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TRANSACT IONS KEVIN D. WILLIAMS JOINS BRAUN INTERTEC IN TEXAS CITY Braun Intertec , an engineering, consulting, and testing firm with offices throughout the central United States, announced Kevin Williams has joined the Texas City, Texas, office as operations manager. Williams brings more than 25 years of specialized geotechnical and materials testing experience serving clients throughout the greater Houston and gulf coast areas. “I’m pleased to have Kevin join our Texas City team,” says Braun Intertec CEO, Jon Carlson. “With his diverse experience working with quality management systems as well as health and safety, Kevin’s background aligns with our vision of being the consultant of choice. His reputation for operational excellence
will support our continued delivery of quality services to our clients as we continue to grow sustainably.” Over the course of his 25-year career, Williams has held a variety of leadership positions, specializing in operations management, business development, and International Organization for Standardization compliance. Most recently, he served as a quality specialist at Fugro Consultants, where he was responsible for data management in addition to conducting compliance audits for various quality management systems such as ISO 9001, 14001, 18001, 17025, United States Army Corps of Engineers and American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials R18.
Williams has also served as an oil and gas business development manager on the gulf coast of Texas and Louisiana and was instrumental in procuring several large projects after serving as the on-site supervisor to more than 30 technicians reporting to the multi-billion dollar Motiva CEP project for construction materials testing for more than three years. Based in Minneapolis, employee-owned Braun Intertec is a premier engineering, environmental consulting and testing firm with nearly 1,000 employees located in Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin.
AUDREY EPSTEIN, from page 3
If you want candid feedback, trust, and support from your teammates, try these five tips: 1)Assume positive intent. Give your teammates the benefit of the doubt. Assume they are providing feedback not to judge you but to make you better. 2)Talk to your teammates, not about them. You can’t solve problems with gossip. Venting without follow-up action en- sures you are building cliques and solidifying rifts. It takes courage, but talking directly and respectfully with teammates when something goes wrong can solve many misunderstand- ings without creating drama or bringing others into it. 3)Care about your teammates’ success. Start by taking an interest in your teammates’ success. Ask questions about their concerns, know what their goals are, help where you can, and be a good listener and collaborator. You can’t be a Loyalist teammate if you don’t know what drives others’ success. 4)Push your teammates to do their best work and vice ver- sa. On Loyalist Teams, team members challenge each other to reach their goals. Loyalists don’t spend energy watching their own backs, so they take risks and reach higher. Start by ask- ing your teammates to challenge you. Bring them ideas and ask for input. Ask for feedback on your plans. Embrace the idea that your teammates make you better. 5)Ask for personal feedback. Before offering feedback, ask for it first. Ask your teammates what you could do to better support their success. Ask peers for suggestions on one be- havior you could work on to become a better teammate. Give permission for teammates to share feedback by asking for it regularly and listening openly. Thank others for giving you feedback. To defy the odds of unself-awareness, work to create a team of Loyalists around you, people who trust you, support you, and challenge you to be your best. Surround yourself with people who will speak their truth, even when it’s hard. And then listen. When you do, you will see an amazingly positive impact – on you, on them, and on the overall success of your team. AUDREY EPSTEIN is a partner at The Trispective Group and the co- author with Linda Adams, Abby Curnow-Chavez and Rebecca Teasdale of The Loyalist Team: How Trust, Candor, and Authenticity Create Great Organizations . For more information, or to take a free team snapshot assessment, please visit, trispectivegroup.com.
performing, or Loyalist Teams. While distrust, politics, infighting, and gossip are hallmarks of Saboteur Teams – or “team hell” – trust, candor, feedback, shared goals, and joint accountability constitute Loyalist Team behavior. In fact, compared to Saboteur Teams, Loyalist Team members are: ❚ ❚ 292 times more likely to spend time debating, discussing problems, and making decisions ❚ ❚ 125 times more likely to address unacceptable team behaviors promptly ❚ ❚ 106 times more likely to give each other tough feedback ❚ ❚ 40 times less likely to have “undiscussables” the team can’t talk openly about On Loyalist Teams, team members talk honestly and openly about team and individual team member strengths and challenges. And, because team members extend trust to each other, they assume positive intent when the tougher conversations happen. Therefore, authentic and candid feedback is more easily heard and valued. It feels okay to be imperfect or to experience setbacks. It is less scary to be vulnerable. “Surround yourself with people who will speak their truth, even when it’s hard. And then listen. When you do, you will see an amazingly positive impact – on you, on them, and on the overall success of your team.” What if you could get honest insights and feedback from co-workers who are truly committed to your success and get to see you in action all the time, on both your best and worst days? You can, and you will, if you build a Loyalist Team. Think of how much quicker you could address the unintended consequences of your actions if you were surrounded by people motivated to give you useful feedback.
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THE ZWEIG LETTER March 19, 2018, ISSUE 1240
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