How do you build a team that trusts each other to speak their mind and take risks?  How do you make it possible for the team to engage in passionate and sometimes emotional debate, knowing that they will not be punished for saying something that might otherwise be interpreted as destructive or critical?  It’s not about trusting that your team members will behave in a certain way.  It’s about building vulnerability-based trust, where it’s safe to take risks and face conflict on the team rather than fear it.  In The …

How do you create compelling arguments for change? How do you convince others to comply with your requests? How do you reduce the perceived costs of action or increase the perceived costs of inaction? In The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, Michael Watkins writes about framing compelling arguments.
Reason, Values, or a Combination
Watkins writes:
“Persuasive appeals can be based on logic and data, or on values and the emotions that values elicit, or on some combination thereof. Reason-based arguments have to directly address the pragmatic …

How do you get people to take action?  If your results depend on other people, how do you set the stage for action and help build momentum?  In The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, Michael Watkins write about how to use action-forcing events to help move people into action.
Eliminate Inaction as an Option
Watkins writes:
“How can you get people to take action at all?  It is all too easy even with the best intentions, to defer decisions, delay, and avoid committing scarce resources.  When …