Develop Cohesion Articles

Reading is essential for professional development. We encourage our credential holders to read regularly. Reading promotes reflection and critical thinking about the competency domains, leader tasks, and supporting knowledge associated with each level of certification. The articles below are relevant to the Develop Cohesion competency domain. We add new articles here regularly.
Getting to know, and care about, your people
Leaders need to demonstrate that they truly care about the members of the team.
RBLP Staff in the Building Resilient Teams Newsletter
Creating a respectful work environment
As a leader, it’s your job to ensure that team members treat one another respectfully. The leader not only models respectful behavior but instills it as a core team value.
RBLP Staff in the Building Resilient Teams Newsletter
Building a circle of trust with your team
As a leader, you need to build trust between yourself and the people on your team. But once you have everyone’s trust, your next task is to ensure that teammates trust one another. If you fail to nurture trust between team members, the team will never function smoothly. Ultimately, such teams fail to achieve their full potential.
RBLP Staff in the Building Resilient Teams Newsletter
Leadership challenge: building cohesive teams
Top-flight leaders understand that winning teams know how to handle assignments flexibly and collaboratively. But it’s up to the leader to build that muscle in the team.
RBLP Staff in the Building Resilient Teams Newsletter
Debriefing: A Simple Tool to Help Your Team Tackle Tough Problems
Debriefing is a structured learning process designed to continuously evolve plans while they’re being executed. It originated in the military as a way to learn quickly in rapidly changing situations and to address mistakes or changes on the field. In business, debriefing has been widely documented as critical to accelerating projects, innovating novel approaches, and hitting difficult objectives. It also brings a team together, strengthens relationships, and fosters team learning.
Doug Sundheim in Harvard Business Review
Cracking the Code of Sustained Collaboration
When I analyzed sustained collaborations in a wide range of industries, I found that they were marked by common mental attitudes: widespread respect for colleagues’ contributions, openness to experimenting with others’ ideas, and sensitivity to how one’s actions may affect both colleagues’ work and the mission’s outcome.
Francesca Gino in Harvard Business Review
How to transform your AARs from diagnoses of past failure into aids for future success? Realize that looking for lessons isn’t the same as learning them. View the AAR as an ongoing learning process – rather than a one-time meeting, report, or postmortem. Set the stage for AARs with rigorous before-action planning – articulating your intended results, anticipated challenges, and lessons from previous similar situations. Conduct mini-AARs after each project milestone – holding everyone accountable for
Marilyn Darling, Charles Parry, and Joseph Moore in Harvard Business Review
applying key lessons quickly in the next project phase.