The Business Case for Leadership Workshops

Business Case for Team Building

Teams provide the foundation for organizational effectiveness, but they won't work without mutual trust and a commitment to common goals. Teams possess more talent and experience, more diversity of resources, and greater operating flexibility than individual performers. Research in the last decade has proven the superiority of group decisions over those of even the brightest individual within an organization. However, when a team lacks harmony or the ability to cooperate, the quality and speed of decision making suffers.

Successful teams must work together wholeheartedly. Trust among members, a sense of group identity, and a sense of group efficacy are the three conditions essential to a group's effectiveness, as identified by Vanessa Urch Druskat and Steven B. Wolff (Harvard Business Review, March 2001). Group identity is a feeling among members that they belong to a unique and worthwhile group. Group efficacy is the belief that the team can perform well and that group members are more effective working together than apart.

A direct correlation exists between harmony and productivity. Harmony in a team creates good feelings that are like lubrication for the brain - mental efficiency goes up, memory is sharpened, people can understand directions and make better decisions. Good team leaders know how to balance productivity with attention to developing strong relationships.

Business Case for Professional Presence

First impressions are 67 percent accurate. Research shows the most common reason cited by potential clients and customers for not working with a particular company is the first impression of that company. Most people allow three to four minutes for a salesperson to establish credibility. The three-part criterion is simple: appearance, communication skills, and the value of the service. If the appearance and the communication skills are poor, the sale is already lost because people stop listening.

In business, people are judged on their professional image before their level of performance or competence is determined. An individual's image comprises 55 percent of what is believed about them in business, according to research studies done by Dr. Albert Mehrabian of UCLA. This means that others believe the visual information we make available to them before they believe the actual content of the words spoken.

85 percent of financial success is due to skill in communication and relationship building. This means in order to be successful, a company must recognize the importance of professionalism as it affects the perception of its brand in the marketplace and ultimately the bottom line of the company.

Business Case for Time Management

A study by a New York research firm found that office distractions ate up 2.1 hours a day for the average worker. That adds up to $28 billion a year in the United States alone. Another study found that employees devoted an average of 11 minutes to a project before being distracted.

As a result of an effective time management system, employees have increased energy, productivity, and motivation; a greater sense of control; and improved decision making.

An employee benefits organization polled employees of its 1,000 client companies and found that 47 percent of respondents ranked time management as the number one source of stress in their lives.