Leading Better Teams

We are wrapping up Season 1 of the Leading Better Teams Podcast on a high note, discussing the future of work with Erin Grau, the co-founder, and COO of Charter. Erin discusses the future of work, and how we can best adapt to this new environment so that teams and organizations truly thrive. Erin’s organization does important research to equip every employee and leader with the best practices to make high-value decisions and resist the gravitational pull of how things have always been done. Tune in to hear Erin showcase her wealth of knowledge and offer practical, actionable nuggets of wisdom from beginning to end!

Show Notes

📰 Erin’s media career: Modernising the New York Times.  02:15
💫 Showcasing the vision for the future and shaping beliefs and priorities around that future. 04:22
🔀 Flexibility is here to stay: hybrid work model is the most preferred type of work but comes with challenges. 05:16
⚗️ Using Experimentation to get the hybrid model right: HubSpot and three different models employees can choose from. 07:56
😍 This time of great transformation: Sharing and connecting with people, understanding mental health, understanding that inclusion and diversity are about power.10:32
🙃 Difference between individual contributor and manager. 12:41
🤓 Leaders now have to learn a whole different way of leadership. 15:30
💯 Looking at employee's well-being, more holistically, not just between nine to five.17:56
🤝 Focusing on helping managers to figure out their priorities - personally and professionally. 20:08
🏆 The highest rated companies this year are the ones that are actively caring for employees and communities by building trust, flexibility, autonomy, and greater clarity in their organization. 23:55
😊 The ability to empathize is critical. 27:33
🤩 High performing teams have high-quality connections: Collective weeks off, mentorship circles and red, yellow, green exercise. 28:40
📋 Tips and studies on how to get the benefits of hybrid work. 33:04
👂 Finding things in common: one on one 5-minute breakout exercise. 36:49
✌️ Start small, show the vulnerability to your team. The #1 driver of successful teams is psychological safety. 39:52
😎 Sign up for Charter’s newsletter: Research findings on best business practices and cliff notes of new business books. 41:16


Links
www.charterworks.com
Team Building Activities: https://better-teams.com/team-building-ideas/
>> Connect with Leigh Ann: www.better-teams.com
>> Get the Better-Teams model to identify your team’s strengths and greatest opportunities using a common language here: https://better-teams.com/better-teams-model/ 
🖼️ Connect with Leigh Ann’ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leighannrodgers/


What is Leading Better Teams?

Leading teams is tough. Leading hybrid or remote teams? Even tougher. New workplace dynamics can create employee tension and communication issues that can overwhelm the best leaders. The leadership challenge of engaging remote employees and leading virtual teams is a skill that all leaders must develop as the future of work is here. Companies are made up of people - like you and me - who are ideally working together toward a common goal. But we’re complicated human beings and when put together in a corporate/business environment, any number of things can go right or wrong.

I’m your host, Leigh Ann Rodgers - world-renowned human potential expert, speaker, author, and CEO of Better Teams. My mission is to help leaders of all kinds to build better teams around the globe so that employees are happy, engaged, and productive. Implementing the most effective and latest models served up humor, happiness, and a dash of southern charm results in positive transformations time after time.

Each month, you can expect to hear from me and other industry experts on how to effectively manage remote teams making them positive and happy. I’ll offer real world examples from my on-going work and be real about the challenges and celebrate victories that I see. I’ll also offer quick tips and tools that are my way of giving you actionable knowledge so that you, too, can help in the mission to build and lead better teams the world over.

This podcast has been created to reach more people, executives, teams to benefit individuals, and can make corporations more human-centered. This show is for leaders seeking new ways to engage remote and hybrid teams and employees and who need practical tips and tools to lead with confidence.

The recognition that humans are complicated and motivated in all different ways allows me to be empathic and listen more deeply to what’s being said, and what’s not being said so that I can understand the entire team's values, ways of working and, ultimately, drive. It’s my whole-human approach that separates my work from the rest and has allowed me to walk among people employed at the smallest of local firms, non-profit organizations, government agencies like the Center for Disease Control (CDC), multinational companies and the world’s biggest brands like MARS, Whirlpool, and Kelloggs. I’ve been privileged to be in company with thousands of humans around the world - team members, frontline workers, and the most powerful executives. But as many as I’ve impacted, I cannot do this work alone. That’s why I created Forward - a trusted community of global industry professionals and now this podcast - so that we call can network, learn from one another, share new ideas, ask for help, and experiment with new ideas so this work can reach far and wide.

In my work as team builder, facilitator, and focus group moderator, people are moved to action by my expertise, and my undying curiosity about people and the never-ending stream of new tools and technologies that are consistently being developed to help teams and people be more productive. My job is to sort through all the information and apply my hands-on knowledge about work - what it is today and what it’s evolving into tomorrow. The world of work and people have been forever changed. It’s up to people like me who can clearly see the impact on people and teams to interpret the trends, test and analyze frameworks and tools to uncover what works most effectively, and take these learnings and put them into practice for teams large and small around the globe.