leadership

Unlocking Your Team’s Full Potential: Healthy Conflict

September 23, 2024 by Daniel Gilbert

Here is an uncomfortable truth: Conflict is inevitable in any team unit. Take a family for instance. No matter how happy and harmonious a family is, conflict is bound to happen. Why? Because when decisions affect multiple people – whether they are key parenting decisions or figuring out what’s for dinner – we simply do not always agree.

We should expect disagreements. Too often, these turn into arguments and fighting. But the truth is, there is a better way.

By approaching conflict in a healthy way, we not only avoid ugly spats with hurt feelings, we also can make better decisions and grow stronger as a team. Mastering healthy conflict on a team at work is not easy, but it is well worth it. Let’s talk about how to approach conflict by first discussing what happens when teams avoid conflict.

What Happens When We Avoid Conflict?

Because conflict can be unpleasant, the natural urge is often to avoid it altogether. The problem with this tendency is simple: Even though avoiding conflict may keep us inside our comfort zone, the underlying disagreement is still festering there. When conflict is not addressed in a healthy manner, one of three things is likely to happen:

The issue lies dormant for a while and comes back up later, in which case the conflict is simply delayed.
The issue lies dormant forever and is never revisited. When this happens – especially when it occurs repeatedly and over a long period of time – the people involved may grow bitter with each other and their teamwork decays.
One person surrenders to the other position simply to move past the issue without conflict. Of course, we should always be open to changing our minds if there is sound reason. But if a team chooses the easy way out and forgoes discussion, they may fail to find their way to the best possible resolution.

In any of these situations, working through the conflict would have been better for the team’s cohesion.

Healthy Conflict Starts with Trust

When conflict happens within a team that lacks trust, people are left feeling angry and hurt. People often have strong opinions and passion. When things get “heated”, it feels more like team members are attacking each other.

Does this mean we should avoid strong opinions and passion? Absolutely not. Particularly when the stakes are high, the best decision depends on the opinions and passion of everyone on the team.

While having healthy conflict on a team is not easy to achieve, the path to get there is quite simple. A high-functioning team depends on trust between members.

On the surface, this may sound like the need to honor commitments and expect that our teammates will do what they say they are going to do. This is dependability, which is a kind of trust that is certainly important in a team – but not the kind of trust that conflict requires to work through.

What matters more in healthy conflict is vulnerability-based trust, the mutual understanding and belief that all members of the team truly respect each other and care most about what’s best for the team.

Another key difference is that a trusting team attacks the problem, not each other. If the team lacks vulnerability-based trust and its leader does not put it front-and-center, conflict is a dangerous territory to enter. At the risk of contradicting the earlier point of the importance of embracing conflict, if trust doesn’t exist on the team, don’t embrace conflict – yet. Building trust must be the first priority.

Practical Conflict Resolution

Once a team has enough trust among its members to start facing conflict with one another, it is helpful to have some tools in your belt to assist.

Simple methods of comparison like pros and cons charts and Venn-diagrams can be used to see two or more ideas side-by-side. These exercises can help fully explore the problem and its possible solutions. They can turn a conflict into a magnificent collaborative moment for a team.

Another approach to conflict is to role-play arguing the other person’s position. Done well, this can force each person to invest a piece of their mind in that opposing argument. Hopefully, each member finds some perspective they wouldn’t understand if they stayed in their own shoes.

Mediators can also be effective by helping to translate messages and make room for everyone’s voice in a conflict, even as a tiebreaker. One-way mediators should certainly not be used as a substitute for trust.

Conclusion

In his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote, “When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.” The point is, conflict and disagreements are not just inevitable. They are evident on a team with fully-rounded perspectives.

Conflict is certainly a tightrope walk. We should approach conflict with extreme care, otherwise it can frustrate and offend people. But when a team with mutual trust amongst all members approaches conflict, they can truly unlock the greater sum of its parts and tackle issues with a higher level of impact than before.

Interested in more team building and business strategy insights? Read through some of Daniel’s other blogs:

Daniel Gilbert

Chief Operating Officer
Kite Technology Group

The Art of Acknowledgment: Crafting a Culture of Recognition at Work

August 26, 2024 by Daniel Gilbert

When I was in college, I was a line cook in the kitchen of an east-coast restaurant chain for a year where I met Cody. I noticed quickly how everyone loved Cody and listened to what he said. At first, I thought he was a manager. When I learned that he was “just another line cook”, I couldn’t wrap my head around why people around him just seemed to listen to him and see things his way. What was his superpower?

When I worked alongside him for the first time, it finally clicked. During that shift, he must have told me “good job” at least ten times. Being a rookie, I am sure he had plenty to correct me on as well, and I am sure it made me a better line cook. But that’s not what I remember about my interactions with Cody. I only remember how much I respected him and wanted to give him what he asked for.

Cody’s superpower was the power of recognition. When recognition happens on a team, the effect is intoxicating and immensely motivating.

Why Is Recognition Valuable?

As draining as the work itself can be, how much more does it sting if, after the work is done, no one seems to notice? Hearing your work affirmed, and especially hearing how people have benefitted from it, is an intrinsic motivator. For many people, intrinsic motivators are way more powerful motivators than money. It is proof that their hard work made an important difference. And for people who crave the feeling of importance, recognition can fulfill that craving.

There is another, perhaps more tangible reason that we should give recognition on a team: Recognition provides and supports a clear vision of what good work looks like. When I was working in the kitchen, I made a Cowboy Burger and Cory told me “Good job, that is a perfect medium-rare and the presentation is exactly right.” Sure, it felt good. But more than that, I took a mental snapshot of that Cowboy Burger, and it provided me a blueprint for how to do a good job again in the future.

Who Gives Recognition?

I’ll start with what may be obvious: A crucial part of a leader’s job is to give recognition to those in his or her charge. I’ve had bosses who gave recognition and those who didn’t – and I certainly felt more fueled by the ones who did (I probably did better work for them, too).

The leader sets the example for the rest of the team, so when the leader tells someone “good job”, the other members of the team notice and learn from it as well.

But recognition from the top is not the only form of recognition. I would actually argue that peer-to-peer recognition is even more important. Even for the best leader, there is only so much time in the day. The bigger the team, the less likely any leader is to be able to single-handedly give proper recognition to everyone.

Recognition can’t come only from the top-down; it must also be given among peers. For all the joy that comes from doing a good job for your boss, it can be even more motivating to do a good job for those next to you. More than just giving recognition, a good leader should create a culture of recognition that the team members bring to life.

How Can You Achieve a Culture of Recognition?

The easiest way to get started, which I have already mentioned, is for the leader of the team to get in the habit of giving recognition. It can be contagious, so I think this step alone can make a huge difference.

With the leader living out a culture of recognition, the next step would be to get the team involved – but how? I think the answer to how best to promote this behavior is the same as promoting any kind of behavior: recognize it. That’s right, recognize recognition. Tell your team how important you think it is to see them recognizing each other’s hard work. Then, whenever you see it, call it out. Make it the “cool” thing to do. It will catch on, and when it does, it will embed itself into the culture to stay.

From a practical sense, there are also many tools and platforms out there designed to enable and promote employees giving each other recognition. At KiteTech, we use a platform called Bonusly.

Why Do We Love Bonusly?

Bonusly is an online platform we at KiteTech use to allow our team members to give recognition to one another. It acts like a social media platform in that users can create posts, tag each other, and add hashtags and multimedia for some extra fun. Then, these posts create notifications and end up in a news feed where the entire company can see them.

When you notice your teammates doing something worthy of recognition, you create a post and tag them. You also specify a number of points to send to them. Each person’s allotment of points refills at the beginning of each month, and everyone is encouraged to give out all their points to teammates each month. Then, the points given to you by teammates can be redeemed for gift cards and store credits to hundreds of different stores, including Amazon and the Apple store.

A few aspects of Bonusly stand out to me as demonstrating key characteristics of any good recognition platform.

It's Fun.

The posts can be customized and include Emojis and GIFs. You can shout out your entire team, share an inside joke, and include hyperlinks to fun articles or websites. Our team loves Bonusly for the same reason that many people love social media: They have fun when they’re on it.

It’s Valuable.

Money can only motivate people so far, but doing work worthy of recognition is extra rewarding when a tangible reward accompanies it. It is also nice for the giver, when it feels like “Thank you” just isn’t quite enough.

It’s Public.

Not everyone likes their name up in lights, and giving recognition does not need to translate to feeding big egos. But the fact that recognition posts are public to the whole company means that everyone can share in their teammates’ success stories. This further perpetuates a culture of recognition.

It's Easy.

Giving recognition on Bonusly is as easy as writing a social media post. It even integrates with tools like Microsoft Teams. It also has a mobile app, so it is easy for everyone to give recognition. If you want your team to be in the habit of giving recognition, it helps if it’s easy.

Conclusion

The act of giving recognition is simple, but it doesn’t always happen on its own – even if it seems like it should. If you want your company culture to be rich with recognition, you need to be intentional about building it into how your company works on a daily basis. Giving recognition doesn’t need to be big, but it does need to be consistent. So don’t worry too much about doing it right, and just worry about doing it. All it took for my line cook mentor, Cody, was two simple words on a consistent basis to somehow make me want to be the best line cook I could possibly be.

At KiteTech, we are passionate about recognizing our teammates’ accomplishments. By doing so, we strengthen our internal team dynamics and performance, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction.

Interested in more team building and business strategy insights? Read through some of Daniel’s other blogs:

Daniel Gilbert

Chief Operating Officer
Kite Technology Group

Unlocking Effective Communication: The Power of Tone and Body Language

December 20, 2023 by Daniel Gilbert

Introduction

Have you ever had a message for your team or an individual on your team, and after you said it, you felt like it didn’t land the way you intended? You may have left the conversation feeling like you said exactly the right thing, but, still, something didn’t feel quite right. In my experience, this is most likely not due to the words you chose to deliver the message, but rather the way it was delivered. While it is, of course, hugely important to focus on the actual words you use when communicating, I feel it is equally important to focus on what’s beyond your word choice. The two other primary elements of communication that are vital to getting your message right are tone and body language. In this last article of our 2023 blog series, Resolutions for Leading Your Team Better in 2023, we will take a deeper look at communication beyond your choice of words and explore the important roles that tone of voice and body language play in expressing a clear message.

The Role of Tone in Communication

We’ve all heard the phrase, “It isn’t what you said, it’s how you said it.” Tone of voice is always at play whenever you deliver a message verbally, and usually it tells more about your true feelings than your words themselves. The good news here is that, if you truly believe in the message you are delivering, your tone of voice often naturally matches your message. This is why it is never a good idea to express a message you don’t truly feel. Aside from the fact that it is simply dishonest, your tone of voice will probably betray you.

Even though your tone of voice often naturally follows your true intent, it is still a good idea to have some self-awareness in the tone you are using. Below are some recommendations related to tone of voice that can go a long way in improving your communication.

Avoid Monotone

Inflection is important in communicating effectively. Anything you say in a monotone voice will sound devoid of any true conviction, so it will likely sound disingenuous. Your main points should be spoken with more emphasis, perhaps at a higher volume. Questions, whether rhetorical or not, should have an inflection that makes it obvious. You want your audience to know exactly how you feel, and using monotone will only leave them wondering.

Avoid Script-Reading

It is typically not a bad idea to rehearse your message in some way before you deliver it. Sometimes it even helps to write it down and practice from it. In the case of a spoken presentation, you probably will have some sort of script written that you can practice from. The danger is, if you sound like you are regurgitating something that was prepared beforehand, it can sometimes weaken your message. Even if you have read your script a hundred times, when it comes time to deliver your message, it should sound somewhat like it is coming off the top of your head. There is a big difference in how your message will be received if it sounds like it has been rehearsed compared to if it sounds like it is “coming from the heart”.

Use Pauses Effectively

When delivering a message, sometimes leaving empty space helps add emphasis. If you are trying to make a strong point, say it strongly, and then pause. This empty space will give the audience time for it to sink in. If you just move right on to your next point, your audience will move on with you, and they will lose the impact of the strong point you are trying to make.

The Role of Body Language in Communication

Have you ever needed to have a conversation with someone, and you felt like you preferred to talk to them in person rather than on a phone call? The reason is that body language is a strong element of effective communication, and it is entirely lost on a phone call. Even a video call can convey body language, so I personally suggest that if it is not possible to be together in-person, at least use a video call so you can still be face-to-face. Here are some ways that body language can come into play when communicating.

Maintain Eye Contact

Maintaining good eye contact in a conversation with someone helps communicate that your full attention is on them. If you are looking elsewhere, it indicates that your mind is at least partially elsewhere as well, which can seem disrespectful. Prolonged eye contact can sometimes be uncomfortable for some people, but still it is always good to try to maintain good eye contact when communicating.

Move Your Hands

We all know some people who “talk with their hands”. The reason many people do this is because it can enhance your message. You often see presentations that use visual aids, and sometimes when this is not an option your hands can do the trick. Your hands can indicate size, order, and proximity, just to name a few. You can also use your hands to simply emphasize a point. If you use little to no hand movement, and then suddenly wave your hands dramatically, your audience will probably pay more attention to the point you just made.

Consider Your Posture and Positioning

We hear about how posture can help with back pain, but can it also help with your communication? There are some subtle ways that posture and positioning can help or hurt your message, depending on what it is. For example, if you are sitting across the table from someone, it can sometimes establish separation or authority, whereas sitting on the same side of the table might be better for establishing an environment of collaboration or equality. Likewise, if you are standing and your audience is sitting, it can convey a sense of authority, whether intentional or not. Finally, just like maintaining good eye contact can express a sense of undivided attention, so can the placement of your body and hands. If you want your audience to feel like you are fully engaged with them, make sure your shoulders are squared and you are facing them, and that your hands are placed in view, perhaps on top of the table.

Conclusion

It is worth repeating that I never suggest using tone and body language to help deliver a false message. If you are trying to send a message that you don’t really believe in, you should reconsider whether it is the right message to send in the first place. Rather, I am hoping that you will reflect on how your message is impacted by your tone and body language and spend some time to make sure it is in line with your intentions. These crucial elements of communication are too often ignored and can sometimes be the decisive difference between an ineffective message and one that is clear and compelling.

If you missed any of our previous articles in our 2023 resolutions series, you can check them out here:

Daniel Gilbert

Chief Operating Officer
Kite Technology Group

Creating a Culture of Connection: Strategies for Team Success

August 15, 2023 by Daniel Gilbert

Introduction

As your organization grows, it naturally becomes more challenging to get to know everyone on a personal level. When I first joined KiteTech, it was a relatively small team. Over the past decade, our company has grown considerably. I will never forget how surprised I was the first time I witnessed two members of the team (both of whom had been with the company for several months) introduce themselves to each other at a company gathering. This was the first time I remember feeling like a “big” company which got me interested in exploring ways we could preserve the feeling of closeness in a “small” company.

If you are leading the team, it is crucial to proactively seek ways to connect with your team members. Establishing robust and consistent connections can lead to happier, more committed employees, a more reliable customer experience, and ultimately, improved team performance.

What does it mean to “connect”?

When I refer to “connecting” with your team, think of it as a spectrum. On one side of the spectrum is forming deep friendships with everyone at your organization. You don’t need to go this far. On the other end, connecting could be as simple as sending an instant message or giving a quick phone call every once in a while, to say “Hi, how are you?”. It’s not much, but in my opinion, this is better than doing nothing at all.

Over time, these interactions, however big or small, progress you towards the high end of the spectrum. This may include inviting someone to lunch or happy hour, or intentionally going deeper than small talk in conversations. Moving up the spectrum means you get to know your people better and they get to know you better.

Benefits of Connecting with Your Team

Before we jump into practical ways you can start connecting better with your team, it is important to understand what benefits it can bring. Here are a few key advantages to fostering team connection:

1. Improved Team Unity and Communication

The ones most directly and immediately impacted by your efforts to connect better will be your employees. Your direct reports and other members of the team you already work with on a regular basis will likely get to know you very well, at least professionally. When people know you deeply, they get to know how you work, how you like to see things presented to you, and how you prefer to communicate; they generally have a better idea of your definition of “good work”. But the rest of the organization whom you don’t work with regularly will not have this perspective, so it is important to get exposed to others whenever possible to help build this.

Maybe you have already met everyone at your organization because you are a part of the interview process, or because you have periodic company-wide meetings. If this is the case, they likely know who you are, but not much more than that. Their perspective might be, “Yeah, she’s the CEO, I don’t really know her and never get to talk to her, but I know she is in charge, that’s where the orders come from.” Finding other opportunities to connect better with all members of the organization can help challenge this” ivory tower” perspective. I think this can help your employees feel more comfortable with you, which means they will also be more likely to voice a concern or share their input.

2. Higher Employee Retention

When you and your employees get to know each other and become comfortable with each other, it becomes part of the culture of the organization, something that employees come to expect. As a result, they will tend to stick around longer than employees who don’t feel connected. This low turnover is a huge benefit in many ways, but maybe best of all is that it gives your employees a better chance of connecting more deeply with each other and even further enhances the culture and environment.

3. Improved Customer Service

Believe it or not, doing a better job connecting with your team can have a profound impact on your customers as well.

To start, if connecting with your team has made your employees happier and more engaged, your customers who are interacting with them will probably be the first to notice. Happy people tend to be contagious; if you have employees who are answering your phones, for example, that employee may be the only rep from your company that customer works with that day or week or even longer. Your customer’s experience is now firmly and solely in the hands of that one employee, so you want to make sure to create an environment where people can answer the phones with smiles on their faces.

Also consider prospects you want to convert to customers. Especially if your customer is considering a long-term commitment with you, they may want to know about your company’s culture. They know that happy employees typically lead to better experiences for the customer, so it is in your best interest to be able to (honestly) show off an excellent company culture with low turnover.

4. Better Business Results

If your employees are happy, your customers will be happy, and this is a measure of success in itself. Customer satisfaction is often one of the most important key performance indicators on many teams.

It’s great to work with people who are happy, both employees and customers, but there is something more to be considered in how connecting with your team can bring results.

In a previous article, I discussed the importance of creating clarity on your team. The premise is essentially that your company’s vision and goals should be communicated over and over again to all members of the team, every chance you get. The moments you create in an effort to connect better with your team are also perfect opportunities to communicate clarity. In addition, if you have strong relationships with your employees, they are more likely to want to help you and the rest of the team achieve goals.

We have also discussed how connecting with your employees can lead to lower turnover. Over time, you will build a loyal team where many team members have been with the company for many years. They will not only have strengthened their expertise in their roles, but they will have done so in the context of your company and your customer base, which potentially makes them better for your team than a seasoned veteran in the field who has never worked with your company.

Strategies for Cultivating Team Connection

Now that we understand the impact made possible by connecting with your team, here are some specific suggestions you can put into practice to connect better with your team.

1. Walk the Halls

It is quite hard for your employees to get to know you, or vice versa, if you spend all day in your office and never interact with them. Walking the halls creates countless opportunities for you and your employees to connect. It is important to distinguish between walking the halls and scheduling meetings with all the individuals on your team. Hallway interactions are more organic, so typically these interactions feel much more human and less like you are just checking a box.

With the rise of remote workers, walking the halls is obviously more difficult, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. If your organization uses an instant messaging platform, you should participate every once in a while, in the group chats. This is a great way for remote workers to stay connected when the organic interactions of the office halls are simply not possible. These group chats can seem like a waste of time, but when the alternative is a team full of people who never interact, I think they are actually tremendously valuable and can even improve productivity.

2. Observe Department Meetings

This one can be tricky because it can backfire easily. You want your team’s meetings to be productive on their own without you, and inviting yourself to their meetings unexpectedly can hint that you don’t trust they are spending the time wisely. If you feel the need to attend department team meetings because you think they need supervision, I suggest instead working closely with that department head to express your concerns.

If your motives are pure and your team understands that you just want some perspective and a chance to see them in action, then your primary job is to just observe. You may find that you want to submit ideas for thought and participate in the discussion, which is fine, just be sure you don’t take over the meeting and dominate the discussion. If done right, your employees will feel like you are along for the ride as opposed to just sitting at the top looking down waiting for results.

3. Organize Company Events

This is one that many companies already do in some capacity, but it is an important one for a few reasons. First, it makes the statement that creating opportunities for your people to connect is enough of a priority that you are willing to spend money (maybe even close the office for the day). Company events can include holiday parties, retirement parties, summer picnics, and volunteer groups.

I have been to many company events where we are able to interact in very different ways than we can while at work. This leads to shared experiences, inside jokes, and a more well-rounded understanding of one another. People work better together if they have connected more deeply in different ways, and company events provide exactly this opportunity.

Conclusion

While none of us can add more hours to the day, we can certainly choose to be intentional about fostering connections at all levels of our organization. By making this a priority, we can cultivate a workplace where team members are happier, more comfortable, and more engaged with one another. In this positive and united environment, not only will our employees thrive, but our customers will be more satisfied, and our business will be primed for enduring success.

Daniel Gilbert

Chief Operating Officer
Kite Technology Group

Harnessing the Power of Your Team’s Input

May 16, 2023 by Daniel Gilbert

In my article, “Resolutions for Leading Your Team Better in 2023,” I shared 4 resolutions that you could work on to help you excel as a leader this year. In this post, we’ll explore the second resolution in more detail: foster input from everyone.

There is a superpower that comes alive when a team combines the thoughts and talents of all its members to tackle challenges together. The key to unlocking this superpower is making sure that everyone on your team has a voice and the opportunity and comfort to share their thoughts. By fostering a culture of inclusivity and valuing every team member’s input, you not only increase the likelihood of finding the best solutions but also cultivate an environment where individuals feel valued and fulfilled.

While this may seem straightforward, fostering company-wide input requires intentional leadership. Let’s start by dispelling common false assumptions that often prevent leadership from harnessing the full power of their team’s input. Then, we’ll explore practical ideas to empower your team and tap into their collective wisdom.

Common False Assumptions to Soliciting Team Input

1. “I don’t have time to get input from everyone.”

I won’t deny that asking more people for their opinion means that it will take longer. Still, I think it is worth the time it takes in most cases. There are certainly decisions that are big enough to impact every single member of the team, so the benefits of getting input from your team far outweigh the time burden it creates.

You should also make sure your communication systems are set up to get your team’s input in the most efficient way. One simple way to maximize your team’s input while minimizing the time you spend is to have your department heads send out surveys to their teams, while your role focuses on synthesizing the information they collect.

2. “I already have the right answer.”

This is probably the most dangerous assumption to make when you are leading a team. You may have an excellent solution to an issue, you may even get it right on your own most of the time, but don’t let this stop you from harnessing the power of your team. By perpetually relying on yourself, you are sure to miss out on cultivating innovative solutions and creative ideas for the issues you are trying to solve.

3. “My team doesn’t want to give input and doesn’t mind if I make decisions for them.”

Maybe this is true, but if this is an assumption, it is most likely false. Some teams have gotten so used to not being asked for input that they stop expecting to be able to give it. As a result, it can seem like members of the team really don’t care whether their opinion is asked. Even if it is true that your team members would rather have decisions made for them without their input, I would argue that your team is not reaching its full potential. Remember, a team’s superpower is in its ability to tap into the minds of all its members.

Tips for Getting Your Team’s Input

1. Serve as a Facilitator

When you are leading your team, there is obviously an obligation and assumption that you will be holding the steering wheel. But consider in discussions when you should take off your leader hat and put on your facilitator hat. You are not a subject matter expert in every area – that is why you built your team with highly capable people. You should be facilitating the discussion with your talented people, not “leading” it. This may seem like a minor difference, but facilitating gives your team the feeling that there is room for their input.

2. Encourage Everyone to Speak Up

It is often common for one or more members of a team to naturally speak less. Entire discussions can go by and, while they may be perfectly attentive, they may contribute little or not at all. This does not necessarily mean they have nothing to say – maybe they are just less inclined to speak up. So, ask them. Observe which team members have not given their input and encourage them to speak up. If you are worried that you may make someone uncomfortable, be intentional about talking to them separately after the meeting. The key is being intentional, because if you don’t call it out during the discussion, it is easy to forget.

3. If You Ask for Input from Others, Be Prepared to Consider It

If you take away anything from this article, make it this point: Only ask for others’ input if you are truly open to seriously considering it. If you say you value others’ input but never do anything about it, your team will quickly find it insincere and stop sharing it with you. There will obviously be times when you choose not to take an opinion, and you won’t be able to make everyone happy all the time. Your team needs to understand they won’t always get their way, but if it seems to them like they are wasting their breath, it won’t be long before they just stop speaking up.

Conclusion

One of the greatest privileges within any team is to have a voice that matters. When team members feel that their individual input is valued, they are more likely to feel more fulfilled and a sense of empowerment in their role. As a result, their creativity and energy soar, positively impacting not only their work but the client experience as well. As a leader, it is vital to foster a culture where every voice matters. In return, you will unlock the true potential of your team’s collaborative superpower to achieve extraordinary things together.

Daniel Gilbert

Chief Operating Officer
Kite Technology Group

Cultivating Team Clarity for Greater Success

March 23, 2023 by Daniel Gilbert

In my recent article, “Resolutions for Leading Your Team Better in 2023,” I shared 4 resolutions that you could work on to help you excel as a leader this year. In this post, we’ll explore the first goal in detail: Focus on Team Clarity.

As a leader, you have a vision for your team, which includes what you want to achieve, where you want to be, and the path to get there. Strong leadership involves translating this vision into clear guidance for your team. By doing so, you boost your team’s chances of success, making it crucial for you to reflect on your role in fostering team clarity.

Understanding team clarity and why it’s important

Creating clarity provides your team members a playbook to follow to help them work cohesively, focus better, and ultimately provide a consistently positive experience for them and your customers. A simple way to define clarity in team leadership is in the context of a foundation consisting of four primary areas: Purpose, Values, Goals, and Roles.

Purpose

Why are you in business in the first place? Is it to help people? If so, how, and what group of people? Whatever your reason, your team needs to understand clearly. When you define your purpose, you attract others who care about the same purpose and give their best to help achieve it.

Values

What is important to you, and what should be important to the members of your team? How should your team behave? Defining values should drive your hiring and performance review process, but they also serve to remind team members how to act when they are faced with making decisions.

Goals

What (specifically) is the team trying to accomplish this year? How about this quarter, month, week or day? What about 3, 5, or 10 years from now? Your long-term goals should be well defined so that your team can zoom in and define their priorities for the short term.

Otherwise, your team will react to the demands that are in front of them, and in a year may find that they haven’t gotten anywhere, or at least haven’t gotten where they intended.

Roles

Roles fit into the team goals by defining how each person on the team should contribute to the whole. We all have job descriptions and understand our jobs, but don’t underestimate the benefit of being diligent, even obsessive, about strengthening role clarity for your team. You want your team members to stay in their lanes so that they don’t step on each others’ toes and they give 100% of their focus to their piece of the whole.

Strategies for improving team clarity

If anything you have read thus far has made you think, “Gee, I guess I could do a better job with this,” start there. Building the foundation (purpose, values, goals, roles) takes some time, but it is well worth the investment of time. If you read this far and thought, “We haven’t written this stuff down because our team members just know – it’s in our heads,” I would challenge you to go through the exercise and write it down anyway (it should be easy if you already know it). Putting it in writing will make sure that everyone is looking at exactly the same playbook, and also enables you to quickly tell the public what is important to your company.

If you already have a strong foundation, here are some tips to help you get even better.

Keep it Simple

Simply stated, keep it simple. Your team foundation should be concise and specific. Every member of your team should be able to memorize all four parts and should be able to recite them on command. You may say, “Well, it’s already pretty simple, my people just have bad memories,” I think you can probably make it even simpler.

Build Frameworks

If your team can memorize the four foundational areas, they will have a guiding light to tell them why they are working and how they should behave and make decisions. You may find it helpful to create frameworks to help your team memorize it, like abbreviations, visualizations, or analogies. For example, KiteTech’s Values are: (1) Relentlessly Solve Problems, (2) Embrace Teamwork, (3) Deliver Extraordinary Client Service, (4) Project Positivity, (5) Always Ask “Why?”, (6) Think Like an Owner, and (7) Honor Commitments. These values have been defined and unchanged for years, but they have been put in a very deliberate order because it creates and acronym that spells “RED PATH”. We say, “At KiteTech, we follow the RED PATH”, and it helps our team tremendously to be able to memorize and name our core values.

Use Multiple Forms of Communication

Your foundation should be well-defined and consistent, but that doesn’t mean you can’t communicate it in various ways. Different people receive communication best in different ways; some people need to read something in order for it to sink in, while others need to see visuals. Some people live and breathe out of their email inbox, while others pay better attention to instant messaging. You should also communicate it verbally so that it becomes a common part of the team dialogue and banter.

Overdo It

There is no such thing as too much clarity for your team. You should take every opportunity you can find to communicate your team’s four foundational areas, in many different ways. A good way to gauge whether you are communicating enough is to ask your team members to do their best impression of you. Seriously, try it. If you have well at communicating team clarity, they should be able to quote you without thinking (they have memorized your foundation – isn’t that what you want?).

It may be a good idea to start all of your regular team meetings by doing a quick review of your foundation. (To be clear, I am suggesting reading and stating it, NOT making changes to it. In fact, this should virtually never change, except in the context of setting new goals to keep your team moving forward).

Ask Team Members to Explain Each Other’s Goals

I stated before that your team roles should be defined well enough that every members stays in their lane. However, it is still important for team members to be familiar with each other’s goals to help them really understand the big picture. It also is a good test of how well you have created clarity for your team. Ask one of your department heads to explain one of your other department’s goals. If they can do it (accurately), that is a sign of good team clarity. Now ask one of your other department heads to explain it. Did they explain it accurately, and in the same words? Not only does this strengthen your team clarity, but it can also strengthen the relationships between the members of your team by exposing them to each other’s world of work.

Conclusion

On a successful team, the power of the team is greater than the sum of its parts. Yes, a huge part of building a successful team is finding capable team members who are good at what they do. But a talented team cannot reach its full potential if they don’t have team clarity and a common vision.

As a leader, it is essential that you effectively communicate this clarity and ensure that everyone is aligned with the team’s objectives. By doing so, you’ll create an environment where each team member feels motivated to give their best and you’ll pave the way for your team’s ongoing success.

Daniel Gilbert

Chief Operating Officer
Kite Technology Group

Strategies for Maintaining a Healthy Culture in a Remote World

June 7, 2022 by Andrew DiDio Leave a Comment

As the Controller at KiteTech, one of my roles is to oversee all HR functions including interviewing potential job candidates. Honestly, the interviews are just as much for me as they are for the prospective employees. As a recent interview was concluding I jokingly apologized for all of my pointed questions and offered to answer his questions. The applicant looked me in the eye from across the screen and asked a question that I have been asked often…”Andrew, what is your favorite part of working at KiteTech?”

I smiled. As much as I was interviewing to see if he would be a good fit at Kite, he had begun interviewing me on why he should want to work here.

My answer was simple. Our culture is focused on relationships, and we go to great lengths to ensure our employees are well-connected.

When everyone went home two years ago, a topic that frequently came up in our leadership meetings was “How do we ensure our employees feel connected with their teammates?”. We heard from some peers that their employees were not doing so well and were dealing with the consequences of extreme loneliness. We wanted to make sure our employees did not feel isolated, alone on the proverbial “remote work island.” As we brainstormed how to encourage employee engagement, we realized that the only fix was through intentional strategies focused on relationships and connections. Below I share some of the strategies that we found most effective in maintaining a healthy, highly engaged culture.

Strategies for Maintaining a Healthy Culture

Engage Employees Daily

Mother Teresa once said, “Loneliness is the leprosy of the modern world.” Humans need human interaction on a daily basis or loneliness can quickly seep in. One of the best ways to ensure your team does not become a lonely and isolated team is to be intentional about engaging with employees daily.

One of our Core Values is “Embrace Teamwork.” Each employee connects daily with their teammates through daily huddles, one-on-one’s with their supervisors, and attending company-wide meetings. Whenever we attend video calls, we always keep our cameras on. We believe that face-to-face interaction throughout the day is key to having a healthy remote work experience.

Occasionally a cat will slink up and jam the keys, or a nephew will run up calling out, “Uncle Andrew!” but this has never been a burden, but instead has helped develop an even greater personal connection. Throughout each day our employees chat over Microsoft Teams to solve technical issues, highlight employee successes, and post funny comments. The office banter has merely transitioned from over cubicle walls to over computer screens. Engaging employees daily can be the difference between loneliness and success in the workplace.

Your Personal Takeaway: Make it the norm to have cameras on during every video call.

Express Employee Appreciation

Teams rise or fall based on if their members feel appreciated. Often employees leave jobs early not because they want a higher salary or a different position. What they want is recognition for a job well done. They want to feel like a valuable member of the team.

One of our favorite tools to ensure employees feel appreciated is Bonusly. Sent in the form of a public tweet and often with a meme, Bonusly encourages employees to publicly recognize their peers by sending bonus points. The points can then be redeemed for gift cards. Personally, I have laughed out loud just from visiting Bonusly. Today, I witnessed memes of dancing stick figures, a cat typing away on a computer, and of course SpongeBob!

On a serious note, as a manager, your employees need to know you value their efforts as part of your team. I often ask myself if I am being a “first-class noticer.” Am I being intentional about noticing others’ efforts, especially those not on my direct team? It is important for our teams to communicate, especially to express gratitude and appreciation for a job well done.

Your Personal Takeaway: Make it a daily habit to notice one person in your organization and show them appreciation with a thoughtful email or public encouragement. Bonus: Find someone that is outside of your direct team to thank them for their efforts!

Encourage In-Person Events

Regardless of how you interact virtually, nothing replaces the in-person connection. Giving a high five, a pat on the back, or a random comment as you pass in the hallway can be mood-defining and an encouragement to employees.

A few months after we started working remotely our employees began asking for opportunities to connect in-person. Once it was safe, we began hosting Happy Hours at local restaurants and scheduling lunches when people were in the office. Even though our employees were spread throughout the country, we wanted to encourage in-person connections. Our West Coast employees occasionally meet up for dinners and hikes and we even hosted our “KiteTech West” employees in Maryland this past March!

Your Personal Takeway: Schedule a Happy Hour with your local employees. If you are feeling extra generous, pick up the tab!

Embrace Mutual Interests

Relationships strengthen when people are able to relate on a personal level and connect outside of the work atmosphere. Though an employer cannot force employees to be interested in similar hobbies, it is important for employers to know their employees’ likes and dislikes and develop opportunities to connect over these hobbies.

Many of our employees share mutual interests and KiteTech encourages employees to embrace these similarities. Our employees have started leadership book clubs with colleagues, organized faith-based small groups, scheduled video game tournaments and even a virtual art class. A night would not be complete without our employees battling over their favorite video games like Fortnite or League of Legends and tuning in to watch each other stream Slay the Spire!

Your Personal Takeaway: Ask some of your employees what they enjoy doing outside of work and schedule yourself to connect over that hobby…you might even find a new hobby yourself!

Employ Remote Culture-Building Tools

One of the keys to building a healthy remote office culture is through being creative with the remote tools that are available. Though employees may not be able to interact in-person, especially for offices like ours that are spread throughout the country, it is important to employ culture-building tools that are suitable for a remote workforce.

A few years ago, KiteTech leaders put together a Fun Committee to be in charge of planning different fun events. Made up of members from different departments, the Fun Committee has led the charge in ensuring our employees are connecting through monthly online events. Some tools that our team has used include virtual movie platforms to allow our employees to remotely watch a movie together and virtual escape rooms. Thankfully, we have always escaped! We also have hosted holiday parties and monthly birthday celebrations over Teams to ensure our employees are connecting regardless of their location.

Your Personal Takeaway: Plan a virtual hangout by watching a movie together, trying an escape room, or laughing hysterically while playing an online game (Jackbox Games are my favorites!).

Conclusion

Maintaining a thriving work culture in a remote or hybrid world can feel daunting. I would love to tell you that every event and tool has been a success, but it has taken some trial and error to learn what works best for our team. It’s important to stay intentional about trying new initiatives to keep your staff engaged and your culture healthy. I hope that the strategies shared in this article provided you with some fresh ideas for your business, and if you choose to implement one or more of our takeaways, we would love to hear about it in the comments.

Andrew DiDio

Controller
Kite Technology Group

Delivering Extraordinary Client Service

May 25, 2022 by Daniel Gilbert

Delivering extraordinary client service is a truly noble pursuit and the cornerstone of every successful business. It is certainly more art than science, but I believe you can follow some simple principles to help you build a company with a legacy of providing your clients with an experience they will remember.

Phase 1: Build the Foundation

Before doing anything else, you need to build the foundation in your company that supports consistently delivering extraordinary client service. There are three essential steps in this building phase.

Establish Core Values

In my observations, most business outcomes can be traced back to a business’s core value. Customer service is perhaps the closest example of this rule. If you want your company to be known for delivering excellent client service, you need to cultivate this value as part of your team culture. Design your core values to act as the playbook that helps your team know what to focus on even if they forget the exact script, like actors in a play who forget their lines but fill in the blanks because they know the scene’s purpose. For core values to make a difference, they should become second nature and a defining part of your company culture. Then they will guide your team to demonstrate the behaviors your company finds most important.

At KiteTech, we consistently remind each other that customer service is central to everything we do because “Deliver Extraordinary Client Service” is one of our company’s core values.

Build a Customer-Focused Team

Once you establish providing excellent customer service as one of your company’s core values, you are ready to build the team to bring it to life. For your core values to be effective, you need all team members to connect intimately with them. Not only will this ensure that your team builds the reputation you want, but when each of your team members holds the same core values, they will work better together, bring more energy to their work, and ultimately love their jobs more. Your employees will be happier, which will, in turn, show up and be evident in how they interact with your clients.

Have you ever interviewed a candidate with excellent experience and hard skills but cannot shake the feeling that their people skills or regard for customer service don’t stack up? It can be gut-wrenching to pass over a highly qualified candidate, especially if your team is in dire need. Still, making tough personnel decisions like this is necessary if you want to build a team that focuses on delivering extraordinary client service. Most often, your clients will more easily forgive someone who doesn’t have an answer than someone who doesn’t treat them well.

Develop Feedback Systems

The final step of the foundation phase is more tangible: you need to provide your clients with opportunities to give you feedback. If you have built a culture around customer service, feedback systems invite your clients to grade your performance in that commitment. Examples of feedback systems are satisfaction surveys, net promoter scores, and online reviews. The best feedback systems strike the right balance between asking for input often enough that your clients feel you are always listening, but not too often that it becomes annoying. You should consider using internal and external methods for your company, which serve different purposes, and I will cover them in greater detail later.

For example, each time a KiteTech help desk technician finishes helping a client with an issue, the client receives an email with a simple satisfaction survey. We purposely make it easy and simply ask them to rate their experience as positive, neutral, or negative. They also have the option to provide additional comments if they would like.

Phase 2: Put it into Action

Building customer service into your company’s foundation is the easy part of creating a culture that focuses on delivering extraordinary client service. It takes considerable hard work and intentional effort day in and day out to take what you’ve built and get your entire team to put it into practice. Let’s look at what’s involved in the action phase.

Client-Focused Leadership

If core values and a customer-focused team are the vehicles, then leadership focused on customer service is the gas. Even when your core values clearly define what’s important and you hire the right people, successful teams still need consistent reminders to stay aligned and focused on providing extraordinary client service. Many companies get hung up on feeling like they need to create catchy phrases or sophisticated team initiatives. However, the best way to keep the team centered on what’s important is to repeat it daily, even several times a day. Your leadership should absolutely obsess over giving these reminders and setting excellent examples for the team. This model set forth by leaders will permeate through the entire team. If you are going to expect extraordinary customer service from your team, you must first expect it from the leaders you appoint. If you say customer service is one of your most important values, your leaders must demonstrate it every single day in all that they do. Otherwise, the spirit of the team will deteriorate over time. Finally, leaders can reinforce a strong client focus by calling attention to good examples of it in action. Providing meaningful recognition and praise when team members deliver extraordinary client service goes a long way in affirming that individual and is an excellent example for the rest of the team.

Set and Exceed Client Expectations

Your clients have every right to expect that you will deliver on the promises you made them and will be able to effectively solve the problems that they’ve hired you to solve. But as much as you might try, no one is perfect. Early in my career, a mentor of mine always liked to say, “People just don’t like to be surprised.” It is critical to ensure that the expectations you are setting for your clients are clear and well within your ability to deliver.”

Let me be clear: I am not advocating for intentionally setting rock-bottom expectations just to ensure you always meet them. In fact, if you are proficient in your job and consistently deliver high results, your clients will probably come to expect a lot from you. This is a good thing! But you need to persistently set expectations in each interaction, or else your clients may come with an expectation of their own. When this happens, you surrender your opportunity to control the experience and leave too much room for misunderstandings or missed expectations. The trick is to set an expectation high enough to instill confidence and allow you to do the job well, but with some breathing room so that you don’t have to backtrack. This should also allow you to often deliver more than you promise.

Practice Transparency

I indirectly touched on this concept when discussing setting expectations, but it is so crucial to excellent customer service that it is worthy of more emphasis. Just as your clients have the right to expect excellent work from you, they have the right to expect that you will be honest along the way. Remember this: being open and transparent should always outweigh trying to maintain a perfect image for your clients. If you make a mistake or run behind schedule, the best thing to do is come clean right away. While it may be a difficult conversation that comes with some disappointment, it helps set realistic expectations, avoid surprises, and develop trust. The alternative would be to hide the truth and hopefully go unnoticed (dangerous and deceitful), or worse yet, to outright lie (a despicable way to treat your clients).

While transparency is vital, you must maintain a sense of accountability to deliver superior results. Practicing transparency is not an excuse to constantly fail your customers. Be humble enough to admit your mistakes and critical enough of yourself to ensure you continue to do good work that you can be proud of, and your customers will appreciate.

Give Your Clients a Voice

Building a system for your clients to give feedback makes a statement that you value their input. But this goodwill is quickly squandered if you don’t do something noticeable with the feedback you receive. Thank your clients when they provide you feedback, and most importantly, take action, and do it quickly. You should have one or more people responsible for reviewing all client feedback. When something needs attention, these individuals should be well equipped to either resolve the issues themselves or ensure they get the feedback into the right hands. The hardest part is that it is natural sometimes to feel defensive when receiving critical or constructive feedback. Making the best of critical feedback starts with a genuine commitment to constant improvement and requires the humility to accept criticism and be willing to learn from it.

This does not mean that you need to take every single recommendation your customers make; that would not be realistic at all. You should, however, close the loop every time you get critical feedback by following up and at least setting the proper expectation. Done well, even if you don’t 100% satisfy every request your customers make, you at least show a strong effort to let them know that they were heard.

It is also worth mentioning that a feedback loop is important in positive feedback as well. Hearing from your customers about what your team is doing well reinforces the value of the services that you provide and serves as powerful motivation for your team members to continue doing that good work. Nothing makes a stronger impact on a customer’s experience than when they feel like their voice is heard. Your feedback system is your prime opportunity to do just that.

Conclusion

If your business serves clients, you owe it to them to deliver the very best experience possible with every interaction. If you don’t work with clients directly, that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. The principles of customer service can easily be applied to internal peer-to-peer interactions or those with your vendors.

Follow the steps laid out here to build the foundation of these principles in your business. They will set you up to deliver the best client experience possible. And keep in mind that the pursuit of delivering an extraordinary client service is never finished. It is something that you and your team should always be focusing on.

I hope that this article can serve as inspiration for elevating the experience you offer your clients when they work with you. If you are interested in learning more about KiteTech’s other core values, take a look at Our Flight Plan to get a glimpse of what is important to us. You can also check out Our Client Experience page to see what our clients have to say about the services our team provides. and

Daniel Gilbert

Chief Operating Officer
Kite Technology Group