Weekly Round-Up: 9 Collaboration Mistakes, 7 Group Decision-Making Strategies, Microsoft Teams New Features, Communicating Corporate Purpose & more

Welcome to my weekly round-up of the best-of-the-best recent leadership and communication blog posts I've seen over the past week. Given the current state of business today and how much has changed because of COVID-19 and calls for racial justice, I'm continuing to use the Weekly Round-Up as a place to share some of the best resources I'm seeing to help leaders and communicators navigate these challenges with their teams. 

This Week's Round-Up of Leadership and Communication Blogs:

• 9 Mistakes That Sabotage Collaboration and Destroy Trust by Karin Hurt and David Dye (@LetsGrowLeaders and @davidmdye), Let's Grow Leaders. Talking about these common problems can help you find a better path forward to more effective and productive teamwork and take everyone’s performance to the next level.

“You’re working hard and want to win. So do your co-workers. You think, 'we’re all on the same team, so why does everything we do seem to sabotage collaboration?' Ironically, it’s usually the well-meaning, high-achievers that inadvertently sabotage collaboration. When you’re that focused on winning, it’s tough to remember that the competition isn’t in the guy in the left Zoom window, it’s mediocrity...” Read more >>

• 7 Strategies for Better Group Decision-Making by Torben Emmerling and Duncan Rooders via Harvard Business Review (@HarvardBiz). Based on behavioral and decision science research and years of application experience, the authors identified 7 simple strategies for more effective group decision making.

“When you have a tough business problem to solve, you likely bring it to a group. After all, more minds are better than one, right? Not necessarily. Larger pools of knowledge are by no means a guarantee of better outcomes. Because of an over-reliance on hierarchy, an instinct to prevent dissent, and a desire to preserve harmony, many groups fall into groupthink...” Read more >>

• Microsoft Ignite 2020: Teams to Get New Well Being Features to Reduce Stress by Tom Li (@ChirpsTom via @itworldca), IT World Canada. Research indicates employees want to work from home. With that in mind, Microsoft announced new features for their Teams platform to help.

“Microsoft’s key tool in connecting a distributed workforce is its Teams communication platform. At Microsoft Ignite, the company announced a slew of new features in Teams to reduce work-from-home stress and improve collaboration regardless of location...” Read more >>

• The Highs and Lows of Communicating Corporate Purpose by Sue Dewhurst and Liam FitzPatrick (@suedewhurst and @LiamFitz via @IC_Kollectif), IC Kollectif. With the state of the environment in constant flux during these times of uncertainty, a flexible approach is needed for optimal outcomes.

“In these unusual times, we need flexible approaches to business strategy more than ever. Strategy is commonly viewed as a roadmap outlining how to get from A to B. Typically created by the upper echelons of an organisation, “having a strategy” means that there is an agreed masterplan which co-ordinates organisational efforts and the use of resources. The strategy plan provides a coherent set of guidance that directs how operational decisions and actions should deliver desired long-term outcomes. Refreshed periodically, this “cascading” planned approach to strategy is intuitively appealing for the order and control it promises to organisational leaders...” Read more >> 

• Searching for the "Just Right" Leadership Approach in This Era by Art Petty (@artpetty via @SmartBrief), SmartBrief. Art Petty explains that during crisis, there's no one-size-fits-all approach to leadership, but rather a blended, adaptive model that draws upon the strengths of at least 3 distinct leadership styles.

“For hundreds of years, individuals known as alchemists searched in vain for the mythical Philosopher's Stone, a substance that was imagined to have the properties essential for turning basic medals into gold or generating the elixir of immortal life. Today's equivalent search is for that one leadership style capable of turning crisis into survival and then prosperity…” Read more >>

What were some of the best resources you’ve read this week?

—David Grossman

Are you applying the communications lessons of this year into your communications plan for the future? As you reflect, consider taking this 3-step approach to Reboot your Communications Plan for long-term success.

This article originally appeared on the leadercommunicator blog.