TEC presents Inspirational Leadership 2011 featuring Simon Sinek

Join TEC and BizTimes Media at the Inspirational Leadership 2011 event on April 14, 2011. We are excited to announce Simon Sinek, trained ethnographer and author, as the featured speaker.

Table seating is sold out for this event, however, you can participate via our live video feed. Contact Michele Bernstein at 262-821-3340 or by email at tec@tecmidwest.com for more information.

Philosophies on leadership best practices

At TEC, our members come together to share personal and organizational success stories and struggles to help create best practices for other leaders. This confidential environment allows TEC members to solve real business problems. However, the types of issues and solutions our members discuss today will change in the future.

How would you best describe the future of leadership best practices? What have you found to be the most consistent philosophy in your organization?

How to avoid working in silos

The larger your organization, the more common it is to find your business falling into silos of separate functional groups. When this happens, effective communication is lost because each department loses sight of how all groups fit together to form the big picture.

Here are three tips to avoid working in silos:

Keep communication open. Holding company-wide meetings to share organizational information happening across all groups helps employees understand their role in the organization and who to go to in another department when they need something.

Lead by example. Bring together your leadership team in regular meetings. This allows  a more detailed update of information and team leaders can discover ways to bring together different departments. Also, invite other team leaders to sit in on your team meetings.

Reward collaboration. Make innovation a part of your company's culture and reward groups working together. Add this recognition to your company-wide meeting agenda.

How does your organization promote collaboration?

How does your company avoid working in silos? [POLL]

TEC brings together leaders from a variety of industries and organizational structures and sizes. We pride ourselves on collaboration and bringing together different points of view to solve business problems. The same rules apply within an organization. Often times departments fall into silos and lose touch with other minds in the organization.

Utilizing competition in team building activities

Productivity and teamwork go hand-in-hand when building a successful business. Team building exercises are a great way to promote teamwork, build relationships and teach a team how to overcome challenges together.

Often times, these types of activities are a game or competition. Friendly competition ignites passion, emphasizes cooperation and helps develop natural team roles. When a team is focused on the end result of the game, hidden talents emerge in the excitement and people assume roles they never had the opportunity to before.

Contrarily, some team members get so caught up in the competition that they forget why they are doing the activity in the first place. Team-building activities are not worthwhile if your employees only remember the game they played or who won.

Share with us and other leaders the best and worst team building activity you've tried. How do you ensure that your team benefits from your activity? In what ways can you connect the activity to daily work life?