We’re all in sales, like it or not. And most of us don’t like it. When we hear the word sales we often conjure up images of oh-so-smug and sleazy car salesmen or aggressive, boiler-room type telemarketers. Or Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross espousing the importance of the ABCs — Always. Be. Closing. Some of us have traumatic relationships with sales. For me, it began with having to sell tickets to my pop-warner football games – me, a sweaty palmed and trembling twelve year old awaiting door-to-door rejection (sadly, my parents accounted for the bulk of my sales). For…

Steve Jobs’ legendary hiring practices and recruiting philosophies — which he developed over the course of five thousand separate interviews — were iconically captured in the following quote (you can find more team building quotes here): “I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1.Given that, you’re well advised to go after the cream of the cream … A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.”

Team building quotes are a great way to rally your troops and get people motivated to work together. The power of a well-crafted turn of phrase is undeniable. Whether you’re a facilitator, manager, trainer or coach, incorporating a quote or two into your repertoire is a great idea. Below you’ll find a large list of quotes for your next team building event. From the boardroom to the locker-room, these classic quotes about teamwork and the strength of the whole over the individual are sure to inspire.

Did you realize we spend close to three hours of our work week dealing with conflict? According to a 2008 survey by CPP , publishers of the popular Myers-Briggs® assessment, conflict accounts for 2.8 hours of our work week. When you add up the hours and multiply it by the average hourly wage of $17.95, we’re talking about $360 Billion dollars in paid employee time. With that in mind, it’s important for managers to address conflict meaningfully. And that does not mean stifling it.

With Gallup reporting that the average work week is closing in around 47 hours – almost a full work day more than a five day work week in terms of time – it brings up the ever present question of work-life balance. And let’s face it, it’s true that a balanced life includes more than just work. But what I want to address in this post is the sense of discontent inherent in the question of work-life balance. There is this belief that a clear dividing line is necessary to achieve a healthy and happy life, one that is not…

In Jim Collins’s iconic book Good to Great, he takes the old Greek parable of the fox and the hedgehog and uses it as a metaphor for describing companies that attain greatness. The fox, in it’s crafty way, knows many little tricks, tactics, and ploys which it employs against it’s quarry. The hedgehog, on the other hand, it’s coat bristling with quills, knows one really big trick — one that foils the fox every time. In today’s rapidly changing business environment, it’s easy to get caught up in creating new programs, products, and projects, with the aim of using all…

True happiness at work pretty much boils down to one word: flow. Flow is the name of the book by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (mee-hy cheek-sent-mə-hy-ee), wherein he describes “a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. It is a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.” (source) Furthermore, Csíkszentmihályi contends that being in this state of flow is the key to happiness, and that a state of flow is often associated with the best moments of our life. Imagine the time you raced down the…

The common wisdom to creating a high-performance team is to populate it with members who have high IQs and who are the best in their respective field. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible. More importantly, this common wisdom is flat out wrong. How else can you explain the poor team decision making that occurs in the upper echelons of businesses, governments, and other organizations? These institutions are not dictatorships, meaning they make their decisions in groups or committees — often chock full of really bright people. Enron was full of brilliant folks who, together, made some really horrendous decisions. Despite our…

An acronym for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity, VUCA is a military concept that was adopted by the business community as a way to describe the inherently difficult issues of the modern world. These four words form the lens through which a strategic leader views the rapidly evolving business landscape, and they are also the basis for creating an adaptable and proactive organization with regard to the inevitability of change. A Little Background on VUCA The concept of VUCA emerged out of the US Army War College in the mid-to-late 1990s, a time during which the US found itself in…

It’s hard to imagine a more impressive backdrop for a Bay Area team building event than an aircraft carrier — and that’s exactly what we had for our Pursuit team building event this past week. We took an enthusiastic group of ninety plus participants through a variety of fun and fast-paced activities inside the hangar bay of the storied USS Hornet, a decommissioned WWII era aircraft carrier moored in Alameda, CA.

Giving feedback is rarely something that we look forward to, but rather something we often avoid or mildly dread. Unfortunately, the word itself has become loaded with baggage. When we hear the word feedback, most of us think of it as a lightly-veiled, corporate euphemism for criticism. Despite the negative connotations, it’s undeniable that feedback is a valuable tool for improving employee and management team performance. And part of the reason that we dread it so much is that we’re doing it wrong. Here are some helpful tips that will assure that you provide feedback effectively.

Glassdoor just released their Top 50 Winners for Best Places to Work 2015, and they did so right on the heels of the US economy’s best hiring month in three years. We’re finally out of the hiring slump and the wheels of commerce are turning again. Along with this hiring increase has come a bolstered sense of confidence among the labor force, and those people who have been hunkered down at a job they don’t particularly like are now starting to explore their options elsewhere. Is your company a place where your employees want to stay?