"The conduct of a company's leadership team is directly correlated with the organization's long-term performance."

In her article Lessons from Team Fumbles, Susan Lucia Annunzio goes on to say "Once-venerable institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Royal Bank of Scotland paid the ultimate price for the behaviors of their leadership teams."

Some of the behaviors Annunzio is referring to includes:

Have you ever watched a 400-meter relay team work?
On a good team, their hand-offs are impeccable.

In fact, given two teams of equal quality runners, the team with the more efficient
hand-offs always wins. The same holds true in the work place.

I recently wrote a three-part series on reluctant new managers. One cause of reluctance that I wrote about was due to a fear of losing control (which often leads to a reluctance to delegate, hand over responsibilities, etc.).

I recently came across an article called When Teams Work Best by Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson and within their article they deal with a similar issue head on. And I quote: "The best way to manage your personal control needs as team leader is to demonstrate behaviors that share control.

One of the most frustrating experiences people can have in the workplace is when there are unspoken expectations between a team member and a manager.

In a typical employment situation, certain expectations, such as salary, hours, and job duties, are clearly understood by both employer and employee. Other expectations, however, are so intimately linked to an individual’s concept of work that they often go unspoken or unacknowledged.