to visualize progress towards the objectives. Progress bars have a strange appeal for
human beings.
You can use any medium: posters, signs, flat screens, projectors, desktop wallpapers, websites, apps... Whatever it
is, make sure it’s visible to everyone.
Ask your team to come up with and construct its own system for visualizing the progress of objectives.
Remember that everything they do themselves will increase their commitment.
Tracking system
The game has its ups and downs, but you can never lose focus of your individual goals...
Michael Jordan.
You should have a tracking system that allows you to review objectives periodically.
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Pacific Lesson 5: Work with Objectives
16
This system should not be presented a means of control but rather as a way of ensuring communication, analyzing
the situation, identifying deviations, and making improvement decisions. Each member of the team should know
in advance that these meetings are going to be held, why, and what they will be like.
Each person should know what he or she has to achieve and should be free and autonomous to decide how to do
it (within certain defined boundaries). In the process, you should act as a facilitator, providing guidance and advice
but never falling into micro-management (paying close attention to the details and defining exactly how to do
things). We will develop this topic further in the sections on “Delegation” and “Coaching.”
The progress meeting:
-- Should be held regularly. Depending on the type of project or team you’re managing, you will have to decide the
appropriate frequency. Every two weeks is a reasonable one.
-- Must be as short as possible. Try 30 minutes to start, you can adjust this later based on your needs.
During the meeting:
-- Review the overall objectives and the progress made on each one of them. Try to make the review of objectives
as visual as possible (use graphics, trend lines, percentages... remember that objectives must be measurable).
-- Analyze in detail the milestones and actions defined for this meeting (which you will have defined in the previous
meeting). Review those that were completed and analyze any that could not be completed.
-- Ask about any difficulties encountered since the last tracking meeting, and together analyze how to eliminate
or minimize these difficulties. Your role is to smooth the way so that they can achieve their objectives (improve
bureaucracy, obtain resources, provide training, create tools, improve processes...).
-- Answer these two questions together: What went well during the past two weeks? What could have been
improved? This will enable you to turn these meetings into a continuous improvement process.
-- Recognize and celebrate achievements. It’s very important to end the meeting on a positive note. This will also
favor motivation and commitment. It’s good to “force” yourself to find good things that you can recognize. Your
tendency will, in general, be to “see” the things that are being done poorly. Make sure that there is something in
every meeting that you can celebrate.
-- Together define the milestones to be reached or the actions to be carried out for the next progress meeting.
-- Set the date and time for the next progress meeting.
NOTE:
Depending on the type of team and the responsibilities of the members, this can be an individual or team meeting.
If everyone is working on a particular project with many interdependencies and complementing each other, the
meeting should be a group one (in this case the duration will be between 90-120 minutes). For example, a team of
software developers working on an application.
On the other hand, if the roles are very distinct and not quite so complementary, the meetings should be individual.
For example, if you are General Manager and you lead an executive team in which each member manages a
different department. Even in this case, you should also schedule team meetings, generally less frequently than the
individual meetings (again, you should decide the frequency based on a variety of factors).
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Pacific Lesson 5: Work with Objectives
17
Download your checklist for your progress meeting.
[With this lesson, you’ll activate the “Define objectives” action which you’ll be able to use in meeting mode.
Objectives increase the synergy between team members and the speed with which they execute their tasks]
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Pacific Lesson 6: Define Team Rules
18
Lesson 6: Define Team Rules
“Your team needs rules to avoid interpersonal conflicts and inefficiencies”
Countries have laws, every club has its rules, religions their commandments, companies their corporate values...
Sociologists believe that rules are the basis on which society is built and that they keep it from collapsing.
Your team also needs some rules to play by. Certain basic standards that shape the manner in which you relate to
one another, communicate, and behave.
Why define team rules?
---------
Reduces conflict.
Makes it possible to work faster and more efficiently.
Effective for team-building.
Clarifies expectations.
Reveals assumptions, in many cases erroneous.
Generates cohesion.
Strengthens team discipline.
Increases trust between people.
Just as a river needs banks to keep from overflowing, your team needs rules to avoid interpersonal conflicts and
inefficiencies.
What type of rules should you define?
Some of the questions that team rules have to answer are:
-------
How do we relate to each other?
How do we help each other?
How do we handle conflicts?
How do we handle mistakes?
How do we make decisions?
How do we define “excellence”?
Some examples of rules used by teams we’ve worked with:
--------
“Transparency.”
“Constant communication.”
“We resolve our conflicts immediately with the people who are affected.”
“Assertiveness.”
“Active listening.”
“We give and receive feedback constantly.”
“Respect.”
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Pacific Lesson 6: Define Team Rules
--------------------
19
“Participation.”
“Commitment.”
“Responsibility.”
“We start and end meetings on time.”
“Creativity.”
“Commitment to majority decisions.”
“Learn from mistakes.”
“Fun.”
“We’re all equal.”
“We meet deadlines.”
“We don’t interrupt each other.”
“We’re positive.”
“We celebrate achievements.”
“We’re brave.”
“We make decisions by consensus.”
“We make decisions by majority.”
“Even if we don’t agree with a team decision, we all fully support it.”
“Quality in everything we do.”
“We invite and listen to everyone’s contribution.”
Rules are a guide that improves gradually over time. Even though you’ll define the initial rules in a first session, it is
possible and advisable to fine-tune them by adding and eliminating rules. Rules grow and evolve with the team.
How do you hold a rule-setting session?
[Estimated duration: 2-3 hours]
This working session is one of the most important ones you can have with your team. It serves to clarify expectations
so that the team members get to know each other better, and to define a work framework that will make them
more efficient. It allows every person to express what is important to them and to learn what is important to the
rest of the team. It is, in itself, a true team-building session.
You should prepare the session with great care and see the time you spend on it as a true investment in your team
and their performance.
The steps for your session:
-- Review this reading and download the checklist for the session.
-- Invite everyone on your team. You want everyone to participate in the process and to commit to following the
rules.
-- Explain to your team why it’s important to have rules and the benefits they bring.
-- Start with a brainstorming session in which everyone proposes possible rules to make the team more
cohesive and efficient. Remember that brainstorming aims to generate the greatest possible number of
ideas; they are not discussed or criticized; all of them get written on a panel that the entire group can see.
(click here to find out how to hold a “brainstorming” meeting)
-- Eliminate repeated or redundant rules. Group complementary ones together.
-- Start a discussion to clarify each of the rules. Make sure that everyone has a perfect understanding of what each
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Pacific Lesson 6: Define Team Rules
20
of the proposed rules consists of. This is one of the main parts of the session: you will discover very interesting
things about the thinking, perceptions, and expectations of the members of your team.
-- Select, by consensus, those rules that the team feels are important and is willing to commit to. You don’t have
to “legislate” every possible behavior of the team; what you want is a set of 7-10 rules that you’re all comfortable
with. There will be time to revise, eliminate, and add rules at a later date.
No one should be forced to accept a rule that he or she doesn’t agree with. In this case, it’s better to
reformulate or eliminate the rule. This condition is also a guarantee that your team will never have rules
that you don’t agree with.
-- Explain in one or two phrases exactly what each rule means. You want to have a very concrete definition of the
meaning of each. Generate a document with the rules and their explanations.
-- Have each member of the team commit to following the rules and to speaking to their colleagues if they feel
someone isn’t.
Print a poster with the team rules and have everyone sign it. The poster has to be visible in the team’s work
area or in one of the meeting rooms you use habitually.
-- At the end of the session, send all the members of the team the rules you all just defined. Store the rules in a
repository that everyone has easy access to.
Download your checklist for a rule-setting session.
How do you work with rules?
As with the objectives, if we don’t have the rules in front of us, we tend to forget about them. Make sure to
display them somewhere visible to all the members of the team. It’s very useful to have them in view during
your meetings.
It’s not enough for them to be visible, you need a system to make sure people follow them. This system should
be sustained by feedback. All of the members of the team have to give feedback to their colleagues when any of
the rules are broken (see readings on feedback). One big advantage is that when there are defined rules, giving
feedback is much easier. You don’t need to give explanations or spend much time on it. Everyone knows what each
rule means and why it has to be followed, so you just need to point it out when one is broken.
Turning observance of the rules into something fun always works. Prepare a small plastic or cardboard
box (a piggy bank also works). Each time someone on the team breaks a rule, make them sign a paper (a
fine) and put it in the box. Each fine can have a monetary value (a dollar, for example). Periodically open
the box, have everyone pay their fines, and then use the money to go out for a drink together. You can also
simplify the system and have the person with the most fines pay for a round of drinks. Any variation of this
system that the team agrees to is valid.
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Pacific Lesson 6: Define Team Rules
21
Working with rules also means talking about them periodically. A quick review of the rules, their observance, and
their contribution to the team only takes 10-15 minutes. You will have to decide on the frequency as a group. This
conversation can take place in a project or department meeting. There’s no need to organize a specific meeting.
The situation and needs of the team change over time. Therefore, it’s necessary to plan a rules revision session
when you and the team feel that they need to be adapted or modified (this should be a dedicated meeting).
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Pacific Lesson 7: Define Roles and Responsibilities
22
Lesson 7: Define Roles and Responsibilities
“Create a list of all the people on the team with the role(s) assigned to them.”
A large part of the inefficiencies and conflicts that arise are because roles and responsibilities within the team are
not correctly defined.
Make sure that everyone on your team has a perfect understanding of:
-----
His or her role on the team.
What is expected of them.
How their work contributes to the team’s objectives.
What their exact responsibilities are.
Any task that doesn’t have a clearly defined owner runs an enormous risk of not being executed. There
is a psychological phenomenon, known as “dilution of responsibility,” that makes us feel very little
commitment to things we aren’t responsible for (“the spectator effect”)
[Read more about the unbelievable murder of Kitty Genovese]
Why define responsibilities?
-------
Prevents conflict.
Avoids uncertainty.
Clarifies expectations.
Facilitates collaboration and teamwork.
Eliminates overlapping assignments and evasion of responsibilities.
Improves the speed and efficiency of the team.
Just as everyone must commit to the team’s objectives, each person must also do so with his or her own specific
responsibilities.
As the team evolves and circumstances change, it may be necessary to revise the roles and responsibilities. Create
a plan to revise them.
Create a list of all the people on the team with the role(s) assigned to them. This will be very useful to you for job
descriptions and defining KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
[With this lesson, you’ll activate the “Define rules” action which you’ll be able to use in meeting mode. Rules increase
the synergy between team members and, with it, the speed with which they execute their tasks]
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Pacific Lesson 8: Give Meaning (Conclusion)
23
Lesson 8: Give Meaning (Conclusion)
“Man is a being in search of meaning.”
Plato
A large part of the inefficiencies and conflicts that arise are because roles and responsibilities within the team are
not correctly defined.
To guarantee the success of your team, you need:
-- A clear idea of where you’re going that everyone is committed to.
-- Certain basic standards that shape the manner in which you behave, interact, and communicate.
-- For each member of the team to perfectly understand his or her role and responsibilities in achieving your
objectives.
These three elements are grouped in what we call “Giving meaning” (in Spanish “Giving meaning” also means
“Giving direction”).
“Giving meaning” means:
-- That your team knows what direction to go in, their reason for being, the objective to pursue.
-- That everyone understands the form and direction that everyone’s interactions and behavior must take.
-- That every member of the team understands the meaning of their work, of their role on the team, of their
contribution to the final objective.
But these three elements are not just a question of common sense. History shows us how important they are for
some of the most successful and venerable organizations in the world.
The Catholic Church, one of the most important religious organizations on the planet.
With very different objectives, the Yakuza (Japanese mafia), with over 100,000 members and worldwide operations,
which date back to the sixteenth century. The largest criminal group in the world generates over 200,000 million
dollars a year.
Another organization in existence for over a century and which manages to mobilize an entire city is the Bilbao
Athletic Club, one of the oldest soccer teams in the world. For over 100 years, it has never dropped below first
division in “La Liga,” one of the toughest contests on the planet (only Real Madrid and FC Barcelona can say the
same).
These three organizations, completely different from one another, are examples of success and longevity (regardless
of whether or not we agree with their purposes).
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Pacific Lesson 8: Give Meaning (Conclusion)
24
What they all have in common is:
-- Clearly defined objectives and an almost obsessive focus on achieving them (evangelizing, generating profits,
or winning athletic titles).
-- Rules that are perfectly defined and strictly adhered to. In the three organizations, failure to follow the rules has
very serious consequences (in some cases fatal).
-- Extremely detailed rules and crystal-clear responsibilities. The three are organizations with hierarchies,
dependencies, spheres of responsibility, decision-making capacity... defined with great precision and in very
strict terms.
We’re not saying that your team has to be like these organizations. We’re just trying to emphasize how three
completely different organizations which have demonstrated their success as few have in history share three
essential elements in their management: objectives, rules, and roles/responsibilities.
Your function as the leader of your team is to guarantee the existence of these three elements, and to adapt them
to the culture of your organization and your specific circumstances.
“Giving meaning” to your team, therefore, is one of the first things you have to do to make your team successful.
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Pacific Lesson 9: Communicate Effectively
25
Lesson 9: Communicate Effectively
“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”
James Humes
“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”
James Humes. White House speech writer.
Leadership and personnel management is, above all, a process of constant communication. Each and every one of
the different steps in managing your team represents pure communication:
---------
Defining objectives and rules.
Team-building, building trust and mutual knowledge.
Motivating and recognizing.
Developing people.
Giving and receiving feedback.
Delegating.
Resolving conflicts.
Coaching.
Every one of these elements has communication as an essential component. That’s why communication is
symbolized by the conch shell of the Nautilus in Pacific’s team management model. It’s the structure that sustains
the rest of the elements in the model.
If you don’t develop your interpersonal communication skills, you’ll be lacking the main instrument you need to
manage your team. Interpersonal communication is a very extensive topic that would require an entire course to
cover. In any case, in this lesson we are going to synthesize some of the basic tools you need to master:
1. Empathy
You won’t be able to lead your team if you can’t understand them. And you won’t be able to understand them if
you’re not capable of putting yourself in their shoes.
To resolve conflict, motivate and improve processes, you have to be able to analyze each situation through the
eyes of the members of your team.
To do this:
-------
Set aside your point of view for a moment.
Stop talking. Let them talk.
Ask yourself: What would I think if I was in their place? What would I feel?
Ask them how they feel.
Ask them what they would do.
Listen to them actively. Don’t prejudge, don’t make assumptions.
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Pacific Lesson 9: Communicate Effectively
26
-----
Question your prejudices.
Ask, ask, and ask.
Demonstrate to them that you’re putting yourself in their shoes.
Recognize their point of view. Doing this doesn’t mean capitulating, but it does show that you accept that there
are different ways of looking at things.
-- Don’t be afraid of being wrong. There’s nothing wrong with changing your mind or being mistaken.
2. Listen actively
Nature gave us two ears and one mouth so that we could listen twice as much as we speak. You should listen to
obtain information, to understand, and to learn.
Studies show that we remember between 25 and 50 percent of what we hear. A good leader can’t afford to
squander this much information, understanding, and learning.
-------
Stop talking.
Pay attention to 100%. Don’t let yourself be distracted by anything else.
Don’t be thinking about how to reply.
Maintain visual contact.
Don’t interrupt.
Show that you’re listening: smile, nod once in a while, and invite the person to continue with verbal expressions
like “yes,” “I agree,” “aha”…
-- Take notes. That way you will avoid interrupting the person and register what is being said, and you’ll be able to
use the notes for paraphrasing.
-- Paraphrase: Sum up in your own words what you have understood and ask the person to confirm that you’ve
understood correctly.
-- Ask questions until you understand. Always wait until the other person finishes speaking to avoid interrupting
with questions. Ask questions to gain understanding, but avoid letting your questions sidetrack the conversation.
3. Questions
You won’t learn anything new by talking. The only way to learn the problems, motivations, concerns... of your
people is by asking them.
The questions:
-----
Will allow you to discover essential information for managing your people.
Are an essential instrument for empathy and active listening.
Are a magnificent tool for resolving problems and persuading people.
Demonstrate interest in the other person, respect for their opinions and ideas.
Ask more. Talk less.
4. Assertiveness
Assertiveness is the ability to defend our interests in a pleasant, frank, and direct way, without being aggressive
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Pacific Lesson 9: Communicate Effectively
27
with others. It involves respect for other people’s feelings, needs, and opinions.
Assertiveness is an attitude that is found between two extremes: a passive attitude (not defending one’s own
interests) and an aggressive one (defending one’s interests by attacking the other person).
Sometimes being assertive is complicated and requires courage, but it’s very important for you to learn to defend
your interests and those of the organization if you’re going to manage people, and you should do this assertively.
Since this is not a natural thing, you will have to practice a great deal to master this technique.
To be assertive:
---------
Speak in the first person.
Express your opinions and feelings.
Watch your tone. Firm but calm.
Be brief and concise.
Try to talk about things that are indisputable.
Avoid sarcasm, condescension, threats, accusations...
Show your willingness to find solutions.
Take an interest in the other person’s’ opinions.
Example:
If a member of the team turns in an incomplete report.
Passive style: To avoid an uncomfortable situation, you would accept the report without saying anything.
Aggressive style: You would show your displeasure and tell the person that the report is poorly done (disputable)
and ask them to redo it.
Assertive style: You would explain nicely to the person how you like reports to be (indisputable), indicate what is
missing in their report (indisputable), and ask the person to please finish it.
Example:
A member of the team is late to meetings.
Passive style: You wouldn’t say anything.
Aggressive style: In the middle of the meeting you would say “It’s incredibly rude to be late [Disputable]. I hope
this doesn’t happen again [Threat].”
Assertive style: At the end of the meeting, you would ask the person to stay behind for a moment and, in private,
you would say “When you come to meetings late, you interrupt us (indisputable). I think some of your colleagues
might consider it disrespectful to them (indisputable). Personally, I like it when you’re all on time (indisputable).
Please try to be on time from now on.”
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Pacific Lesson 9: Communicate Effectively
28
As a leader you’ll have to say “no” countless times. The people on your team will always be asking for something.
Some managers don’t dare to say “no” (passive), which significantly harms the team and their own authority. Others
will say “no” but not assertively (aggressively) and damage the motivation and atmosphere of the team.
How do you say “no” assertively?
-- Say “no.”
-- Explain why it’s no.
-- Offer alternatives.
Example:
“Right now I can’t meet with you (say “no”) because I’m finishing a presentation for tomorrow (why it’s no). How
about if we get together the day after tomorrow when I have an opening in my agenda? (alternative).
Example:
“We can’t move you to another position now (say “no”) because right now that would disrupt the team and slow us
down unnecessarily (why it’s no). We can talk about this when we’ve finished the project and the change wouldn’t
cause so many complications (alternative).
It’s your responsibility to keep exploring these topics. You need to discover the techniques, practice them, and
improve them until you have mastered the skill. Development of this skill is so extensive that you can’t stop learning
it ever.
And, it’s not enough to just have the skill. You have to use it. You have to spend time with the people on your team,
interact with them, initiate communication...
[With this lesson you’ll activate the “Ask questions” action which you’ll be able to use by clicking on the characters
to find out their motivations. The information you glean will be incorporated into the sheet for each member of the
team. Use this information to select rewards that fit each of the characters]
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Pacific Lesson 9: Communicate Effectively
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Pacific Lesson 10: Develop People
30
Lesson 10: Develop People
“My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them
even better.”
Steve Jobs
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you In between, the leader is a
servant.
Max De Pree. Founder of the Herman Miller company.
Your main function as a leader is to guarantee that your team has the necessary tools to do its job properly.
A good leader works at the service of his or her team (not the other way around). Constantly look for obstacles that
are holding your team back and eliminate them.
In a normal pyramid structure, each person looks “upstream” and tries to satisfy his or her “superior.” But who is
looking at the customers? Who is trying to satisfy the people who keep the organization alive?
CLIENTS
T EAM ME MB E R S
TEAM MA NAG ERS
D I R E C TO R S
In a common-sense structure, the customers are the most important people. The people who are in direct contact
with them should have a single obsession: giving them service and satisfying their needs.
“Obsess over customers.”
Jeff Bezos. Founder of Amazon.
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Pacific Lesson 10: Develop People
31
With this new approach, the managers of people in direct contact with customers have a new objective: serve their
team and make sure that these employees have everything they need to attend to customers. Their role is not to
oversee or control but to serve.
And so on throughout the entire inverted pyramid: every leader is at the service of the team to provide it with what
it needs (what it needs, not what it wants).
D IREC TO RS
T EAM MA N AG E R S
TEAM MEMBERS
CLIENTS
At minimum you should:
-- Develop people.
-- Develop processes.
-- Develop tools.
1. Develop people
“My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.”
Steve Jobs.Founder of Apple..
To be effective, to be productive, and to be able to work on a team, people need to develop certain personal skills,
like:
---------
Interpersonal communication.
Assertiveness.
Negotiation and conflict-resolution (find out about our video game on negotiation).
Time management and personal productivity (find out about our video game on time management).
Sales techniques.
Problem-solving.
Customer service (find out about our video game on customer service).
Teamwork.
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Pacific Lesson 10: Develop People
32
-- Meeting management.
-- Creativity.
-- Empathy.
You can’t take for granted that everyone has these skills. They aren’t taught in elementary school, or in high school,
or in college... and experience is no guarantee that they’ve been picked up. The majority of these skills are easy to
develop: it’s a question of understanding a series of very basic techniques and practicing. The problem is that the
vast majority of people don’t know about these techniques.
In addition to interpersonal skills, each position requires certain technical skills that you also have to address.
Your function as the leader of the team is, precisely, to detect the development needs of each of the members of
your team and make sure they are covered.
This is not the responsibility of HR or the training department. It’s your responsibility to make sure your people have
the skills they need to do their jobs properly. Request training for your team proactively. At the very least, don’t
become one of those managers who works to block or prevent their team from spending time on training actions.
If you succeed in getting the people who work with you to develop themselves, grow, and improve, you’ll not only
increase their motivation but also the team’s synergy and performance. You’ll also achieve levels of loyalty and
commitment that are hard to come by any other way. People who feel they are better thanks to you will give you
considerable respect, esteem, and loyalty.
Make sure the training you provide is of high quality. Select it very carefully because your team members
will not want to invest their time if they feel that they aren’t learning or that what they’re learning isn’t
useful for their jobs or personal lives.
“The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”
Harvey S. Firestone. Founder of Firestone.
If your excuse is that you don’t have a budget for training your team, here are some ideas for doing it, many of them
at no cost:
-- Teach them yourself: dedicate time to your team to explain things to them, to share information and knowledge,
to train them, to coach them... it’s one of the most effective forms of development, besides being an incredible
tool for motivating people.
-- Give them constructive and constant criticism: feedback is one of the best tools you have for developing the
members of your team.
-- Have them teach one another: ask a member of the team to prepare a topic on something they are especially
knowledgeable about, and then schedule a session for them to explain it to the rest of the team. In general,
asking someone to teach their colleagues generates motivation. And, you’ll be obliging the “teacher” to learn
more than anyone else so they can prepare the session.
-- Share training: if the training you need is very expensive, ask one member of the team with good communication
and public speaking skills to attend the course and then explain what they learned to the rest of the team.
-- Organize “job shadowing” sessions: this consists of asking a person with less experience to become the shadow
of someone with experience for a period of time to learn through observation.
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Pacific Lesson 10: Develop People
33
-- Plan joint projects that oblige them to work together or with people from outside the team so they can learn
from other people.
-- Use MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses): currently some of the best universities and business schools in the
world offer free online courses. Here are some of them: www.courseraorg, www.udacity.com and www.edX.org
-- Give or lend books: ask them to share the key ideas in the book. Use it to generate a feedback and improvement
conversation.
-- Create a library for your team or for your company: with a small budget you can buy a lot of books which then
can be lent to the people on the team.
-- Get a subscription for the team to a service that offers summaries of books. For example: www.getabstract.com,
www.bizsum.com and www.readitfor.me. Besides keeping you up to date, these summaries are an inexhaustible
fountain of ideas.
-- Give them time off to attend free courses and seminars.
-- Share interesting articles: many consultants and experts share their ideas on their websites, in publications, or
on thematic portals.
-- Share interesting videos.
-- Share podcasts.
-- Look for mentors for your people. Young professionals can learn a lot from more senior people. And mentors
can also learn a lot in the process.
-- Organize lunches where your team and other employees can talk about topics of interest.
-- Sign your company up for memberships in associations or chambers of commerce: these organize a multitude
of free events, conferences, and seminars for their members.
-- Train them using instructional video games: making training a fun experience will make it easier to engage
them.
-- Ask the training department for materials from courses they’ve given in the past.
-- Use training as a reward for certain achievements.
Make sure they feel that what they learn is useful for their work and their life.
Do I have time to train my team?
“The day you stop learning is the day you stop living.”
Richard Branson. Founder of the Virgin Group.
The other excuse bad managers use is: “My team has so much to do that they don’t have time for training.”
Sometimes, we’re in big hurry. There’s lots of pressure to achieve results. Is that any reason to not develop your
team?
No one is in a bigger hurry than Formula 1 drivers in the middle of a race. And yet they make “pit stops” to change
their tires. They sacrifice their lead and stop for several seconds while the other drivers get ahead of them. At first
glance, this decision is counter-intuitive. But, if they didn’t do this, in every lap with worn tires they’d lose two
to three seconds. In a few laps, this would make them fall back several positions or, at worst, crash from lack of
traction. With new tires, they only need a few laps to make up the time lost in changing the tires. From that point
on, each new lap lets them gain more and more time.
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Pacific Lesson 10: Develop People
34
No matter how much of hurry you’re in, both you and your team need to stop to change the tires. The excuse of
not having time to learn to work better because you have to work is not valid.
“We’re too busy mopping the floor to turn off the fauce.”
Anonymous.
[See the next lesson to continue with development of processes and tools]
[With this lesson, you’ll activate the “Develop” action which you’ll be able to use by clicking on the characters.
“Develop” increases the characters’ level of development and the speed with which they execute their tasks]
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Pacific Lesson 11: Develop Processes and Tools
35
Lesson 11: Develop Processes and Tools
“ Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification.”
Tom Peters
In the previous section we explained how the function of the leader is to put him or herself at the service of the
team to give it everything it needs to do its job properly (what it needs, not what it wants). In this lesson you
learned the importance of developing people.
2. Develop processes:
“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the greatest competitive
advantage.”
Jack Welch.
Your next function will be to carefully analyze how your team works. You need perspective and to “step back” from
day-to-day concerns to observe your team from the balcony. You want to understand how it functions, how it does
things, what tasks it executes, how it executes these tasks, what difficulties it encounters...
You want to understand your team’s processes. The people on your team are too busy executing and don’t have
the time or the responsibility to analyze them. Your function is to do this and find ways to improve them.
You should adopt analysis and improvement of your team’s work processes as a routine task. You want to
constantly be optimizing them. You are the one responsible for the continuous improvement of your team. Small
improvements introduced steadily can make a huge difference in the medium and long term.
----------------
What repetitive tasks can be automated?
What task duplication can be avoided?
What are the most common errors? Why do they happen? How can they be avoided?
Can you simplify how things are done? Can something that involves five steps be done in four? In three?
What is the real added value of your team? Are you dedicating yourselves to generating added value?
Are there tasks you shouldn’t be doing? Something that can be outsourced?
Are the communications processes adequate? Can they be improved?
Are people using e-mail properly?
Are people prioritizing adequately to achieve the team’s objectives?
Are people taking maximum advantage of the abilities of the different members of the team?
Is bureaucracy standing in the way of performance, initiative, or creativity? How can you avoid this?
Are there bottlenecks? What is causing them? How can you eliminate them?
Are there jobs that can be done faster using specific software?
Are people working efficiently?
[…]
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Pacific Lesson 11: Develop Processes and Tools
36
“Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification..”.
Tom Peters.
To improve a process, follow these steps:
-- “Map” the process: define each step and draw it on a flow chart. The better you can visualize the process, the
easier it will be for you to analyze and improve it.
-- Analyze the process: where are there bottlenecks? In which step do more errors occur? Where are delays
generated? At what point do costs take off?
-- Redesign the process: it’s much better if you can involve your team in all three steps, but it’s essential that they
get involved at this point. Use brainstorming sessions to generate improvement ideas.
-- Obtain resources: you’ll need resources to implement the new process. It’s your responsibility to get them for
your team.
-- Implement the change and communicate: make sure that you communicate all the changes (and the reasons
for them) clearly, both to your team and to everyone else affected by them.
-- Make corrections: the changes probably won’t work perfectly at first. Monitor how things are going from the
start and correct any problem that might arise.
-- Measure: collect data and information that enables you to understand whether you’ve improved or not. Look for
evidence, don’t assume things have improved.
-- Repeat: keep improving the process periodically.
Analyze and improve how you all work, what you communicate about, your meetings, how you make decisions,
etc.
“Quality is not an act, it is a habit”.
Aristotle. Ancient Greek philosopher and scientist.
3. Develop tools
“If you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them”.
Steve Jobs. Founder of Apple.
Besides processes, you have to get the tools your team needs to do its job properly.
Does your team have...
-------
clearly defined objectives?
team rules?
strategy, planning, and priorities?
instruments and physical tools?
appropriate hardware and software?
sufficient manpower?
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Pacific Lesson 11: Develop Processes and Tools
------
37
the necessary budget?
adequate environmental conditions?
personal productivity systems?
communication systems?
measurement and monitoring systems?
When faced with a performance problem on the team, don’t assume that the problem is with them. You are the
person ultimately responsible for this deficient performance. Are the systems being used the right ones? Are the
processes adequate? Are the tools the ones they need?
[With this lesson, you’ll activate the “Develop processes” action which you’ll be able to use in meeting mode. Rules
increase synergy between team members and, with it, the speed with which they execute their tasks]
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Pacific Lesson 12: Motivate your Team
38
Lesson 12: Motivate your Team
“You can only motivate people if you understand what it is that motivates
them.“
When people are motivated, they will make extraordinary efforts. A high-performance team is made up of
motivated people. Motivation is the fuel for performance.
Motivation is a factor you have to work on all the time.
Think of it as the battery of your cell phone. You want to be charging it constantly. Each action you take to motivate
one of the members of the team (or all of them) will have a temporary effect: It will cause a brief spike in motivation
(charge) and then, little by little, the battery will start running down again. You should make sure your team’s
charge level doesn’t drop too far. As the level gets close to zero, performance problems and conflicts start to
appear, and people may even quit the team.
“When you look at people who are successful, you will find that they aren’t the people who are motivated, but
have consistency in their motivation.”
Arsene Wenger. French soccer coach..
Just as you do with your cell phone battery, you need to recharge the motivation of each member of your team
regularly.
On your calendar, your smartphone, or your to-do list, set a periodic alarm to remind yourself that you
need to recharge your team’s motivation.
The steps for motivating a person:
-- Discover what motivates them.
-- Use these motivation factors in daily work: in how you treat the person, work with them, define their job, delegate
to them...
-- Recognize their work. Especially when the results are outstanding.
-- Reward their outstanding results (see reading on recognizing and rewarding).
What motivates my team?
Each person has different motivation factors. Your first challenge is to discover what these are.
You can only motivate people if you understand what it is that motivates them.
The only way to know what motivates each members of your team is by asking them. While it’s true that with time
and observation you’ll be able to deduce some things, there’s no information as valuable as what you can get
directly from the person in a conversation on the subject.
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Pacific Lesson 12: Motivate your Team
39
Get your checklist for the conversation on motivation and rewards by clicking here.
Schedule a 30-minute one-on-one meeting with each member of the team. Be clear about the purpose of the
meeting: You want to better understand what motivates and demotivates them. Make it clear that in asking and
listening to them, you are not committing yourself to anything. Explain that you will try to use the information to
improve your management.
Schedule a 30-minute meeting with each of the members of your team. Use the checklist to guide the
conversation.
Use the checklist to guide the conversation.
This type of conversation will not be quite as open or enriching if you haven’t first completed the previous step in
the model: “Team-building.” Mutual knowledge and trust are key factors for making this conversation truly useful.
You should have these conversations periodically because people’s circumstances change and evolve. Motivation
factors change over time. You could start with a frequency of a couple of times a year. Afterwards, you’ll need to
adapt this to your team’s circumstances.
Once you’ve had this type of conversation, people will expect you to change something. Make sure you
manage expectations properly.
As you discover the factors that motivate each member of the team, you’ll know which members need recognition,
support, challenges, responsibility, change, etc. Then you’ll be able to use this information to motivate them.
Keep a record for each member of your team. If possible, put it on the same sheet you have their objectives
on. Write down all the things you discover about the person based on your conversations and questions.
Not only the things that motivate the person, but also the rewards they value most. Collect this information
and include the date.
The foundation of motivation
As a leader, your principal job is to create an operating environment where others can do great things.”
Richard Teerlink. CEO of Harley Davidson.
An essential first element, without which it is difficult to motivate your team, is a good environment: The foundation
on which your team’s motivation will be built. Without a good environment, your efforts to motivate your people
will fall flat.
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Pacific Lesson 12: Motivate your Team
40
You’ll create a good environment if your team has:
----------
Mutual knowledge.
Trust.
Respect.
Good interpersonal relationships.
Fluid and transparent communication.
Fair and equitable treatment.
Conflicts are resolved quickly and don’t fester.
Good humor.
Fun.
These are precisely the benefits obtained through team-building (see the readings on “Team-building”).
Complement your team-building actions by making sure people have some fun on the job. There is a direct
correlation between fun at work and productivity, creativity, morale, satisfaction, and retention. See the reading on
“Fun at work.”
How do I motivate my team?
Regardless of the individual factors, there are a series of motivators (and demotivators) that affect the vast majority
of people.
In recent decades there have been a multitude of studies analyzing these motivation factors. The conclusions of
these studies are similar: The most important motivation factors are shared by the majority of human beings. The
good news: The vast majority don’t cost anything and are within your reach.
Download the document “Ideas for giving recognition” with lots of ideas you can use with your team.
What motivates your team:
-- A sense of achievement: clearly define objectives, and celebrate successes and progress. Celebrate constantly.
-- Purpose: you should make each person feel that the work they’re doing has a reason. They want to feel useful,
they want to help, they want to be proud of what they do. Fully explain to them the purpose of their work, the
contribution it makes to their colleagues, to the organization, to society.
-- Professional and personal growth: make sure the members of your team have the opportunity to learn and
improve themselves (see readings on “development”). Talk to them about their careers, advise them, offer them
constant feedback, be a mentor to them, coach them, (see the readings on “coaching”). Teach them to do things
for themselves. Give them autonomy.
-- Sense of belonging: the readings on “team-building” explain how to make your team cohesive and create a
team identity. Make them feel like members of the team. Members of something bigger than themselves or
their positions.
-- Challenge: challenge them constantly. Encourage them to solve their problems, and support their decisions.
-- Pride: they want to be outstanding. Do things well. Help them accomplish this: let them share the responsibility
of improving work processes and show them how to do it. Get them the tools and resources to enable them to
succeed.
-- Praise and recognition: constantly look for reasons to praise and recognize their work.
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Pacific Lesson 12: Motivate your Team
41
-- Contribution: listen to them. Ask them for their opinions, let them contribute ideas. Do something with these
ideas. Give them recognition for their ideas. Make sure they understand their contribution to the team, the
meaning of their work, their contribution to the group.
-- Warmth: dedicate time to them. Constantly communicate with them transparently. Listen to them. Take a sincere
interest in them. Be patient.
What demotivates your team:
Make sure to avoid the following mistakes. They can destroy your team’s motivation.
--------
Failure to define objectives. Inconsistent objectives.
Incorrect management of expectations.
Lack of training, learning, and development.
Lack of recognition and esteem.
Lack of transparency.
Lack of coherence.
Lack of integrity.
Some hygiene factors:
-------------
Fear.
Stress, pressure, and anxiety.
Unresolved conflicts.
Excessive criticism. Especially of the non-constructive type.
Lack of direction.
Lack of time, resources, or processes for doing the job properly.
Broken promises.
Unproductive meetings.
Bureaucracy and excessive number of rules.
Routine and repetitive work.
Politics.
Too much control.
All negative hygiene factors lead to demotivation, but even when positive most of them aren’t particularly
motivating. For example: bureaucracy. Bureaucracy that functions properly and doesn’t obstruct work doesn’t
motivate. Nevertheless, in the opposite case, it’s an important demotivator.
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Pacific Lesson 12: Motivate your Team
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Pacific Lesson 13: Recognize and Reward
43
Lesson 13: Recognize and Reward
“Don’t forget that recognition is one of the best tools for motivating and generally doesn’t cost anything.”
Recognition
Recognition is an ongoing process for which you are the main responsible party (it’s not a job for Human Resources
or the CEO of the company). It’s an ongoing effort, not something you do at the end of a project.
You should recognize effort, advances, a job well done, results, progress... You have to constantly look for reasons to
recognize the members of the team. We tend to see only the negative, the faults, the things that need improvement,
and we forget about reinforcing positive behaviors.
The people on your team have to understand, at all times, that you will tell them when they’re doing things well
and when they need to improve. This constant feedback process is what guarantees the growth and continuous
improvement of the team.
Don’t forget that recognition is one of the best tools for motivating and generally doesn’t cost anything.
As we’ve noted in the reading on motivation, each person is different and, therefore, needs different types and
forms of recognition. Through the conversations you’ve had with them on their motivation factors, you should be
able to adapt the recognition to each of them.
Recognizing the team is as important as recognizing individuals. Don’t forget to also recognize the efforts
and achievements of the team.
Use recognition to set an example, to reinforce the behaviors that interest you.
The steps for effective recognition are:
----------
Offer the praise immediately. If you let time go by, the recognition will have less impact.
Be sincere. Never pretend, because people can tell. You have to really mean it.
Describe exactly what the person did well. Specify the act, behavior, or specific achievement.
Never invalidate the praise: Avoid expressions like “better late than never,” “but,” “although,” “for the first time,”
“finally”…
Describe the positive impact it has on the team, on the company and on customers...
Express your satisfaction.
Thank the person for their effort.
Encourage them to keep up the good work.
Consider doing it publicly.
Dowload your checklist for an effective recognition.
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Pacific Lesson 13: Recognize and Reward
44
The benefits of praise:
-------
Motivates.
Improves self-confidence.
Encourages repetition of the behavior that was praised.
Focuses on what we’re doing right.
Helps to define what is considered “good work.”
Inspires people to develop new skills.
Rewards
Sometimes recognition is not enough. People are grateful for recognition but, sometimes, if the praise and thanks
are repeated over and over again without representing any personal benefit, they end up losing their motivating
effect.
When the achievement is extraordinary and/or is repeated often, you will need to reinforce your recognition with
some sort of reward.
Through rewards, you’ll encourage behaviors, attitudes, and efforts that interest you.
The basic rules for rewarding are:
------
Follow the basic rules for recognition described in the previous point.
Adapt the reward to the person. Remember that everyone is motivated by and likes different things.
Adapt the reward to the achievement.
Be equitable. Everyone on your team is expecting to be treated fairly when it comes to rewards.
Think carefully about whether you want it to be public or private. Making it public sends a message to the rest
of the team and sets an example, but it can cause problems if you don’t perfectly manage your reward system.
Download the document “Ideas for giving recognition” with lots of ideas you can use with your team.
[With this lesson, you’ll activate the “Reward” action which you’ll be able to use by clicking on the characters.
Rewarding increases motivation. Make sure that the reward is tailored to each person. Ask the characters questions
to find out what motivates them]
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Pacific Lesson 14: Fun at Work
45
Lesson 14: Fun at Work
“ We can play and have fun at the same time as we’re being serious and
professional about our work.”
Fun has a direct and positive impact on the team’s productivity, morale, satisfaction, and retention.
Fun generates:
------------
Sustainable motivation.
Energy.
Self-esteem.
Enthusiasm.
Team spirit and cohesion.
Positive attitudes.
Relieves stress and tension.
Improves communication.
Reduces conflict.
Alleviates boredom and fatigue.
Boosts creativity.
Many companies like Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, WalMart, and Ben & Jerry’s use fun at work as an organizational
strategy. As a strategic tool for motivating employees and their managers.
Sometimes work isn’t necessarily fun or exciting. But people can be. And the way they go about their work as well.
It’s essentially a question of attitude.
We can play and have fun at the same time as we’re being serious and professional about our work. Just as this
course enables you to learn while playing and having fun.
Some things you can do to encourage fun in your team:
----------
Encourage humor.
Promote spontaneity.
Reduce the number of rules and protocols.
Let them dress the way they want.
Create a friendly and relaxed atmosphere.
Let the design and decoration of the work area play a part.
Celebrate more (achievements, successes, birthdays, anniversaries...).
Encourage compliments and thanks.
Set up a box for “fun suggestions.”
Above all, preach by example: be pleasant, upbeat, spontaneous, agreeable, polite, courteous, nice...
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Pacific Lesson 15: Pygmalion Effect
46
Lesson 15: Pygmalion Effect
“The expectations we have for a person directly affect their results.”
In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus who sculpted a statue of a beautiful woman. His creation
was so beautiful that he fell in love with her. In answer to his prayers, the goddess Venus brought the statue to life.
We use the term Pygmalion effect to refer to the psychological phenomenon of finding what we expect to find in
objects, situations, and people.
“It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.”
John Steinbeck.
This theory has been proven over many years in numerous scientific studies.
In one of them, a group of teachers was assigned three classes with different types of students:
-- One class of students with learning problems.
-- One class of gifted students.
-- One class of students with average abilities.
Over the course of the year, the results from each of the three classes were measured. At the end, the results
were as expected: the class with children with learning problems achieved lower-than-average results; the normal
children achieved average results; and the gifted children achieved results much higher than average.
The upshot: the three classes were exactly the same. The researchers had made sure that the three groups had the
same abilities and had deceived the teachers by making them believe otherwise.
When the teachers thought they were working with children with learning problems, they demanded less. They
expected less of them. As a result, the children achieved worse results, but the teachers weren’t concerned about
the poor results because “these were children with learning problems.”
However, when they thought they were working with gifted children, the teachers demanded more, expected
more of them, and made an effort to use teaching systems suitable for their profile. When, at the beginning, the
class didn’t achieve the expected results, the teachers assumed that the problem was with them, since “these were
gifted children.” So they worked harder to teach them, to encourage them; they looked for new teaching methods...
until, effectively, they got the class to perform at a level well above average.
What we expect of someone ends up influencing the way we relate to that person. So that, consciously or
unconsciously, the person perceives the expectations we have for them. And the person will respond to these
expectations accordingly.
The expectations we have for a person directly affect their results.
By nature, we all tend to try to satisfy people’s expectations for us.
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Pacific Lesson 15: Pygmalion Effect
47
This will happen especially in any work team, so it’s your responsibility to trust your people and help them develop
confidence in themselves. And you should do this constantly.
How?
------
Trust them.
Ask them for their opinions and suggestions. Then, use them.
Encourage them to be positive. Celebrate achievements and success.
Help them define challenging objectives, and then how to achieve them.
Pass on praise for their work from other people as well as your own.
“When people feel trusted, they’ll do almost anything under the sun not to disappoint the person who gave
them the gift of trust.”
Rob LeBow.
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Pacific Lesson 16: Ideas for Recognizing and Rewarding
48
Lesson 16: Ideas for Recognizing and Rewarding
“In many cases, there are rewards that are much more appropriate and motivating than money.”
Ideas for giving recognition:
-- Say “thank you.”
-- Ask the president, CEO, or a senior manager to stop by and congratulate the person.
-- Get a meeting or lunch date with the president, CEO, or senior manager to show appreciation for and recognize
an effort.
-- Leave the person a handwritten thank-you note.
-- Post a thank-you note where everyone can see it.
-- Send a handwritten letter to the person’s home (so they can show it to their family if they want to).
-- Publish the recognition in the blog, the internal magazine, the newsletter...
-- Take the person to lunch or dinner.
-- Let the person present their achievement in a meeting where it will have more visibility.
-- Recognize the person in public at a meeting or corporate event.
-- Give the person a diploma, pin, plaque, medal, or trophy.
-- Name the person the employee of the week, month, year.
-- Organize a lunch, dinner, or party in the person’s honor.
-- Take the person and their significant other to lunch.
-- Ask the person’s colleagues to give them recognition.
-- Add the person to the “Hall of Fame” or the “Wall of Fame.”
Ideas for rewarding:
In many cases, there are rewards that are much more appropriate and motivating than money.
In general, people will appreciate your gesture.
Many of these gestures cost little or nothing.
--------------
Training.
More autonomy.
Greater responsibility.
Internal promotion.
Greater visibility in the organization.
Additional resources.
More flexible work schedule.
An afternoon off. Or a morning.
Trips.
Meal coupons.
Tickets to shows and sporting events.
A day of paid vacation.
Merchandising articles.
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Pacific Lesson 16: Ideas for Recognizing and Rewarding
--------------
-----------
49
Extra time off.
Friday or Monday off to give them a long weekend.
Longer lunch hour for a week, month...
A massage.
A manicure.
A spa session.
A gift certificate to a hair salon.
A gift certificate to a major chain store.
A subscription to a magazine, or information or training service.
Flowers.
Books.
A weekend trip with hotel and meals paid for.
A package of experiences (there are companies that offer packages with a menu of experiences to be selected
by the customer. For example: driving a sports car, a balloon ride, a parachute jump, go-karting, horseback riding,
driving a 4 x 4, etc.).
Project or training in another country.
Toys for the children.
Maid, ironing, concierge service... for a period of time.
Time to attend free courses and seminars.
A lottery ticket.
A VIP pass to some event, occasion, or place.
Temporary privileges: parking space, free lunch...
New equipment: new computer, tablet, smartphone, monitor, keyboard, mouse...
We all like money. Don’t rule out salary increases and/or bonuses, especially when they’re unexpected. But you
should be careful: monetary incentives have a very short effect and can become expected.
Stock options. Offering a profit-sharing plan is one of the most powerful forms of recognition.
Some guidelines to make the reward system effective:
------
It should reflect the values and strategy of the company.
The employees should participate in its creation and execution.
The rewards should be varied.
They need to be widely known.
They should be short-lived and changed frequently.
Keep in mind that there are two dangers with incentive policies: the tendency for inducements to turn into
entitlements and declining motivational effect.
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Pacific Lesson 16: Ideas for Recognizing and Rewarding
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Pacific Lesson 17: Team-Building: Mutual Knowledge and Trust
51
Lesson 17: Team-Building: Mutual Knowledge and Trust
“The people when rightly and fully trusted will return the trust”.
Abraham Lincoln
Synergy is a special type of energy produced in teams. In reality it represents the union of energy (as opposed to
entropy: destruction and dissipation of energy). Synergy is a characteristic of high-performance teams.
The word “synergy” describes the action of coordinating various parts to achieve a greater effect than that of the
sum of the individual effects. In colloquial language: two plus two equals more than four.
Your main responsibility as a leader is to create the conditions that produce synergy within your team. One way is
to increase the affinity between the members of the team. This is what we call “Team-building.”
Team-building involves:
-- Encouraging mutual knowledge among the members of the team.
-- Building trust.
-- Creating a team identity.
We’ll address the first two in this reading. You can learn about the third in the following one.
Mutual knowledge and trust
Mutual knowledge has three aspects:
-- You should know each and every member of the team.
-- They should know you.
-- Everyone should know one another.
We mean knowing them beyond a strictly professional sence. You all have to understand how your colleagues
think, what they like, what they don’t like, how they feel, their expectations, what motivates them and what they
fear... You have to construct solid interpersonal relationships that facilitate communication and cooperation.
The greater the team’s mutual knowledge, the greater the trust.
Some years ago, teams stayed together much longer, and therefore knowledge and trust would develop naturally.
Nowadays, project-based management, the pace of business and outsourcing, mean that teams are formed and
disbanded faster. So you need to “speed up” the process of building familiarity and trust.
Teamwork, meetings and the time we spend together in the office... contribute to this process. The problem is that
people aren’t the same inside the office as they are outside it. We need to set up situations where the team behaves
naturally: eating together, playing together, laughing together and solving problems together.
These situations, brought about in a structured way, are what we call “team-building activities.” Your role as the
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Pacific Lesson 17: Team-Building: Mutual Knowledge and Trust
52
leader of a team is to ensure that these situations arise regularly. See the reading “Team-building activities” to learn
how and to discover dozens of ideas that you can use with your team.
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust theml”.
Ernest Hemingway.
Trust is the magic ingredient in synergy. Besides mutual knowledge, trust is strengthened when:
------
Everyone treats everyone else with respect.
Everyone feels necessary.
Objectives are clear and you’re all committed to a common goal (see the readings on objectives).
Each person feels like a member of “something” special, something bigger than themself.
You have clear rules that govern how you interact with one another (see the reading on rules). You share common
values.
-- There is open, fluid, and assertive communication (see the readings on communication).
-- There is transparency. Everyone knows what’s going on at all times.
What you need to do to strengthen trust:
------------
Treat everyone as equals.
Be honest, ethical, and consistent.
Be assertive and respectful, and don’t raise your voice.
Listen to your team.
Support your team.
Accentuate the positive.
Provide your team with the resources and tools they need to do their jobs properly.
Make decisions and defend them in complicated situations.
Take responsibility for the actions of the team.
Give your team the credit for achievements.
Take responsibility for the team’s mistakes.
People that have your trust are motivated and give the best of themselves. If you trust them, they will have to
demonstrate that they deserve that trust.
In general, don’t expect them to trust you more than you trust them.
“The people when rightly and fully trusted will return the trust”.
Abraham Lincoln.
You will destroy trust if...
-----
You don’t keep your promises or you make empty promises.
You inspire fear or anxiety.
You are inaccessible and always have your door closed.
You don’t explain what you expect of them.
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Pacific Lesson 17: Team-Building: Mutual Knowledge and Trust
53
-- You are manipulative.
-- You delegate responsibility without authority.
-- You tell other people things before you tell your own team.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”
Warren Buffet.
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Pacific Lesson 18: Teambuilding: Team Identity
54
Lesson 18: Teambuilding: Team Identity
“The identity is a link. A glue that keeps the team united.”
When there is team identity, the communication, coordination, and performance of the team increases.
Identity exists when the members of the team feel an identification with the team and have a feeling of special
unity. When this happens, people put the interests of the team before their own.
The identity is a link. A glue that keeps the team united. The identity is defined as the team becomes more concrete
about its reason for existing, its way of operating, how it relates to other groups, and, above all, the awareness of
belonging to the group becomes stronger among the members of the team.
Team identity makes the members feel special and different from other groups. This will be your challenge: Get
your team to feel special, different and “better” than other groups.
The identity is not something that appears from one day to the next. It takes time and deliberate effort on the part
of the team for it to emerge.
You start to build team identity in the first steps of the model:
-- When you clearly define a goal and commit all the members of the team to achieving it (see the readings on
objectives).
-- You specify the rules to govern your behavior and interactions (see the reading on rules).
-- You establish roles and responsibilities within the team.
But there is another series of elements that can contribute to strengthening your team’s sense of identity:
-- Symbols: all human groups have used symbols to differentiate themselves. Symbols around which feelings
of unity and belonging are created. Flags, anthems, coats of arms, colors, logos, uniforms, tattoos, hairstyles...
Countries, tribes, families, churches, companies, and all kinds of groups have been doing it for centuries (think
armies, the Boy Scouts, sports teams, musical bands, urban tribes, and street gangs).
Look for elements that your team can use to differentiate itself, that can serve to unite you and make you feel
special.
Between all of you, select a song that reflects your spirit and energizes you. Play this song before an
important meeting, on Friday afternoon before going home for the weekend, when there’s something to
celebrate, to raise your spirits when you’re feeling down...
-- Mottos: there are phrases or expressions that have the capacity to reflect the way of thinking or acting of a group
of people. A motto can be a big help in making your team cohesive and for explaining what you’re about.
As a team, define a logo or image to represent you. Give your team a name. Choose a motto with which
you all identify. Give each person a T-shirt or baseball cap with the team image and motto.
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Pacific Lesson 18: Teambuilding: Team Identity
55
-- Myths: extraordinary stories have the advantage of being easy to remember and instructional. Tales and stories
have always been used to transmit messages, educate, and mobilize people. Many companies use them today
to transmit to their people the types of behaviors or attitudes they want to promote.
For example, a multinational package delivery company shares the story of a lost shipment and how the president
himself drove the delivery van all night to deliver the parcel on time.
Steve Jobs himself is the myth of Apple in the search for perfection and simplicity.
These types of stories have great power to transmit to people within organization which things are important and
what behaviors and attitudes are valued and rewarded.
-- Ceremonies: these are occasions where something important to the group is celebrated. When we celebrate
something, we send an unequivocal message about what we approve of and want to see replicated. The
ceremony itself also constitutes an identity-building element when it is specific to the team.
Award-granting ceremonies, project closing parties, Christmas parties, ringing a “gong” every time a sale is closed,
promotions, a gift after X years in the company. They are all examples of ceremonies that contribute to generating
team identity. Don’t overlook them and use them as much as possible.
There are many other elements that contribute to forging the identity of your team. From the language you use,
your way of working making decisions and your way of socializing, etc. You should be aware of it and use it to
increase the cohesion of your team as much as possible.
The simple act of talking to your team and thinking about what makes you different and special is already
contributing to generating a team identity.
Any of the actions for strengthening team identity should always be preceded by the previous
step: the existence of mutual knowledge and trust. Trying to do it before this can be useless or even
counterproductive.
[With this lesson, you’ll activate the “Team-building” action which you’ll be able to use in meeting mode. Teambuilding increases motivation, team synergy, and the speed with which tasks are executed]
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Pacific Lesson 19: Team-Building Activities
56
Lesson 19: Team-Building Activities
“Unique, fun experiences are the best way of increasing the cohesion of your
team.”
Regularly scheduling team-building activities that make it possible to increase mutual knowledge, trust, and team
identity is one of your main responsibilities.
You want to get the team out of its normal setting and have it spend time together in an environment that allows
people to behave in a more natural, more human, way.
These types of activities can be informal (like going out to eat or having coffee with someone on the team) or
formal (like organizing a specific activity to achieve a concrete objective).
How do you do formal team-building activities?
Some recommendations for organizing formal team-building activities:
-- Team-building activities are technically work, and you shouldn’t require your team to spend their own time
on them, so you should hold them during working hours. In the end, they’re an investment in your team’s
productivity and performance. If everyone agrees, some activities can take place outside working hours.
-- The team should know ahead of time that the activity is going to take place and its purpose.
-- Make sure the timing of the activity is not a problem for your team. You want them to have a good time and not
be thinking about the deadline they’ll miss because of the activity.
-- Make sure the activity is interesting. Unique, fun experiences are the best way of increasing the cohesion of your
team. Laughter and fun are your two most powerful allies for team-building.
-- Challenge your team. Working together to solve a complex problem that’s different from what they see in their
everyday work is a very significant way of encouraging teamwork.
-- Celebrate achievements and thank people for their efforts. Ask everyone to do it. A sense of achievement and
mutual gratitude is a very important element of cohesion.
-- Each and every member of the team should participate in the activity. If it’s not possible, reschedule it for another
time.
-- Avoid hierarchies and make sure people feel like equals during the activity.
-- Make them habitual and have them occur regularly. It’s no good to organize an activity and then never do it
again.
-- The simplest activities should be very frequent. For more special activities, one every 6-12 months is a good
guideline.
-- Ask for feedback. When the activity is over, ask your team for its opinion, assessment, and ideas to improve the
activity. That way you’ll have invaluable information for the next activities you have to organize.
-- Evaluate the activity. Analyze whether you’ve achieved the objectives you set for the team-building activity and
identify improvements for the next one.
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Pacific Lesson 19: Team-Building Activities
57
Ideas for team-building activities
1) Simple and habitual activities
Things that can be done any day.
------------
Eat lunch with the entire team.
Have a cup of coffee with a member of the team. Chat with the person for 20-30 minutes.
Go out for a walk.
Go out for a drink after work (this should be the team’s idea; you shouldn’t force it).
Devote 30 minutes in a meeting to a team-building exercise (see section 3).
Have a party.
Celebrate the birthdays of the people on the team.
Celebrate the company anniversary.
Celebrate an employee’s fifth or tenth anniversary with the company.
Invite the team to go out to dinner.
Play darts, foosball, or video games in the break room.
2) Special activities
Organized and formal. A couple of times a year. One-day duration.
--------------------------
Organize a hike in the country. Make it a route with medium-high difficulty. Have a picnic.
Organize a kayaking or canoeing excursion.
Rafting.
Visit a picturesque town, nature site, tourist attraction...
Bicycling excursion.
Balloon flight.
Sailing excursion.
Cooking class.
Theater class.
Visit a museum or exhibition together.
Go out bowling.
Visit an amusement park together.
Invite the team to a barbecue at your home.
Organize a day of volunteer work. Spend the day supporting the efforts of some association or NGO.
Drive go-karts or race cars on a track.
Excursions in 4 x 4s in the mountains.
Horseback riding class.
Athletic or cultural gymkhanas.
Build something together: vehicle, prototype, etc.
Percussion class.
Film a movie together.
Distribute food to the needy in your city.
Cook and serve a meal at a soup kitchen.
Organize a Christmas party and invite family members.
A party, a dance, karaoke.
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Pacific Lesson 19: Team-Building Activities
58
-- Class on magic tricks or an event with a magician.
-- A day of diverse team-building activities. Consult with a company that specializes in team-building days (see the
next section).
3) Team-building exercises
For inside or outside the office. To incorporate into your special activities.
There are an infinite number of exercises specifically designed to produce mutual knowledge and build team spirit.
There are countless books with thousands of ideas for team-building exercises you can consult. Some suggestions:
-------
“The Big Book of Team Building Games.” John Newstrom and Edward Scannell.
“Quick Team-Building Activities for Busy Managers.” Brian Cole Miller.
“Team-Building Activities for Every Group.” Alanna Jones.
“365 Low or No Cost Workplace Teambuilding Activities.” John N. Peragine.
“100 Training Games.” Gary Kroehnert.
“Team Games for Trainers.” Carolyn Nilson.
A simple Google query will bring up thousands of ideas you can use to find team-building exercises to use with
your team.
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Pacific Lesson 20: Coach Effectively
59
Lesson 20: Coach Effectively
“Only if people trust you will you be able to hold effective coaching
conversations.”
“Each person holds so much power within themselves that needs to be let out. Sometimes they just need a
little nudge, a little direction, a little support, a little coaching, and the greatest things can happen.”
Pete Carroll. Coach and Executive Vice President of the Seattle Seahawks.
Coaching is a very useful way of developing people’s potential and stimulating (boosting) their performance. It’s an
instrument for helping the people on your team discover their potential for themselves.
A coaching session normally consists of a conversation between the coach and the coachee, and it aims to help
the person discover solutions for themself. This is mainly accomplished through the use of questions that guide
the coachee to their own conclusions.
The coaching process takes place over several sessions until the objectives being sought are achieved.
Coaching can aim for the long-term development of a person or correction of specific problems.
Coaching is not something that, as a manager, you should do. A coach is someone that, as a leader, you have to
become.
You should consider holding coaching conversations with all the members of your team at least every two weeks.
If you analyze the Pacific model and all its elements, you’ll realize that coaching is a way of structuring them. If you
follow all the steps described in the model, you’ll be turning yourself into a coach.
The keys to coaching are:
Create a relationship of mutual trust:
Only if people trust you will you be able to hold effective coaching conversations. Act with integrity, in a consistent
and fair manner, and keep your promises.
It´s a good idea to have an explicit agreement to keep everything you discuss in these sessions confidential (with
the exceptions dictated by common sense). If you want to share your worries, concerns, needs, feelings... it’s very
important to have the peace of mind of knowing that your conversations are strictly between the two of you.
Follow the steps in the Pacific model; each of them is designed to help you create a relationship of trust: manage
from the inside out, give meaning, do team-building, develop, facilitate, and communicate constantly.
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Pacific Lesson 20: Coach Effectively
60
Define the problem to be solved or the objectives to be achieved:
In this first point, your questions should be directed towards getting the person to clearly identify the problem or
specify in concrete terms what the desired objective is.
Remember that coaching consists of asking questions to get the person to reach their own conclusions. Some
useful questions for this phase:
-----------
Do you really think there’s a problem?
How would you describe the situation?
How would you describe it to someone looking at it from outside?
How would you define what is happening in one sentence?
How would you like all of this to turn out?
How would you describe your objective in just one sentence?
Why do you want to achieve this objective?
How would you measure success in achieving this objective?
How would you like to feel when you’ve achieved it?
How do you want to feel throughout the process?
Get the person to accept the problem to be solved or the objective to be achieved:
To gain the person’s commitment to the next phases in the process, the first step is to get the person to accept
without reservation that there is a problem or to state unequivocally their willingness to achieve a series of concrete
objectives. Keep using questions in this phase.
Analyze the causes:
Before starting to generate solutions, spend some time analyzing the causes of the problem or the reasons behind
the objectives. Types of questions that can help you in this phase:
-------
What do you think might be causing this situation?
What is preventing you from achieving your objective?
What is it that concerns you?
Why do you think this is happening?
How do you think we got to this situation?
What is it that you really need?
Explore alternatives:
Coaching is based on helping the person find his or her own solutions. It consists of asking questions more than
offering advice or solutions, in provoking thought and stimulating more than giving instructions.
Hold a brainstorming session [See the lesson on “brainstorming”]. Try to generate as many alternatives as possible.
Write them all down, without judging. Instigate brainstorming with questions like:
-- How do you think we could achieve this result?
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Pacific Lesson 20: Coach Effectively
61
-- How do you think another person would solve this problem?
-- Can you come up with a crazy idea for doing it?
-- What would you need to do to achieve your objective?
When you have a long enough list (it’s a good idea to set a target for the number of ideas—25 for example), help
the person to analyze the pros and cons of each of the alternatives and to select one. Be careful in this phase, resist
the temptation to try to influence the person.
-- Which of these alternatives brings you closer to your objective?
-- Which solution would you select? Why?
-- Which do you think is the best solution? What makes it better than the others?
Sometimes, you can’t support the chosen solution (for reasons related to business, company culture, resources,
internal politics...). In this case, explain the limitations to the person and ask them to find an alternative that takes
these into account.
Any solution selected should be specific and be written down.
Define an action plan:
Help the person to define a step-by-step plan with concrete and feasible actions that will help them achieve their
objective. You could ask:
-------
What concrete steps do you need to take to achieve it?
How would you do it?
When would you do it?
When do you want to finish?
What resources will you need to do this? How are you going to get them?
Who can help you?
The action plan should materialize in a list of action items with deadlines.
Get the person to commit to acting:
The session should not end without you getting the person’s total commitment. Since throughout the process it
is the coachee who has made the decisions, and as this is the person who defined the action plan, it will be much
easier to get this commitment.
At this point, you should define a tracking system to monitor execution of the action plan. Ask the person:
-- How do you want me to help you track progress on your action plan?
-- What should I do if you don’t live up to your commitments?
-- How can I help you get back on track if you deviate from the plan?
It’s a good idea to ask the person to sign the action plan that was just defined.
Make sure to track progress. If you don’t, you’re sending a very negative message and putting future coaching
sessions at risk.
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Pacific Lesson 20: Coach Effectively
62
Give the person feedback along the way:
Along the way, give positive and negative feedback.
Immediately correct any deviation.
Celebrate achievements and progress. Congratulate the person for their efforts and for hitting milestones.
[See the lesson on Feedback]
—
Coaching in itself is a subject for an entire course. Don’t stop researching and exploring this subject.
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Pacific Lesson 21: From the Inside Out
63
Lesson 21: From the Inside Out
“Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the
only means.”
Albert Einstein
The Pacific leadership model is represented by the Nautilus conch shell. The Nautilus is a type of cephalopod found
in the waters of the Pacific ocean.
The Nautilus’ shell is made up of chambers. The creature lives in the largest one. As it grows, it produces a new and
larger chamber (from the inside out). The growth of the shell follows a spiral that maintains a perfect proportion
defined by the number phi (ϕ).
This number governs the arrangement of rose petals, lurks in the scores of Debussy and in the portrait of the Mona
Lisa, and even defines the dynamics of black holes. It’s called phi and it determines what is known as the “divine
proportion.”
Your leadership should also be constructed from the inside out, step by step, and in a proportional way.
“Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.“
Albert Einstein.
How does my way of being affect the team?
You should analyze yourself, how you behave, how you communicate, how you relate to other people. All of this
has implications for how your team perceives you.
All leaders lead by example, whether they know it or not. Are you aware of the example you’re setting? Do you
know how the members of your team see you? How the way you behave affects them?
Your way of being translates into a series of behaviors, and these behaviors have a direct (and different) impact on
each of the members of your team. You are the way you are, it’s neither good nor bad, but you should understand
that this way of being affects the people on your team.
For example: That being a perfectionist (personality) makes you constantly review the work of others (behavior). Your
behavior provokes anxiety and transmits lack of trust (impact on the team). Or that being passionate (personality)
makes you speak too loudly and with enormous conviction (behavior). Your behavior can make it so some people
don’t dare to express their opinions, especially if they contradict yours (impact on the team).
Even if you think you know, you’d be tremendously surprised to learn people’s opinions of you. You don’t know how
people see you, you can only imagine.
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Pacific Lesson 21: From the Inside Out
64
And how can you find this out? There’s only one way: you have to ask them.
How much of the problem is in me?
As the leader of a team, you are ultimately responsible for any problems that arise in it. Before putting the blame on
anyone, you should ask yourself a simple question: How much of the problem did I cause?
This doesn’t mean you have all the blame for everything bad that happens in your team, but you are responsible
for not having avoided the conditions that produced the problem.
When you ask managers to name the main problems they encounter in their day-to-day work, these are the types
of answers they give:
------
“There are people who aren’t committed.”
“They’re not motivated.”
“They’re not working at 100%.”
“They don’t have the right preparation to do their jobs.”
“Conflicts are constantly arising in the team.”
All of these problems are your responsibility. And in part, they’re your fault. Maybe you don’t deserve all the blame,
but you do deserve some of it. If they’re not committed or motivated, it’s because you aren’t doing your job
properly; if they aren’t working at 100%, it’s because you’re not managing them well; if they dont have the right
preparation to do their jobs, it’s because you haven’t trained them to do it or you haven’t given them the right
tools. If conflicts are constantly arising, it’s because the rules or the roles and responsibilities aren’t well defined, or
because effective communication channels or decision-making methods are not being used, etc.
Manage from the inside out. When faced with a conflict, problem, or inefficiency, start by analyzing the things you
can/must change.
There will be situations in which you’re totally blameless. In any case, it’s always good for you to perform this
exercise in self-analysis.
How can I improve?
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
John F. Kennedy. Thirty-fifth President of the United States.
The only way of knowing whether or not you’re managing well is to ask the people around you. Especially the
members of your team.
You should proactively ask them to give you feedback on how they see the team, about how you’re managing it
and about what could be improved...
It’s not easy to hear criticism, but it’s the only way to get better. The people who best know how you’re leading are
the people you’re leading. If you don’t ask them, you’ll never know what you’re doing wrong. If you don’t ask them
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Pacific Lesson 21: From the Inside Out
65
what you’re doing wrong, how are you going to improve it?
Feedback is the fundamental tool for improvement within the team. You will have to provide it constantly (both
positive and negative). But the first step to getting them to receive it easily is for you to preach by example. They
need to see that you are using feedback to improve, and then they will understand why you are giving it to them.
For the whole system to function, to generate a team culture in which everyone gives and receives feedback
naturally, in which feedback is not just accepted but also demanded... everyone has to know how to give feedback
correctly [see the reading on feedback] and how to receive it.
“I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done
and how you could be doing it better.”
Elon Musk. Founder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX.
These are the keys to receiving feedback:
-------
----
--
--
Recognize the tremendous value it has for helping you to improve.
Ask for it regularly.
Reward it. Thank people for it.
Never punish someone who has dared to tell you something you’re doing wrong.
Listen actively: Pay attention, ask questions, paraphrase [see the lesson on communication]
Don’t respond right away: explain that you’re not going to respond just then, that you’ll take your time to think
about what you’ve been told. This doesn’t mean that you agree with them, just that you place importance on
what you’ve heard. It’s very likely that in the heat of the moment, your first reaction will be to justify yourself or
refute the criticism; but if you give it enough time, you’ll always find some grain of truth in what they are telling
you.
Don’t refute the criticism or justify yourself: Understand what they’re saying to you and understand why they’re
saying it to you. It’s the other person’s turn to talk. Ask questions and answer. Understand.
Don’t take offense: Don’t interpret it as a personal attack. No one’s perfect. It’s no big deal if you are doing
something poorly.
Even if you don’t agree: you’re getting very useful information about how the members of your team perceive
the situation, how they see you as a leader, how they feel and think. It’s information with tremendous value. Don’t
squander it.
If you’re going to receive feedback, receive it. In a feedback conversation, you should only be talking about one
person. If you want to give feedback to that person, you will have to do it in a separate conversation. Concentrate
on understanding what you can improve and not on what the other person can improve. Either we talk about
me or we talk about you.
Always remember: You’re learning things you didn’t know before.
Download here the intructions and the checklist to get feedback.
“The most fundamental thing about leadership is to have the humility to continue to get feedback and to try
to get better.”
Jim Yong Kim. President of the World Bank.
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Pacific Lesson 21: From the Inside Out
66
Leading people is a skill you’ll never master. Becoming a great leader means never ceasing to learn, never ceasing
to improve. You’ll have to constantly refresh your knowledge; you’ll have to read books on management and
leadership; you’ll have to study the biographies of great leaders in history, observe leaders you admire, constantly
ask the people around you questions, ask your team for feedback, learn from the countless mistakes you’ll make...
And after all this effort, you still won’t be perfect and you’ll have to keep on learning... forever.
“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”
Harry S. Truman. Thirty-third President of the United States.
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Pacific Lesson 22: From one Leader to Another
67
Lesson 22: From one Leader to Another
“Leadership is not a skill but rather represents the mastery of many interpersonal and social skills”
Letter from an apprentice leader:
Dear Reader,
In this letter I want to share with you some of the things I wish someone had told me over 25 years ago when I
started leading teams.
First of all, allow me to start with the most important point: Managing people is the most difficult thing there is.
Leadership is not a skill but rather represents the mastery of many interpersonal and social skills (communication,
self-management, negotiation, influence, time management, relationship management, emotional intelligence,
and a long list of other things). Moreover, it means working with people, each with his or her peculiarities, needs,
problems, expectations... all of these changing over time.
Managing people well is enormously complicated. Doing it very well is almost impossible.
Only with patience, perseverance, and constant learning will you be able to become a better leader, provided you
really want to become one. This is the first question you have to ask yourself.
Below, I provide some advice and reflections that I hope will help you as much as they did me when I was lucky
enough to discover them:
-- Never stop learning: The minute you do, you’ll start to become a bad leader. Observe, read, get training, ask
questions, find a mentor, learn from your team...
-- Learn from your mistakes: You’re going to make mistakes, lots of them, so always learn from them. Always learn
from them. Don’t make excuses, don’t justify yourself, don’t deny it. Accept the mistake immediately and learn all
the lessons that can be derived from it. We all make mistakes, the important thing is to not repeat them. Learn
and move on.
-- Improve your skills: Learn to communicate, to influence, to sell, to manage your time, to solve problems, to lead
meetings and to control your stress.
-- Seek support: The position of a leader is extremely solitary. The greater the responsibility you have in the
organizational structure, the more solitary it is. When you work on a team, you can always share your problems
with your colleagues. When you manage a team, you often don’t have anyone to do this with. The problems,
concerns, doubts, will be constant, and your stress level will be high. Seek support and people who can listen
to you and/or give you advice. A friend, your significant other, a mentor or a coach. Don’t hold things in or you’ll
explode.
-- Don’t expect gratitude. As a good leader, you’ll have to assume responsibility for all the mistakes and let your
team take credit for all the achievements. There will always be someone to tell you that you’ve done something
badly (because you’re not perfect), always someone who will ask for more (because people’s desires are
insatiable), and very infrequently, if ever, will the members of your team thank you. It’s better to not expect it,
you’ll save yourself a lot of disappointment.
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Pacific Lesson 22: From one Leader to Another
68
-- Don’t expect them to be your friends: Even if you’ve done everything you can to be just another team member,
the rest of them won’t see you as an equal. You’re “the Boss,” and this automatically sets you apart. I’m not saying
that it can’t happen, just warning you not to expect it because it’s painful when you discover this for the first time.
-- Concentrate on what you can change: There are things you can’t change. Don’t waste time on them. If you can’t
change something, take it out of the equation or learn to live with it. Behaviors, processes and ways of working
can be changed. Personality traits, not.
-- Don’t take problems too much to heart: There will always, and I mean always, be problems, conflict, friction and
uncertainties. None of them will be as serious as they seem. They’ll all have a solution, so learn to live with them.
Assume that they’ll always be there and always concentrate on the solution, not on the problem.
-- Don’t try to please everyone: You won’t accomplish it. It’s impossible to please everyone, especially if you’re
managing people. Concentrate on doing things well and acting with integrity to please yourself.
-- Act with integrity. Be honest: Life is much easier when you know that you don’t have anything to regret.
-- Choose your team. If you have the great luck of choosing the people who will work on your team, take plenty of
time to find the right people and, if you detect that someone is a bad fit, get the person off the team immediately.
No one is essential, even if they seem to be. When you reach the conclusion that a person doesn’t belong on your
team, don’t waste even a second in making the decision.
-- Stop “working”: Sometimes you need to think, to analyze your team and its performance with some perspective.
If you don’t set aside enough time for analysis, reflection and improvement, your team will not have the guide
it needs.
-- Follow the Pacific model: Implementing all the steps in the model is very difficult. Not because they’re complex,
but because there are so many of them and the day-to-day routine makes us lose perspective. Use the Nautilus
as a reminder of the things you should be doing and try to do something every day. Don’t stop yourself from
doing a little just because you can’t do it all.
-- Persevere: Leadership is not something you can do in a day. None of the recommendations in Pacific make
sense if they aren’t applied over time. Like anything else that’s good in life, it will be perseverance that enables
you achieve great results
Despite the difficulties, there is no more gratifying job than being able to achieve magnificent results through
other people.
Very few people do it well, so if you put some of the recommendations in Pacific into practice, you’ll start to stand
out from the crowd right away.
If you like challenges, adrenaline, if you want to make your mark, and achieve great things... welcome to the world
of leadership.
Soft skills training
through video games
www.game-learn.com
Copyright © 2015 Gamelearn · All rights reserved. Modification and/or reproduction, total or partial, is strictly forbidden without prior written permission by the copyright holder.
Pacific 
69
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