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Category: Team Building
Leaders engage
In 1921, the newly formed United States Steel Company hired their first president. His name was Charles Schwab, and his salary was over $1 million a year. He was hired by Andrew Carnegie. When asked why he was paid so much, Schwab said, “I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people to be the greatest I possess”.
The importance of that high paid quality remains today in companies, sports teams, and other organizations. The leader who can generate the highest performance and measurable results is always the most sought after.
Keeping others accountable: The carrot or the stick?
We live in a world of increasing complexity. And part of that complexity involves doing more, better, faster with less. When we move in this direction, it is easier for some tasks and duties to get overlooked.
Earlier this week, I was working with a management team that was disappointed in their staff. The staff members had agreed to entering specific data regularly, and it wasn’t getting done. There had been many conversations with the group members both individually and as a team. In spite of all these efforts, the data was not being entered consistently.
Leaders Listen…to everyone
While reading the Wall Street Journal this morning, I noticed an article on “Work Place Bias”. The author gave an example of an executive from a major aerospace security system provider. Her name was Denise, and she admitted “I may not have made the best decisions because of inadequate input from introverts. I tend to favor more talkative personalities.”
This reminded me of a key fundamental of a collaborative team: Idea fluency.
Good listeners know their filters
Remember the game of telephone? Most of us played it at birthday parties when we were of grade school age. We all gathered in a circle as the leader or host whispered some silly phrase in the first person’s ear. The first person whispered the message to the one on his right and the pattern continued until the message had gotten all around the circle. The only rule was that the message could not be repeated. You heard it once, and that was it. When the last person to hear the phrase was asked to identify the message, there were always plenty of laughs. The message was usually quite different from the original.
In teamwork, just like the game of telephone, communication can get distorted as it is passed along.
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Blessed are the Nitpickers
I would like to put the spotlight on who I believe are the most persecuted group of people on earth – the “nitpickers”. You know who I am talking about. These are the folks who take your marvelous idea or plan and start poking holes in it. They say things like, “What about this?”…”What could happen if?”…”Have you ever considered these possible consequences? All of a sudden, we creative people get defensive and even irritated. When this happens the communication wall goes up, and the quality of the collaboration goes down.
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