5 podcasts that will improve collaboration and support on your teams
1. Hello Monday
Hello Monday, a weekly podcast by Jessi Hempel, LinkedIn's senior editor at large, covers the changing face of teamwork.
In the mid-2019 season finale, Hempel spoke with Michael Lombardi, former NFL talent scout and then-New England Patriots assistant coach, about the art of assembling teams. According to Lombardi, crafting a strong team starts with what he calls a "blueprint," or offering criteria for success.
"If I don't define what your job is, how do we all work together?" Lombardi asked. He advised leaders to focus on offering descriptions of every teammate's role. Without doing that, he said, "People walk around aimlessly."
You can hear more of the podcast here.
2. HBR IdeaCast
HBR's IdeaCast, a weekly podcast by Harvard Business Review's Senior Editors Alison Beard and Curt Nickisch, covers top leaders in business and offers insight into workplace management.
Early in the series, Kim Christfort, a national managing director at Deloitte, spoke candidly about how she brings together different personality styles in an organization. Because of the different personality quirks that appear across teams, Christfort compared a prosperous team to "one of harmony and music."
She said these teams include four types of people: pioneers, guardians, drivers, and integrators. Christfort said she came up with these four personality groupings with the help of a geneticist and a biological anthropologist.
"So our starting point was to say, what are the things that really matter in a business environment that we could observe or have some sense of based on normal clues in the workplace," Christfort said.
3. Ask a Manager
Alison Green, founder of the website AskaManager.org, has a podcast that helps employees discover how to talk about hard issues at work. One hard issue is how to deal with a team that works too hard.
In one episode, Green spoke to a new manager at a non-profit, who wanted to change company culture because employees were losing sleep over work-related tasks. To complicate these matters, employees worked in different time zones and felt pressure to immediately respond to urgent tasks. Green's advice was simple: Delegate those tasks to employees that can handle an earlier or an off-beat schedule, and let other team members off the hook.
While Ask a Manager is no longer releasing new episodes, the podcast has a massive archive of management tips. Other tips from Green include how to deal with a colleague that overshares or starting a new job on a positive note.
You can listen to the full archive here.
4. Master of Scale
Masters of Scale, a biweekly business and finance podcast hosted by Linkedln cofounder Reid Hoffman, covers how companies can grow and scale to create a productive culture.
Last year, he interviewed Ray Dalio, the billionaire investor and founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, and they discussed the importance of having team members who sometimes disagree.
Dalio said disagreement can sometimes lead to improving ideas, but he noted the importance of a team recognizing the difference between constructive and destructive conflict. When opinions vary, he said, constructive conflict is where a team shares a goal that ultimately benefits the company.
You listen to more of this episode here.
5. Tim Ferriss Podcast
The Tim Ferriss Show is an experimental business podcast led by Tim Ferriss, an entrepreneur and author of "The 4-Hour Workweek."
In one of the series' earlier episodes, Ferriss interviewed US Navy SEAL veteran, Chris Fussell, and Stanley McChrystal, a retired US Army general who was a commander of American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. During the interview, McChrystal and Fussell offered insight into how they organized teams and remained productive in high-pressure environments.
One of their tips was on the importance of maintaining good relationships, no matter what kind of communication you use. Fussell said he values teams that are not just kind to each other in person but extend kindness over email and through the phone. They both said that goes a long way in improving how colleagues interact with and respond to each other.
You can listen to the rest of the archive and more episodes here.
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