Sometimes Priorities Are Forgotten...

Throughout my career, or rather, my time in various positions of employment, I have been privileged to work for some pretty spectacular people, for some truly great organizations, and despite all of that, there have been times when the first two fingers of one hand are providing encouragement to the team, while the third finger is definitely countering the positive messages with some real ... well, profanity is probably the best way to put it.

I am no great leader.  I'm working on that.  I need to focus on my communication skills, and work on keeping the message consistent, and more so, making certain that I don't counter the message I want to project with a message that destroys what I want to accomplish.

I say all of that due to my recent experiences.  And I'm not trying to focus blame on any one individual - I am certain that there's more than enough pressure going around to keep everyone on the knife edge of tension.  But it's pretty widely acknowledged that leadership does not do well when threats become part of the communication.

I've had the good fortune to, when I've been a leader of any team, be the encouraging fellow.  I suppose there's more than a few folks laughing up their sleeves, because they don't see leadership as where folks try to make sure everyone succeeds.  I've seen some pretty terrible examples where a nominal "person in charge" focuses their efforts on their "star player" whether that's the newest person to the team, or the person they see as being the most likely to succeed.  

Thing is, if your objectives are bigger than any one person can accomplish, that's probably why you have a team.  If one person can accomplish it, you aren't working efficiently if you have six people on a team to do the same thing.  Some folks are wasted, others aren't being used to their most effective limit, and still others might be actively seeking to achieve their goals in opposition to others.  Don't laugh, I've seen it.  

But if it's something that you need everyone to pitch in to accomplish, watch your tone.  Know, deep down inside your bones, not just the tip of your tongue or fingers, that written communication is utterly likely to come over far more harshly and formally remonstrative than saying the same thing on the phone or in person.

And in my favorite examples recently, you can encourage the team members to use one another as resources.  If Joe is the expert on Chili, well, then, when Hannah, your top Asian Chef, needs to make a big old batch of Chili for the company picnic, don't tell her "hey, you can call on anyone except for Joe, because we want to show him he's needed elsewhere."  In one quick swing, you've cut the legs out from under your expert, because now someone who needs his knowledge is told he's not to be used for what he is expert of, he's to do something else.

When you need better performance, I learned a very long time ago that the single thing you can do to really insure you never see it is yell at someone, and threaten them.  As in when my mother told me to clean the living room, it was probably utterly counter productive to yell at my sisters to pick up the pillows and put them away or Mom would take them away.  So of course, they go whining to my mother, leaving crap all over the floor, and then I get yelled at - floor remains unvaccumed, I'm in the doghouse, and ... well, the job didn't get done.  

So there ya go.  Lessons learned.  Some day I should probably write the book "All I Really Needed To Know About Leadership I Learned In My Playpen..." Too bad it took the lessons more than a few years to get through the thick bone on the top of my head.  Though I do submit that perhaps the extra thick bone did protect my brains from the repeated crap flung at it over the years by the attendant goon squad.  I did survive.  So I got that going for me, which works out for pretty good.  So far.