The Firefly Effect: Build Teams That Capture Creativity and Catapult Results

Kimberly Douglas

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How can you tap into your team’s creativity to tackle today’s toughest business challenges?

In The Firefly Effect, Kimberly Douglas presents inspiring yet pragmatic insights into getting your entire team firing on all cylinders and aiming in the right direction. Comparing the difficult act of harnessing and capturing creativity to the act of catching fireflies on a summer night, she will explain:

• What to do when the fireflies don’t show up (or when creativity dries up)
• How to know when it’s time to find a new meadow (or a new approach, place or process)
• What to do if the leader is keeping too tight a lid on the jar (and team innovation is gasping for air)
• How to get inventive when it rains on your firefly hunt (or parade of ideas)
• What happens when everyone is too busy to join in (and group problems remain unresolved)

The Firefly Effect

Build Teams That Capture Creativity And Catapult Results

Creative, effective teams often make the difference between stunning success and abject failure in business. But, like catching fireflies on a warm summer night, chasing creativity and bottling it up in your teams is no easy task. The Firefly Effect explores that metaphor to reveal what it takes to build the kind of teams that collaborate and create effectively and profitably.

In this practical yet inspiring guide, human resources consultant and business expert Kimberly Douglas explains how business leaders like you can capture those creative fireflies and build them into teams that produce tangible, long-term results. The Firefly Effect is what happens when you ignite the creative spark in enough of your group to create a blaze of new and innovative thinking. It leads your people and teams into a zone of intense teamwork and dedication, enthusiasm for achievement, unfettered creativity, and contentment with a job well done.

The Firefly Effect leads to much more than just great business results; it also leads to employees who are proud of their jobs and invested in something more meaningful than mere "work." When done right, the Firefly Effect:

• Lets individuals rediscover their unique and creative talents and best apply them within your organization
• Turns business leaders from autocrats into consensus-building role models
• Leverages the talents of individuals into a collective that focuses on critical business challenges rather than petty personal issues
• When you roll all those things together, you can achieve virtually anything.

In each chapter of The Firefly Effect, you'll find inspiring stories, practical tools, and real guidance for building teams that truly work together.

Plus, you'll learn:

• What to do when the creativity dries up
• How to know when you need a new approach
• What to do when team leaders start to stifle creativity
• How to synchronize everyone's effort to deliver powerful impact and stunning success

Kimberly Douglas, SPHR, is a nationally recognized expert in building the effectiveness of teams, based on her knowledge of industrial/organizational psychology combined with her real-life consulting and corporate human resources execu-tive experience. As President of FireFly Facilitation, she has collaborated with hundreds of leaders—at organizations such as AT&T, Cisco, United Way, and even the U.S. Marine Corps—to dramatically improve their business performance. She is frequently featured in national publications and is a sought-after speaker at meetings and conferences.

	PART I: REDISCOVER YOUR CREATIVE SPARK
1	What is The Firefly Effect?
2	The Individual – Creativity Found Again
	PART II: THE LEADER’S ROLE – CREATING THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT
3	The New Role of Leadership
4	No Dissing the Red Quadrant
5	Beware the Ferocious Firefly!
6	Conflict as Creative Abrasion…a pearl, a diamond, or a mountain?
7	Was It Something I Said?
	PART III: THE LEADER'S ROLE – TARGETING TEAM ENERGY
8	One Team – One Picture of Success
9	How Will You Know When You Get There?
10	Guiding Principles as Guiding Light
	PART IV: EVERYONE FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS
11	Team Gatherings – Time to Shine
12	Team Decisions – Fact or Fiction
13	What to Do if the Leader Is Keeping Too Tight a Lid on the Jar
14	Shining the Light of Accountability
	PART V: SPARKING CREATVITY
15	The Firefly Chase Begins
16	How Could You Forget the Toys?
17	This Place Is a Zoo!
18	When Sparks Collide – Dealing with Inter-Team Conflict
	PART VI: SYNC – THE MAGIC
19	There's Something Going on in My Backyard!
20	Change Is Not a Four-Letter Word
21	At the End of the Day

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