By taking the time to stop and think, team members can gain a better understanding of their role in the team's success and identify areas where they can improve. Research shows that teams are more effective when they harness cognitive diversity by doing things outside of their comfort zone and pausing to stop and think about what they are doing.

In a recent webinar, our Chief Thought Leader Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, and our Head of Content Ashley Blackburn shared evidence-based strategies for creating high-impact stop-and-think moments to maximize your team's effectiveness.

These strategies can help you create a more cohesive and productive team by encouraging individuals to pause and reflect on their work and the team's goals.

These days, resilience is something that’s on all of our minds. We often hear it talked about in the context of how well we can “bounce back” from a setback or crisis. In some ways, though, bouncing back implies that we’re at the mercy of everything that’s going on around us. Or as Ann Herrmann-Nehdi put it in a recent LinkedIn post, “It feels like I am in a pinball machine.”

When it comes to bridging the engagement gap, are your managers part of the problem or part of the solution?

If you weren’t able to attend Ann Herrmann-Nehdi’s recent HRDQ-U webinar, “Developing ‘Thinking Managers’ to Bridge the Engagement Gap,” here’s a taste of what you missed:

• Survey after survey shows that a large portion of the workforce is either only partially engaged or totally disengaged.
• US businesses lose $11 billion annually as a result of employee turnover.
• Managers account for as much as 70% of variance in employee engagement scores.
• Everyone processes information differently based on how they prefer to think, and these preferences affect what will engage them, what will frustrate them, how they prefer to get work done, and what kinds of work will inspire them to give it their all.

What’s your biggest leadership challenge?

Engaging employees?

Preparing emerging leaders to step up?

Building high-performance teams?

Developing a leadership mindset across the organization?

If you’re like most training leaders today, the answer is “all of the above.” The good news is, you and your leaders already have the best tool for navigating an “all of the above” world—the brain.

Even better news: Kevin Sensenig’s webinar for Training Magazine has the practical

Teams have become the driving force in many organizations today. We’re relying on their collective intelligence to solve problems faster, come up with more innovative ideas and deliver higher quality results in less time. But as we all know from our own team experiences, it’s not as simple as just bringing people together.

While many of the traditional activities and behavioral models designed to enhance teamwork and collaboration “make us feel good,” as Margaret Neale, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, points out, “What they don't do is improve team performance.”

In fact, according to a survey of 1,000 employees in the UK, they often “only succeed in leaving staff feeling more awkward about dealing with their colleagues.”

We have to be faster. We have to be more flexible. We have to constantly balance the long term and the short term, and quickly rearrange what we’re doing and how we’re structured to deal with today’s and tomorrow’s big challenges.

The question is:

How will you adapt?

Find out how thinking agility—the ability to consciously shift your thinking when the situation requires it—can provide the antidote to an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.

Whether you’re responsible for developing leaders, are a leader or aspire to be one, Ann Herrmann-Nehdi’s recent webcast for HR.com, 4 Steps to Developing the Thinking Agility of Today’s and Tomorrow’s Leaders, will give you strategies and actions you can immediately put into practice to claim the thinking space necessary to adapt and be more agile every day.

Here’s what one participant had to say about the webinar:

High-potential leaders are critical to ensuring businesses can meet their goals now and in years to come, and that’s why one of the most pressing human resource challenges today is a lack of up-and-coming managerial talent to quickly and effectively execute on critical strategies and initiatives.

A recent PWC survey found that 50% of business leaders say their biggest challenge is recruiting and retaining high-potential middle managers. The impact, they report, is being felt across the business, from cancelled or delayed strategic initiatives to missed market opportunities and an inability to innovative effectively.

Ann reveals how you can apply what we know about thinking and the brain to better “see around corners” and harness the full brainpower available—your own as well as others’—to meet today’s mental demands while maintaining a more strategic mindset.

Learn how you can better harness your own thinking preferences and the brainpower of those around you to make your case. Ann Herrmann-Nehdi shows you how in the free HR.com webinar, Getting Buy-in for Your HR Initiatives: Applying C-Level Thinking for Faster and Better Results.

Engaging Employees: Pay Attention to What Really Matters

From business magazines to HR publications to health and wellness websites, employee engagement is one of the hot topics of the moment.

The Googles and Zappos.com's of the world are often name-dropped as examples of companies that are doing it right, keeping their employees happy and, well, keeping their employees.

But what makes them happy? Is it the perks like free food and dry cleaning? The financial incentives? The social activities?