CQ Blog - Management skills for everyone!

Whatever the industry, there are certain elements that all high performance teams (HPTs) have in common. When building a HPT, the onus is not only on the employee but on leadership as well. In some regards, HPTs are born. In other ways they are selected, shaped and refined. Of course, a good working definition of what a HPT is and some prerequisites are necessary in order to achieve one. A high level of interpersonal skills are required to get the job done.    

Leadership is a phenomenon that has interested people for hundreds of years. One rather outdated explanatory approach still plays a prominent role in practice and the media in particular: The so-called Great Man Theory. In this blog we present what this theory is all about and why it is time to look for alternative approaches.

Exchanging knowledge is a great way to learn from and with other people, generate innovative ideas and solve complex problems. In addition, we all bring a vast amount of knowledge and experience with us that can add tremendous value to each and every member of a team or group that participates in knowledge exchange sessions. However, the benefit of structured knowledge exchange sessions goes far beyond that. We are all human beings and thus it is also a great deal of fun meeting other people, sharing knowledge and enjoying the time while learning from each other.

Working in distributed teams is one of the major trends in the 21st century. Many technology start-ups are spearheading this development with teams distributed across different countries and time zones working on one and the same project. Traditional companies are heading in the same direction with an increasing share of employees working from home and international project teams collaborating across departments and sites. On top of this, corporate intranets are on the way to becoming the tool of choice for company internal collaboration.

Lean and Agile approaches are currently on everyone's lips. While Lean is still often associated with production optimization and the automotive industry, Agile appears to be closely linked to software development and IT. This understanding has, however, changed since Lean and Agile are successfully applied in areas such as Lean start-up, marketing and project management. In this blog, we would like to introduce you to both approaches and present a new learning model based on Lean and Agile or "Leagile Learning", which can be implemented quickly and efficiently.

We’ve all had positive moments in our lives that you just won’t forget. It doesn’t matter if those moments were part of personal life or professional life, occurred during studies or other forms of education: Situations that are associated with fun, inspiration, hope, interest, admiration, and pride are etched into our memory and can be recalled in great detail and with great emotional depth many years later. This is in strong contrast to a large number of lectures, meetings, trainings, etc. whose content we are only able to memorize after multiple repetitions and great effort, for a short period at most.