Description
Hands-on strategies for strengthening the connections between and the productivity of workers.
Collaborating in the Workplace arms readers with tips to help teams collaborate and create more powerful outcomes. Focusing on the key skills necessary for effective collaboration, along with practical exercises to help improve these skills, the goal of this informative volume is to encourage the creation of connections that lead to powerful communication and better results. The authors cover such topics as: how stress impacts daily interactions; ways of listening that create a deeper understanding and connection with others; preparing for, practicing, and learning from difficult conversations; tricky workplace communication issues that tend to trip people up, such as interrupting, giving feedback, and being clear about requests. With step-by-step exercises and guidelines for practice, readers can learn the skills necessary to make any team work better together.
Endorsements
Cover endorsements:
“A wonderfully practical guide for building teams and getting the best out of everyone. If you are looking to build collaboration in the workplace, start by reading this book!”
—DANIEL L. SHAPIRO, PhD, Author of Negotiating the Nonnegotiable
“Comprehensive, focused, and immediately useful, Collaborating in the Workplace is a highly practical synthesis of current research on what makes an effective team. Our work teams found Lasater’s exercises to be simple and easy to follow. This guide should be recommended reading for leaders and team members alike.”
—LU QING, President, DongFeng Nissan University, DongFeng Nissan Passenger Vehicle Company, Guangzhou, China
“This important book addresses the interpersonal skills needed to be a productive team member with a simple eloquence that is practical and easy to follow. If you are concerned about your ability to play well with others . . . do read this book! You’ll learn everything you need to know to get along and add value to your team.”
—JOHN FORD, Author, Peace at Work: The HR Manager’s Guide to Workplace Mediation, founder of The HR Mediation Academy
Interior endorsements:
“I have used the exercises in this book with the participants of my Leadership Development Training and have witnessed the dramatic impact empathy has in a successful collaborative balancing act. I highly recommend Collaborating in the Workplace as a tool to improve both your team’s management and its relationships. This book has the power to develop the vision and the skills necessary to achieve team cohesion and the dream of unity to which more and more organizations aspire.”
—GIOVANNA CASTOLDI, Nonviolent Communication Certified Trainer, Founder of “School of Feedback”
“Recently, the business press has been telling us to build empathy and ‘emotional intelligence’ into our organizations’ cultures, promising us more effectiveness through empowerment, trust, and mutuality. Sounds great in a workshop, but . . . conflict often is a daily reality in business, and people soon fall back into their old patterns. Finally, here’s a book that provides a clear and actionable approach that you can start using right away. Ike Lasater has a lifetime’s experience helping organizations and individuals learn how to navigate conflicts. Ike presents specific techniques and practices to help team members become more open to one another’s creativity, so that—together—they can harness the energy that conflict often dissipates. Use the wisdom of this book to make your culture more resilient, your team more effective, and your work more satisfying.”
—ED NIEHAUS, Chairman, Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc.
“Business people understand the importance of effective teams, but often aren’t clear about how to develop the actual skills of collaboration. Ike Lasater provides this clarity. His many years of teaching the art of connection have resulted in this groundbreaking book. Once a team learns to communicate by connecting with self and others, they will never want to go back to functioning at a lower level. Every company would be wise to permanently place this book in the middle of their conference table and refer to it daily!”
—RITA MARIE JOHNSON, CEO, Rasur Foundation International Creator of the Connection Practice, Author, Completely Connected: Uniting Our Empathy & Insight for Extraordinary Results
“Ike and I have been close colleagues and collaborators for over fifteen years, and this book is a powerful distillation and integration of the work for organizations. Ike and Julie lay out in clear, practical, and doable ways the core, and I believe universal, skills and maps for navigating interpersonal conflict and developing highly effective teamwork. Collaborating in the Workplace: A Guide for Building Better Teams provides skills and practices that will make any organization more successful and employees more fulfilled. This work will be common practice in organizations of the future.”
—JOHN KINYON, CNVC trainer and cofounder of Mediate Your Life training, coaching, and mediation, Author, From Conflict to Connection: Transforming Difficult Conversations Into Peaceful Resolutions, www.mediateyourlife.com
