Welcome to Better Team Habits
Here’s something to ponder: (most) humans are hard-wired to want to be in good rapport with other humans, innately motivated to accomplish goals, and enjoy winning together. You’d expect that it would be easy for naturally cooperative beings who love accomplishing goals to work together.
And yet, teamwork is rarely easy. When it is easy, it’s typically because members of the team have done a lot of work to make it easy.
Here at Better Team Habits, we’re going to explore leadership, teamwork, strategy execution, and organizational dynamics by focusing on team habits, by which I mean the habits the team does as opposed to merely some habits that individuals do.
How your team schedules its meetings is a team habit, as is whether and how they share agendas before the meeting. How teammates loop others into emails or Slack messages is a team habit, as is whether they have the practice of cc'ing or group‑bombing everyone to make sure they cover their bases.
We know the power of habits when it comes to personal effectiveness — we’re applying the same principles to team habits.
Don’t let the simplicity of the idea of team habits fool you. Much like some of the simple personal habits that we know we need to be doing, actually practicing good team habits is where the work the real work is.
While most of the work here will likely be practical and concrete, I'll also be sharing posts on the philosophy of business, the future of work, conscious business, behavioral economics, and leadership paradigms and mindset. The how of working better together is rooted in deep whys we often take as givens. Many of those givens need to be questioned, amended, and/or rejected if we are to make work better for everyone.
If you’re interested in leadership, teamwork, strategy execution, and organizational dynamics, you’re in the right place. I’m looking forward to learning about the good and bad team habits your team has.
When you subscribe, you’ll get immediate access to two sample chapters from Team Habits. One of the chapters covers meetings so you can start applying the practical insights right away.
About Me (Charlie Gilkey)
Most people know me from Productive Flourishing (PF) where I help people thrive and do their best work. I’m an executive coach, best-selling author, and podcaster.
If you’re curious about why I started Better Team Habits when I already have a well-known platform at PF, I wrote about this as a fresh and focused next step here.
I have nearly 20 years of fieldwork that incorporates systems thinking, strategy execution, leadership and organizational development, practical innovation, and communication. My experience includes leading 200+ soldiers in the U.S. Army, 14 years consulting leaders in various industries in for-profit and nonprofit industries, writing award-winning books, and serving on various boards. My forthcoming book, Team Habits, is a guide to creating practices in teams that create great results and belonging.
At heart, I’m a team guy. As challenging as leading and working in teams can be, there are few things as sublime as seeing your team come together and get a great job done. I’m in this because I believe every team, everywhere has the potential to be that kind of team — and when we make working in teams better, we make work better, which means we make people’s lives better.
