David Burkus Presents

In 2015, Google’s People Analytics team asked an ambitious question: “Why do some teams perform better than others?" They looked at a variety of potential explanations, mostly based on team composition. And found very little that could explain performance. But when the researchers turned their attention from the attributes of the team toward its regular behaviors, traditions, and norms, they found...

Motivation is tricky for all teams, co-located or remote. It's hard for many team managers to find a way that motivates each individual. And it’s even harder to find way to motivate the team as a whole. But, co-located teams have a lot of advantages. When you're seeing each other day to day, you get a better picture at what's going on behind the scenes in someone's mind and what you could latch on...

Finding ways to reinforce purpose on a daily basis can be difficult. So, in this episode, we’ll review three ways that you can frame that purpose in a team that will help them internalize your purpose. It will reinforce it, and it will help your people feel like they are actually working toward something bigger than themselves—even when they’re focused on the day-to-day tasks. People don’t want to...

Remote work has been on the rise for a long time, but 2020 gave extra accelerant to the remote work fire. In this episode, we’ll cover three activities to focus on when managing a remote team: Set Objectives Mutually Track Progress Regularly Give Feedback Collaboratively And if you take all of them together—focusing on the outcome, not the activity—you'll find something amazing. You'll find that p...

No matter how long your tenure as a team leader, you've probably seen it. Motivation can fade. Individual employees who seemed so full of life and so full obsessed for the job eventually settle into rhythms and patterns and might even burn out. Teams that were formed with an inspiring mission eventually fall into those regular old habits of teamwork and can become demotivated and disengaged. ...

When it comes to motivating individuals and teams, a lot of leaders assume they need a great deal of power to make changes to the whole organization. But that doesn’t mean that, if you’re not, you don’t have any options when it comes to motivation. There are a few key levers that leaders at any level can use to help their team get more inspired to do the work they're tasked with doing every single...

Creativity is a team sport, and creative problem solving is no different. But where many team leaders struggle is in how to lead their team through a problem solving process. Too many leaders just gather their team for brainstorming or some other meeting intended merely to toss out ideas. There's a lot of work to be done before and after brainstorming. Problem solving isn't one meeting; it's three...

In this episode, we're going to cover four ways that you can manage burnout on your team. When you examine all the research on keeping remote workers engaged, it turns out that it’s not too hard to keep employees working. In fact, the bigger challenge is keeping employees from working too hard. The bigger task is helping them fight the burnout that would turn a short-term productivity gain into a...

Trust is one of the most important elements of a team culture but also about an entire company's culture. If people feel that they can trust you as a leader, and if they feel they can trust each other, then they communicate better, they collaborate better, they develop a sense of shared identity and shared understanding, that pushes that team to greater levels of performance. And as a leader, buil...

You, as a leader will likely be leading remote teams in the future, so it's worth talking about what it takes to lead a remote team effectively, and in this video, we're going to share three tips for leading a remote team. When you look at the research on remote teams, leading effectively involves three crucial elements: Shared Expectations Shared Empathy Shared Vision. In this episode, we'll look...

What do great teams have in common? What are the things that great teams who create consistent amounts of value and over perform expectations all share. The teams that win again and again--what are the things that they all have in common that under performing teams lack?  When we look at the research there are three things that great teams have in common. Intellectual diversity, psychological...

Purpose statements, mission statements, vision statements. It can get really cluttered really fast. It seems like every organization has a different offering when it comes to declaring their purpose. Some just have a mission statement. Some have a mission and vision, some have a purpose. Some use some other term to describe a little bit of prose that they put on a plaque in the office or in the fr...

Motivating your people is a delicate and purposeful challenge that requires more than an annual review or jotting a few notes in someone’s personnel file. Just like getting in shape or learning a new language, bolstering the motivation and performance levels of your employees won’t happen overnight.   Here are six ways you can improve performance and motivation in your workplace: 1. Make Expe...

One of my favorite leadership lessons is the story of how Paul O'Neill fought for safety at Alcoa. He led a turn around of the financial performance of struggling aluminum manufacturer, but NOT by focusing on Alcoa's stock price or revenues. Instead, he encouraged employees at all levels to fight for the safety of their coworkers by studying the process and working to become a zero accident compan...

Never in the history of humanity, never in recorded history at least, have we found that the entirety of humanity is united in one fight. Is united in one purpose. I mean, yeah, World War Two was a massive global threat but even then it was one half of the world fighting against the other half. We have never had one global enemy. One global fight that we are all together looking at and saying "We...

Which leader are you? There are two basic types or styles of leadership: transactional and transformational leadership. Transactional leaders look to exert effort from followers based on rewards and punishments. Transformational leaders tap into something far more effective. They don't promise rewards, they build movements. And the people who follow, follow because they see a future worth fighting...

What makes a purpose driven organization? 4 Misconceptions about purpose-driven companies The last 10-15 years have seen a dramatic increase in talk about being purpose-driven organizations, mission-focused companies, and business that do good by doing good. But there's a lot of misconceptions around what it really means to be a purpose-driven organization. In the video, we cover 4 misconceptions...

Research reveals that underdogs, those who feel like they've been criticized and discounted, are more motivated than others to perform and more likely to develop innovative ways to win. Low expectations actually fuel high performance. If people underestimate you, and you believe they're estimating wrong, then your motivation to perform is stronger than if they'd believed in you to begin with. //AB...

Personality Tests at work are widely used. Millions of people every year take personality tests given to them (or paid for) by their employers. But most of these personality tests, the ones that place you into a personality type, are useless. They're of dubious origin, and dubious methodology. And yet we fall for it time and time again. //ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, D...

Let's talk about your company mission statement. The goal of mission statements was noble. The intent of a mission statement is to inspire and motivate employees. But many of them fail. And for the same reasons. //ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David Burkus’ forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever. He is the best...

In this episode, we're going talk about extrinsic motivators, intrinsic motivators, when can you motivate people and when do you have to trust that they're motivating themselves. //ABOUT DAVID One of the world’s leading business thinkers, David Burkus’ forward-thinking ideas and bestselling books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever. He is the best-selling author of four books abo...