Finding the right balance between giving enough freedom and leading the way is a challenge for many team leads. Where on the spectrum do you find yourself? Are you inclined to give much freedom or do you tend to lead the way? Leaders in both cases tend to struggle with the same question: "Is what I do ideal if I want to optimize team performance and make my team members feel good?" The key is to create a framework in which people can take decisions and action within certain b

One of the most powerful conversations you can have as a leader or manager is about your team member's goals.

"Some people in my team do not dare to speak up because they're more of an introvert" "There are people in my team who don't stand up for themselves yet because they haven't been in the company for that long." We often believe that personality types, seniority level, etc define whether or not people feel confident enough to voice their opinion, the challenges they're facing and to speak up for the mistakes they made. However the real reason for people not speaking up i

As a teamleader or coach, you can play a huge role in creating an environment where it is okay to make mistakes

Today we would like to share some coaching questions that we love to use during development sessions with our teams or team leaders.

These days personal development has become so much more important than it used to be. Both on a personal and professional level. In order to maximize growth in the latter case, it's important to not keep your professional goals to yourself, but to share them with your manager and team. That way, they can support you in your self-development. A support system: Why? Why is this important? There are 3 main reasons. A broader range of opportunities: Your peers or manager can spot

Radical innovation is threatened, even if it's more crucial now than ever. Our whole reality, including the needs of the market will change drastically in the years to come and businesses face a big challenge in keeping up with this. How can we prepare and what is needed to make your organisation innovation proof? Innovation in the Covid19 crisis Where in the midst of facing one of the biggest crises in history. This creates fear, which is a natural reaction to all the u

Below you can find three remote-friendly energizers that we often use during our online workshops or team meetings.

Have you ever given feedback to someone, resulting in them getting defensive? It's probably a sign that that person didn't feel psychologically safe. Psychological safety can be described as the belief that you won't be punished in any way when asking for help, sharing concerns, lacking knowledge, having a different opinion or being open about mistakes. Only when this is present, people will feel at ease to be deadly honest in the feedback they give and will be able to learn

3 tips on how you can have more impact replacing blame with curiosity will improve your team dynamic

As most of you know by now, Eleni and I recently launched one of our first products: the unity card deck, containing 52 team exercises to become an expert in managing team dynamics. To make our card deck corona proof, we turned some of our exercises into virtual experiences! But you might ask what you can expect when running such an exercise? We decided to show you by running a demo with some of our closest friends! The "Post-It in color" exercise is perfect to get to know yo

We're halfway through 2020, the perfect time to check-up on your goals for this year, to review them, or to set new ones! In this post we'll help you clearly define goals that will help you grow professionally and get you started with an action plan that will enable you to reach them! If you're a team leader, this post will help you to guide your team members with defining their own goals and to follow up on those with them throughout the year! The difference between objectiv

How can you as a leader start practicing vulnerability with your team? NNORM listed 4 tips that can help to get you started

Doing exercises and energizers in your meetings are so much more than adding an element of fun. They give you as meeting facilitator, the power to increase meeting efficiency! How? There are 3 elements to take into account. First of all, it helps increase involvement, second, it's a powerful tool to switch more empowering meeting modes and lastly it triggers collaboration. Increase involvement "Try to say something - anything - in a meeting as soon as possible" is an advice I

Let's be honest, working remotely has some great benefits, from allowing for flexibility to more efficient time use. However, the emotional connections we have with our team members and colleagues is not something that we can easily replace when working from home. It is even so that virtual teams that lack a strong bonding can leave team members feel under-valued which can impact productivity and effective contributions. This way, the physical distance of remote teams can qui

I stumbled upon an article of Harvard Business Review on why feedback rarely does what it's meant to. They argue that the good of feedback is based on 3 widespread theories, that are in fact not true. At NNORM, we agree that those 3 theories are wrongfully accepted as truths, but we strongly believe that the fact they're not true does not make or break a feedback culture. When you haven't noticed the benefits of feedback, there's a big chance you've been doing it wrong. When

Two researchers from VitalSmarts did extensive research on how to create voluntary engagement in virtual meetings and found 5 rules.

Past weekend I was reading the book "The school of life", written by multiple psychologists, philosophers and writers. The book stated that a good school shouldn't tell us only things we've never heard of before. It should focus on rehearsing things we theoretically know, yet have practically forgotten. This inspired me to make the link with the business world, because there as well, repetition is key in adopting change, learning new things, or installing a certain culture. S

In one of our previous posts, we learned that psychological safety in teams has a lot of benefits for teams and organizations. Employee engagement is being boosted, team innovation improves, members are allowed to learn from their mistakes and so on. This mainly because members feel safe in making mistakes, voicing their opinions, and sharing ideas. We received some questions about team leaders and coaches who would like to get started, but are not sure how. Below we will

Teleworking and working in virtual teams will be reality for many of us. How can you show leadership in this new environment?