Six Secrets of Powerful Teams: A Practical Guide to the Magic of Motivating and Influencing Teams by Michael Nir Page A

become increasingly challenging with the advent of modern matrix organizations.
    As a result the lore concerning the magic of teams has been lost.
    When I’m facilitating workshops for business professionals, project managers in software development, seminars for finance and IT professionals, consulting with marketing and supply chain experts, I am surprised, to witness their low propensity for soft skills literacy. They know the hard aspects of what needs to be done, however they remain clueless when required to lead the teams that help them accomplish the required objectives.
    As most of these teams are cross functional in a matrix organization, it is likely that the leaders and managers of these teams do not have direct hierarchical control over the team members. Requesting deliverables from the team members becomes challenging.
    Even when the managers do have hierarchical power, the contemporary concepts of empowerment and motivation prevail, making direct commands unpopular to say the least.
    Yet again requesting fulfillment of the objectives and deliverables becomes tricky. It is quite remarkable that simple concepts for creating positive interactions outside the business world are hardly ever used within business and project teams.
    What are you going to find in this exciting, expert-based book?
    Initially the challenge of managing and leading teams is outlined. We explore two scenarios of teams, no doubt you’ll find yourself identifying with at least one of the scenarios.
    We then discuss valuable proven concepts about teams and provide practical guidelines on how to use them in your teams.
    The next chapter is exciting and quite revolutionary; we introduce simple Gestalt psychological concepts and their application in project teams. We then highlight specific authentic behaviors that can be found in teams and provide advice on how to handle them as they occur. The third element in this chapter is the powerful, yet fundamental neurolinguistic programming (NLP) set of concepts and its relevance to team interactions.
    All of the amazing ideas presented in this chapter are a surefire way to make a remarkable impact on you and your team’s performance. These ideas increase your portfolio of handling different situations, reducing conflict, solving conflict, increasing motivation, enabling breakthrough in performance and are all valuable for team growth.
    It is my pleasure to provide you with these tested concepts that immediately increase your team performance and ultimately make your life much easier. Thanks again for buying this book and striving to learn and better yourself. 
    This book emphasizes the soft elements of the team, additional concepts are discussed in the many other books I have published.
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    CHAPTER
    ONE
     
     
    In the spotlight – the challenge

 
In the spotlight - the challenge
    Since ancient history the challenges and advantages of leading and managing a team have been recognized. One can imagine that successful human endeavors, based on collaborative efforts were in effect founded on well performing teams.
    That is not to say that management by coercion did not have its debut from time to time, however teams that were based on mutual respect, empowerment, motivation, trust, and collaboration tended to outperform, even in history, teams that were based on coercion, fear, and punishment. 
    The better performance of these teams was usually expressed in military and social victories. For example the Roman army, the U.S. Army in the war of independence, the British Army in World War II, the Greek at the battle of Salamis, and the developed Italian city states of the Renaissance era.
    In the first chapter we introduce two scenarios of non-functioning teams, indeed you might find yourself identifying with the scenarios, very good, it will make the experience all the more potent.
    The dimensions in which we analyze these