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Speaker's
Corner - Teams and Personal Responsibility
Need
A Speaker For Your Conference, Keynote or Company Meeting?
Have we missed the boat about team development and team building? We
should be starting with THE fundamental issue - helping team members understand
that the key is personal and individual responsibility. A team with members
who don't take individual responsibility will fail!
Teams and
Personal Responsibility
Over
the last decade there has been a greater recognition that teamwork is a
critical aspect of workplace life. Most jobs are interdependent and require
employees to work with each other to achieve common goals. With that awareness
there has been more effort invested in developing teams of various sorts.
Efforts
to improve teamwork are varied, ranging from values clarification exercises,
to outdoor adventure challenges. One aspect that is often neglected is
the role of personal responsibility and commitment in team life. One factor
that appears to separate high functioning teams from poorly functioning
teams is the degree to which individual team members focus on THEIR OWN
responsibilities and obligations, rather than focusing on the responsibilities
of others. Teams with members that look at themselves first tend to have
less destructive conflict, and are more productive.
While
elements such as group dynamics and group roles ARE important, no team
can succeed over the long haul without individual commitment and recognition
of personal responsibility.
Robert
makes a case for personal responsibility as the starting point in improving
teams. Possible topics include:
.
Setting a team climate of personal responsibility as opposed to finger-pointing
.
Setting team and meeting management rules that promote responsibility
.
How individual members can contribute more to harmonious teams
.
The importance of team leadership with respect to responsibility
.
Focusing on team problem solving
Prospective
Audience:
Anyone
working in teams, team facilitators and leaders, managers and human resource
professionals
Your
Presenter - Who Is Robert Bacal?
Robert Bacal is a dynamic
stimulating speaker whose forte is questioning common assumptions in business,
management, training and communication, and helping others approach common
issues and problems from a different perspective.
Holding a Masters degree
in applied psychology, Robert has been training others and speaking for
two decades in corporate, government and university settings. Other experiences
include working as an organizational development consultant, an instructional
design specialist, serving on an academic research journal editorial board,
and even working with multiple murderers in a mental health setting.
Currently Robert is head
of two companies, Bacal & Associates, a consulting organization, and
the Institute For Cooperative Communication, a virtual organization whose
mandate is to develop, explore and teach ways to prevent and deal with
conflict.
Robert is also the author
of eight books ranging from "Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook for Public
Sector" to "A Critique of Performance Management Systems - Why Don't They
Work". His newest book, Conflict Prevention In The Workplace - Using Cooperative
Communication was released in May, 1998. Expected this year is a rewritten
and expanded edition of his book on performance management and a book on
performance management published by McGraw-Hill.
In addition to books,
Robert is a regular writer for Today's Supervisor in California, and former
writer and publisher of The Public Sector Manager Newsletter and The Work-Smart
Bulletin. His articles have been used all over the world in academic and
business settings and reproduced in association publications such as the
International Association of Facilitators.
Robert applies several
principles to his speaking and training engagements. First, no canned speeches.
All speaking and training engagements are custom-designed. Second, Robert
will only speak or offer training in topic areas where he has a considerable
level of expertise. Third, passion and energy. Robert only speaks on issues
where he feels a passion for the particular issues. It shows.
Robert's work can be summed
up with the following quote:
My job is not to have
all the answers. I'd like to have all the answers but I won't pretend I
do. My real job is to help people who attend my sessions question assumptions,
and explore ways for them to solve their own problems, whether it be in
team-development, performance management or customer service. Two criterion
for success. People who attend my sessions should walk out thinking just
a bit differently. And, they should laugh, enjoy and relax while they are
there.
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