This resonated for me the first time I read it years ago and still does today. Enjoy an oldie-but-goodie from Robert Fulghum:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.

Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

In my last blog post, I mentioned sharing the story of my first triathlon, turned biathlon. Read on…

If any of you are from the Philadelphia area, you’ll likely recall the torrential rains, flash floods, wicked lightening storms we had in late July and early August. One such storm occurred on the morning of August 2^nd. This was the morning I was racing in my first triathlon, SheROX, taking place in Fairmount Park. On that morning, I woke up before my alarm to a familiar sound. “What’s that”, I thought? “No, it can’t be thunder. It’s not going to storm today.”

Fast forward a couple of hours. I’m standing in the field at Fairmount Park, wearing the rarely seen triathlon ensemble, a hot pink swim cap, my trisuit, and my running shoes, awaiting a decision by race officials. The decision in question was whether to allow the swim or to cancel it. If canceled, the half-mile swim would be replaced with a mile and a half run. Standing there looking at the Schuylkill River, I have to say, I have no idea what took race officials an hour to make the decision to cancel the swim. I will spare you the details of what was floating down the river. Though I did not personally see it, news reports said that a dead body was one such item. Even so, I was disappointed not to finally conquer my first open water competitive swim.

Fast forward another couple of hours.  I finished the first run portion in 11-minutes, grabbed my bike, and ran out of the transition area.  I have a really great road bike that I was lucky enough to score from a female Hawaii Ironman Champion living nearby. So I’m flying along on my bike, having a blast passing people, when all of a sudden it starts raining. No, let’s make that pouring. I was still having fun until the spills and crashes started to happen (not me thankfully). I decided I should probably slow down (a little). Which I did and safely finished the bike portion and was off for the final run. I crossed the finish line with my husband and kids cheering me on!

I was standing in line for a leg massage, when the STORM hit. Thunder so loud it shook the ground like an earthquake; Lightening bolts struck seemingly within feet of where we were standing. And the rain! It was like having buckets dumped over your head, one after the other. News reports said that Philadelphia received 5 inches of rain in 2 hours that day! That’s a month’s worth of rain in 2 hours! Fairmount Park quickly turned into a bunch of ponds with some grassy areas in between. Race officials eventually closed the racecourse and urged people to return to their vehicles, which were parked literally a mile away. Not feeling like taking chances with my two small children, my family and I huddled inside a trailer for a while. Eventually, the worst of the lightening passed and we began our long walk back to the car. And to an eventful ride home. One road after another was closed due to flooding, rockslides, bridges out. Ironically enough, by the time we got home, the sun was beginning to shine.

Later that evening, I went online to see my race results, which were pretty good. Until I began to think, had the first run really been a swim, it would’ve easily taken me 15+ minutes longer to complete. And I would never have made it through the transition area so quickly either.  I still hadn’t completed a triathlon! I immediately searched TriMax Triathlons website and registered for the Blue Marsh Triathlon on Sept 20, 2009. Please everyone, do your sun dances and send prayers out for clear skies!

I recently completed my first triathlon. Actually, that’s not exactly true, due to a race time decision to cancel the swim portion, making it a biathlon (that’s a whole other story you’ll see posted here shortly). Nevertheless, I trained for a triathlon, which was a real balancing act for me, a business owner, wife and mother, with zero “spare time.” Preparing for an event comprised of three unique activities (swim, bike, run) stretched me in many ways.

During my couple months of training, I often thought about how the triathlon training was similar to the “training” necessary to build a successful and cohesive team. While there are many, many aspects involved in building a really great team, I’ll categorize them into three broad areas: relationships, tasks, and process.

• Relationships involve how people relate to one another, the quality of the interactions, level of authenticity and openness, and generally how well people like each other and want to be together.
• Tasks involve the goals, objectives, deliverables, results the team is working towards and the daily operational aspects of getting the job done.
• Process involves the way the team goes about getting the job done. How are decisions made? What happens when we disagree? Are we involving everyone necessary in the problem-solving process? Are people kept informed and is the communication thorough and effective? etc

First, similar to triathlon training, to build a great team you’ve got three unique areas to work on simultaneously; each requiring different strengths and a different approach to developing those strengths. Second, most people come to triathlon training (and to their team) having some experience and skill in one, perhaps two, of the unique areas. For instance, I am primarily a runner and have competed in many foot races, from 10Ks to a marathon so the running portion of the triathlon was of no concern to me. And I love to ride my road bike. Though I am not especially competitive in that area, I was looking forward to the long bike ride during the race. Swimming? Well, let’s just say I came to the training aware of some basics (like you kick your feet). The swim was the component I felt least confident about and really had to focus on in my training.

So the challenge in triathlon training and in building a great team lies in balancing the dynamics. How much focus do we place on one area over another at any given time? How will our approach differ when nurturing trust and positive relationships, compared to when we are preparing the details of a project plan?

It goes without saying that in triathlon training, if you neglect one area, you’re probably not gonna win, and maybe not even be competitive, when it counts. This is also true in building great teams. Each of the three areas, relationships, tasks, and process, requires regular attention if you expect your team to remain competitive and to win.

Some questions to think about with your team:

1. What relationship(s) needs attention right now?
2. Have we, as a team, proactively spent time clarifying expectations of one another?
3. What might be needed now to move us closer to our goals/deliverables

Good luck! And like competitive athletes, successful teams benefit greatly from the guidance and objectivity of a coach. Let me know if you need one; I’d love to work with you!

I had a picnic lunch with a friend the other day. You know, your typical picnic of miso soup, sushi, and Perrier water! The conversation soon became typical also (for me anyway), and covered ideas about what it means to be in community, where in the world (geographically) we’ve witnessed the greatest sense of community, and what it would be like to have that in our own small town.

Something my friend said has really stayed with me. In commenting on what it was like for him when he first moved to our town, he spoke about feeling unwelcome, or like an outsider, based on the way people interacted with him. Rather than being given eye contact and a smile, he noticed people looking away, avoiding eye contact. Rather than being approached with curiosity, he felt approached with judgement, as if others were “summing him up” solely on what they saw at that moment.

So I’ve been paying more attention to the behaviors I observe as people, myself included, have the opportunity to interact. Sometimes people grab the opportunity and contact is made. In many cases, however, contact is avoided and an opportunity is lost. When you pass by another person on the street, in the hallway at the office, in the mall, do you make eye contact and smile? Do you look away, avoiding the other’s face? Take a minute to become aware of your typical reaction, whatever it is. Then ask yourself, what is being created by your action at that moment. How can you use contact opportunities to create inclusivity and community?

One of the most common scenarios I am asked about by team leaders is how to help geographically dispersed team members become more cohesive and operate with a strong sense of team unity. Sound familiar to you too?

As they say, there is no substitute for face time; and I would agree. I am big fan of face time. For most organizations with virtual teams however, face time is not a frequently occurring situation (especially in a down economy). And building a cohesive team requires frequent, intentional interactions. It is important to regularly look for and talk about the things the team does well and to engage in retrospective dialogue around setbacks and “failures” to learn as much as you can and keep the team moving forward.  Below are three suggestions to get you started.

1. The foundational step in creating a cohesive team is building trust. Towards trust building, it is useful for people to spend time getting to know each other and exploring their similarities and uniqueness. Prepare 2 or 3 “self-disclosure” questions prior to each meeting and have every team member take a turn responding, round robin fashion. Questions can progress from fun trivia type questions to more meaningful or work-related questions as the trust builds. For example, “What is your favorite vacation spot?” is a risk-free question, while, “Who in your life has most influenced your career? What did he/she do?” may feel more risky to some. The purpose is to allow for discovery of the things people have in common and to gain greater insight into what makes each other tick.  Team members might rotate the job of coming up with the questions and facilitating the discussion.
2. Another important step towards trust building is providing the space for team members to discuss individual expectations and the values that are important to them as a member of the group. Ask team members to think about what they value most in relationships and come prepared to each share their top 3 values. After each team member shares his/her list, explore commonalities and themes. Build this into the team’s Guiding Principles or Operating Agreement and have each team member verbally agree to uphold. This leads nicely into an opportunity to proactively talk about the area where most teams have trouble: accountability. Explore questions like: “How will we know that we’re doing/upholding ‘abc value’? What will be different or enhanced?” “What will we do when someone violates a guiding principle?” “How will we handle accountability?”  This could all be done in one long meeting or divided into segments to be facilitated over a few team meetings.
3. As trust builds and the Team Guiding Principles take shape, plan 10-15min at the beginning of each team meeting for a “team process check-in.” This is the time, before the team begins discussing the tasks at hand, to focus on the process of being a cohesive team. At each meeting, pose a question for the team to explore together. Examples include:

• What’s good about the way we’ve been making decisions together? What’s working well for us?
• What would you (each team member) like to see more of regarding our communication about “abc”?
• Let’s reflect on Project X (just concluded). Name 1 or 2 things we did really well and how it contributed to the project’s success.
• What wins or successes are we celebrating today (remember to include the small everyday ones)?

Consider what might be possible when your team engages in this level of Everyday Teambuilding throughout the year. What results could you expect to see that you are not seeing today?