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Better Still Tools

Better Still Tools for professionals and teams: smart, practical, and standing ready.

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Better Still Tools help you improve professional work while it happens. From idea generation to decision-making to coordination to action, our tools are designed to close the timing gap of performance improvement in organizations large and small.

Better Still Tools combine no-nonsense, step-by-step guidance with the business orientation of organizational leaders and the concentrated wisdom of an executive coach.

Better Still 1.4 tool in hand

Use Better Still Tools to:

Elevate team performance • Boost productivity and engagement across distance • Onboard new talent • Strengthen professional culture • Improve team management • Develop high-potential leaders • Change your organization successfully • Design your organization’s future together

Better Still Tools activate seven catalysts to improve professional and team performance.

1Strengthen Yourself

Be and contribute your best at work, and increase your engagement as you do. This asset-focused catalyst of superior performance emphasizes professionals’ personal choices, responsibilities, and ethics.

2Think With Others

Generate effective, smart thinking together. Productive interactions embody curiosity, emotional intelligence, inclusion, creativity, and communication skills that build understanding and promote learning.

Better Still Catalysts work together and separately to elevate the work of your teams and professionals.

3Decide With Others

Make wise and smart decisions to set direction and inform the actions that follow. Excellent, disciplined decision-making has many elements that functional aptitude alone does not guarantee.

4Manage Standards With Others

Make excellent, relevant, and explicit standards a centerpiece of your professional work, to strengthen your interactions and ensure quality results. The effective use of standards informs every other element of the Better Still Solution.

5Coordinate With Others

Lay the groundwork for effective action. In this crucial transitional step, professionals align priorities, identify collaboration opportunities, assign energizing tasks, and establish performance expectations.

Each catalyst includes specific actions that professionals and teams can take to improve work.

Hover over a catalyst to learn more.

6Get Things Done With Others

Propel positive action together, whether you’re executing or experimenting. Effective professionals are scrupulous about their commitments, and learn and recalibrate in real time.

7Share Feedback With Others

Embrace and prioritize feedback as a key to organizational learning, and a source of vital information that allows professionals and work to thrive. When done with awareness and skill, the benefits of feedback are profound.
Better Still Catalyst 1
Better Still Catalyst 2

Better Still’s catalysts work together and separately to elevate the work of your teams and professionals.

Better Still Catalyst 3
Better Still Catalyst 4
Better Still Catalyst 5

Each catalyst includes specific actions that professionals and teams can take to improve work.

Click on a catalyst to learn more

Better Still Catalyst 6
Better Still Catalyst 7

The current library of Better Still Tools

Better Still Catalyst 1
  1. How to discover what gives you joy
  2. How to reveal and use your strengths
  3. How to evaluate and enrich your character
  4. How to prepare yourself to work effectively with others
  5. How to find composure in emotionally provoking situations
Better Still Catalyst 2
  1. How to understand another person better
  2. How to communicate with people who aren’t like you
  3. How to be authentic in your interactions with others
  4. How to metacommunicate
  5. How to advocate to create better ideas
  6. How to listen well
  7. How to ask questions to deepen understanding
  8. How to foster creative thinking in a team
Better Still Catalyst 3
  1. How to strengthen decision-making with strategic questions
  2. How to figure out what you’re deciding
  3. How to use relevant facts to tackle your problem
  4. How to create and explore multiple scenarios
  5. How to generate great options
  6. How to weigh benefits and risks when you make a decision
  7. How to transform an impasse
  8. How to choose the best decision-making process
  9. How to communicate your decision
Better Still Catalyst 4
  1. How to recognize a standard
  2. How to identify the source of a standard
  3. How to create an effective standard
  4. How to align your standards with another person’s standards
  5. How to create a system of standards to sustain quality work
Better Still Catalyst 5
  1. How to choose collaboration over competition
  2. How to reveal and reconcile competing priorities
  3. How to assign tasks that energize performers and deliver results
  4. How to make a request
  5. How to respond to a request
  6. How to offer to do something for someone
  7. How to respond to someone’s offer to do something
Better Still Catalyst 6
  1. How to take constructive and courageous action
  2. How to determine whether you’re executing or experimenting
  3. How to drive performance effectively and respectfully
  4. How to ask for help
  5. How to strengthen actions through real-time learning
  6. How to complain when someone breaks a promise
  7. How to apologize and fix things when you break a promise
Better Still Catalyst 7
  1. How to give feedback to someone
  2. How to request feedback
  3. How to receive feedback
  4. How to lay the groundwork to reveal hidden opinions in groups
  5. How to extract vital lessons from the results we achieved

WHAT DIFFERENTIATES BETTER STILL TOOLS

Better Still Tools are created specifically for high-caliber professionals, teams, and organizations.

They are potent, practical, and relevant to everyday professional work.

The tools are designed to be integrated into the flow and activities of daily work.

They activate seven catalysts that strengthen organizational teamwork.

The tools make work better now—often within minutes—and better still, for the long term.

Each tool delivers value on its own. Combined with other tools, they become even more powerful.

Follow a day in the life of Better Still Tools

Person
Person

7:00am

Ximena determines how to maximize her contribution as a member of her new team, with tool 1.4 How to prepare yourself to work effectively with others.

Person

7:30am

In advance of today’s crucial brainstorm session, Ramon paves the way for a better meeting by sending participants tools 3.1 How to strengthen decision-making with strategic questions and 2.5 How to advocate to create better ideas.

Person

8:00am

Sandra improves this week’s team assignments with tools 5.3 How to assign tasks that energize performers and deliver results and 5.4 How to make a request.

Person

9:00am

With her team now working remotely, manager Tia invigorates communication and work practices with tools 2.2 How to communicate with people who aren’t like you and 4.5 How to create a system of standards to sustain quality work.

Person

9:30am

To start today’s meeting regarding a potential new line of business, Winston asks participants to use tools 3.2 How to figure out what you’re deciding and 3.3 How to use relevant facts to tackle your problem.

Person

11:00am

To ensure a trusting partnership with the leader of another organization, Kayla uses tool 2.1 How to understand another person better in her first phone meeting.

Person

11:30am

With the brainstorm session well underway, Ramon asks participants to think more expansively by projecting the introductory video and steps in tool 3.4 How to create and explore multiple scenarios.

Person

12:30pm

To recover after some tough conversations, Grace turns to tool 1.5 How to find composure in emotionally provoking situations.

Person
Person

1:00pm

To resolve a potential conflict regarding two projects, Michael and Noreen use tool 5.2 How to reveal and reconcile competing priorities.

Person

1:30pm

New team member Ximena offers to assist colleague Laslo by using tool 5.6 How to offer to do something for someone.

Person

2:00pm

To overcome a fundamental disagreement between participants in the meeting on a new line of business, Winston activates tool 3.7 How to transform an impasse.

Person
Person
Person

2:30pm

To gain clarity about objectives before they launch a major new initiative, the leadership team uses tool 6.2 How to determine whether you’re executing or experimenting.

Person
Person

3:00pm

To constructively resolve Patrice’s failure to successfully complete a task that Sandra had requested, Sandra uses tool 6.6 How to complain when someone breaks a promise.

Person
Person

3:30pm

New project co-leads Corinne and Francis prepare a united leadership approach by using tool 4.4 How to align your standards with another person’s standards.

Person

4:00pm

Eager to improve how he can perform even better in his new role, Evan prepares to seek comments from colleagues by using tool 7.2 How to request feedback. He also takes Better Still’s tool-based High-Potential Leader Assessment and prepares to activate the corresponding Individual Development Plan.

Person
Person
Person

4:30pm

With their impasse resolved, members of the new-business meeting prepare to make and communicate a decision effectively with tools 3.8 How to choose the best decision-making process and 3.9 How to communicate your decision.

Person
Person
Person

5:00pm

As Olivia and her colleagues wrap up their three-month project, they turn to tool 7.5 How to extract vital lessons from the results we achieved.

Bring Better Still Tools into your organization with:

Better Still Solutions

Tool-based consulting engagements to strengthen your team, talent, or organization

Better Still Teams graphic

Better Still Teamwork & Collaboration Solution >

Better Still Onboard Talent graphic

Better Still Talent Management Solutions >

Better Still Organizational Culture graphic

Better Still Organizational Culture Solution >

Better Still Change Management graphic

Better Still Change Management Solution >

Better Still Hybrid Workforce graphic icon

Build and
prepare a hybrid workforce >

Better Still HR Team graphic icon

Enhance the effectiveness of
your HR team >

Better Still Teamwork Toolkits

Specially designed packages of select Better Still Tools and step-by-step tool plans, ready to provide enduring value

Better Still Teamwork Toolkit—Chart the Future Together

Design your organization’s future >

Better Still Teamwork Toolkit—Team Leader

Improve team management and results >

Better Still Teamwork Toolkit—Team Contributor

Enhance your reputation as a worthy colleague >

Please contact us, and we’ll think with you about how Better Still Tools can help your organization.

Be and contribute your best at work, and increase your engagement as you do. This asset-focused catalyst of superior performance emphasizes professionals’ personal choices, responsibilities, and ethics.

Generate effective, smart thinking together. Productive interactions embody curiosity, emotional intelligence, inclusion, creativity, and communication skills that build understanding and promote learning.

Make wise and smart decisions to set direction and inform the actions that follow. Excellent, disciplined decision-making has many elements that functional aptitude alone does not guarantee.

Make excellent, relevant, and explicit standards a centerpiece of your professional work, to strengthen your interactions and ensure quality results. The effective use of standards informs every other element of the Better Still Solution.

Propel positive action together, whether you’re executing or experimenting. Effective professionals are scrupulous about their commitments, and learn and recalibrate in real time.

Lay the groundwork for effective action. In this crucial transitional step, professionals align priorities, identify collaboration opportunities, assign energizing tasks, and establish performance expectations.

Embrace and prioritize feedback as a key to organizational learning, and a source of vital information that allows professionals and work to thrive. When done with awareness and skill, the benefits of feedback are profound.