Seven Simple Principles Might Contribute to Group Work Success

Imagine a 12-year-old saying or writing something so readily applicable to the business environment, it made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Dick Eaton, LeapFrog Innovations chief energizing officer, said this was his experience after stumbling across a paper in his son Alex’s social studies folder.

The heading on the paper read, “How can we make group work successful?” Beneath it were seven bullet points: share ideas, work together, share work evenly, listen well, follow the golden rule, stay on task and be accepting.

Apparently, Alex deals with the material all the time in class to reinforce key things that will help make his classmates’ group projects successful. Eaton has since adopted the seven principles into his business.

“He blew it off as no big deal, but I borrowed the paper, and I thought about it for a couple of days,” Eaton said. “It resonated with all of the work that I’ve been doing in this business for 13 years and in my other business for six years before that. So, basically, for 20 years of my life, this is what I’ve been trying to bring to the world.”

Eaton said the principles neatly sum up the work he does with clients working to facilitate team building or to create a certain kind of corporate culture in which employees behave, interact and (perhaps most important) collaborate in ways that really make an impact on the business.

“It’s super simple, but really it’s the essence of what our clients are doing and striving for in their organizations,” Eaton said. “For instance, John Hailer, CEO of Natixis, has a very clear idea of what kind of culture he wants the organization to have. It’s very contrary to the normal financial services culture, which is very much about ‘me’ —what can I earn, how much money can I make and how can I look out for myself?

“As the company has grown, John called on us to help with many of their most significant meetings and employee conferences to basically make it a different place to work. When I was talking about the way this resonates with me, he said, ‘This resonates with our corporate culture and what we’re trying to do here around people. We’re different — we don’t allow meanness in this company, we don’t allow lying. We’re all about people actually collaborating.’”