Preparation For High Performance Teamwork and Leadership: Throughout the course of business, leadership, teamwork, and how to create a high performance team has been studied and authored. Well documented are the components of a high performance team, and the beginning of a high performance team is a true leader, someone with the ability to apologize, take responsibility, focus on the team and the goal instead of personal agendas, and a person with keen, accurate, insight into the behaviors of the team and the individuals. In a recent article, I focused on what I term the “Robin Williams” effect. Robin Williams was a comedian loved by all for his humor and the essence of who he was as a person. People knew the origins of the jokes Robin authored and because he was a comedian, he could joust with all ethnic backgrounds and races to the offense of no one. High level humor which permits us to laugh at ourselves through the eyes of a talented comedian, one who spared no jousting partner when it came to comedy, keen was Robin Williams in all aspects. The clarity by which he viewed the world is unequaled. In searching for a true leader, keeping the Robin Williams effect in mind can be helpful in identifying a true leader and a high performance team member. Seeking an employee who can bring to the table this keen insight is critical to the success of any project, and any organization. In business, the clarity of the origins of the actions and behaviors of workers is keen in a true, high quality leader. A top performing leader recognizes the actions of the employees as they truly are. A true leader can recognize when an employee is bringing forward an error that is in need of correction as a team player, especially when the employee does not have the authority to correct the error, being barred by computer security, access to other departments who would need to be on board with correcting an error, and so on. A true leader does not interpret these actions of employees as complaints or worse. “tattle telling” on their peers. Leaders focused on the task at hand are open enough, and probably more importantly, KEEN enough to recognize the intent of the employee bring forth errors which would negatively impact the project at hand. Business 101? Certainly, but is it identifiable in many business settings? No, not always because of the impact of the standard business model is the chain of command. In the chain of command, a true leader brings forward the truth with self-accountability. And one cannot hold others accountable without first being accountable themselves. The chain of command short circuits the effectiveness of an organization by placing barriers of communication between the top decision makers and the middle managers or project leaders. If a middle person makes an error, or is not keen enough to understand the origins of the employee’s actions, poor or uniformed decisions can be made. In the commercial world of business, this can result in death of a brand (such as Kodak, who miscalculated a market and has taken decades to bounce back), or decreased effectiveness at least. In lieu of a formal definition of this type of effect, the Robin Williams effect definition suffices. Keeping this in mind assists a true leader to step back and simply apply common sense to the situation. Culture of an organization can also assist in avoidance of these types of errors. As in my previous Joint Commission article, organizations which operate out of the blame game are destined to fail on all levels as this type of mindset creates ripples in the organization whereby employees will detach and will not participate if they risk being blamed. The core capability of team leaders starts with the ability to recognize the origins of actions of those around them or of their direct reports. Team leaders need to be receptive and open minded when working with employees and the first step in the skill set identification of a true leader should be keen insight. The worst thing a leader can do is to reprimand an employee bringing forth an error or stating that something is “wrong” in the work product. Rarely are employees shooting bullets into the goal of the project, and this is, yet again, where keen insight is required of a leader. In comparison, a blame game leader criticizes the employee, a keen leader takes the message, investigates it, evaluates implementation, garners buy in of those effected, and repairs the error in order to facilitate the move forward of the team effectively. It takes a true team player to bring forward a concern to the leader, especially if the leader themselves are responsible for the error in the first place. As true team leader can tolerate information from an employee without becoming defensive or misinterpreting the intent of the employee if they possess this keen insight. Intent being the equaled “Robin Williams” effect as it applies to business. Robin Williams did not have to say –“I am a comedian” prior to his show, and employees should not have to identify their intent when bringing forward facts to their team leader. Most leaders realize that employees are not out to shoot them down, so the first step in working with an employee is simply following intent. In a Forbes article, 2010, the focus on leadership being the primary factor in the success of a high performance team is spot on target. A team cannot succeed with a team leader with a sub-standard mindset, split loyalties-such as personal agenda vs organizational goals, a lack of keen understanding of people, and worse, operation out of the blame game mindset. A keen leader recognizes the effects of a stressed out team, a confused team, a misdirected team, a team that is in an infancy stage finding the correct pathway. and even team members who are less than authentic when they attempt to befriend the team leader by building a false connection. The false connection team members try to influence the team leader, and a true team leader who is accountable, should re-direct the one stepping out of the team box back to the team, which is where their energy should be applied. A true keen team leader has several layers of skills, but sacrificing a keen intelligence for other skills can lead to disaster for individuals, the team, the leader, and the organization. The risk of a team leader without a keen mindset is disorganization within the team, competition with the team, team members who will not risk participation, and worse, total failure of the project the team is working on to achieve, or a high turn over rate of employees within the organization. At the surface, it may appear that there is a lack of skilled, qualified employees, yet 9 out of ten times this is not the case at all. Frequently a problem of mindset is the core issue and this is not a commodity, or a tool or a supply, as a keen mindset is not a value that can be purchased for an organization. It is something that individuals possess. A failure of goal attainment in an organization often results into top management questioning why the project failed to reach targeted goals. Often times it is not a failure of numbers as much as it is a lack of a keen mindset within the team structures. In my next article, I will provide an example of a true keen mindset in a healthcare facility that created internal changes within their organization which literally saved their organization - just by using the tools on hand, and changing their mindset.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 18:40:57 +0000