In many organizations, leaders can cause a bottleneck by trying to have all information and decisions flow through them. An organization that is playing chess is made up of leaders who grow their leadership team. By empowering our leaders, we can share the load and accomplish bigger dreams than we could ever approach on our own.
This week, we learned some interesting facts:
- To create "Snow White", Walt Disney managed more than 700 artists responsible for more than 2 million drawings
- NASA employed more than 400,000 people in order to put a man on the moon
- More than 1 million people helped build the Great Wall of China
Could you imagine a dream so big that you would need 1 million people to accomplish it? How exciting would that be? What if we were to dream big and ignore restrictions and limitations?
What do High Performance Organizations do? How do they "Shoot for the Moon"? According to Randy Gravitt of InteGREAT, they:
01. Define a Common Purpose
02. Pursue Shared Goals Together
03. Track results with an established Team Scorecard
04. Recruit and select Talent based on character and skills
05. Clarify team goals
06. Build a cross-functional team
07. Develop Individual Skills and Team Skills
08. Lead Valuable Meetings
09. Solve problems as a team
10. Build an authentic community for your team.
He also has this to say about Responding with Courage in how a team is structured:
In our conversations about how well we are doing on "Starting with the HEART", "SERVE"-ing our organization, and "GROW"-ing as individuals, a few topics took center stage.
Great Leaders "Value Results AND Relationships"
People tend to lean either towards a task or people orientation. If you lean one way or the other, it takes practice and skill development to learn to engage with others on both sides of the spectrum.
In our ADMO Coaching Program, we look at the DISC personality style of our employees. Those who have a D or C personality tend to be more task-oriented while those with a I or S personality tend to be more people-oriented.
For a quick test to see where you land on the DISC chart, you may visit:
https://free.peoplekeys.com/
(If you are an ADMO employee and would like a more in-depth evaluation, please visit HR and request a 4D test.)
Here are some suggestions to help you start developing the orientation that is less natural for you.
If you are a task-oriented person, try these things to stretch your people-oriented side
1. Schedule time on your calendar to have conversations with your team or do other relationship-building tasks (like sending cards or making phone calls). Perhaps, you need to make a people-oriented activity a "task" on your to-do list. By scheduling a few minutes every day to stop and check-in with your team, you are stretching yourself in your people-orientation, but also have the satisfaction of completing a task.
2. Make a list of open-ended questions you can ask so you are prepared ahead of time with ways to engage. Maybe your list looks a little like this:
- What was your favorite thing about your weekend?
- What's something you've been learning lately?
- Tell me a little about your family or what you like to do after work.
- If you won the lottery, what would you spend the money on?
- What's your favorite holiday or season?
- What's something you've always wanted to do?
3. Create a Team Profile sheet that has some of the personal and professional goals of your team along with some personal information and preferences (see questions above). Make it a goal to complete the profile sheet without directly asking your team to fill in the questions. Be a detective and find out more about your team members by playing this game.
4. Set a goal of 5 personal interactions per day. Create a system to keep track during the day. One suggestion from Jodi Wozniak of Real Change, Inc., was to put 5 coins in one pocket at the beginning of the day and transfer one each time you say something personal to someone (even if it is just making eye contact and saying "good morning"). If you haven't moved all of the coins before going home, find someone to connect with to complete your goal before leaving.
5. Challenge yourself with the goal of not asking for a task to be completed unless you have engaged with the person on a personal level. For instance, instead of walking up to someone and saying, "Please, have this completed by 6pm". Try making eye-contact and saying, "Good Morning, [insert name]! Would you please complete this task for me by 6pm?" Just adding a greeting and saying their name while making eye-contact goes a long way to making a person feel valued.
If you are a people-oriented person, try these things to stretch your task-oriented side
1. Make a daily to-do list and work to complete all tasks by the end of the day. Set a limit on yourself that you can not have any casual conversation until 1 task is done. Then, use "people-breaks" as a reward for each completed task.
2. Technology can be your friend! Use a digital calendar to keep up with important dates. Set reminders to make sure you are prepared for meetings or other tasks.
3. When you have a big task to complete, engage other members of your team to complete it as a team project. Engage your "people" side, while tackling the task.
4. Seek out a task-oriented person that you know manages tasks well and have a conversations. Ask them what works for them. Find out what they've tried before and how well they fared. From your conversation, resolve to try one thing to stretch yourself in your awareness of tasks.
5. Have a conversation with your boss to help you prioritize your to-do list or get your tasks for the day.
The other topic that we touch on yesterday was the idea of multiple intelligences. As we work to "Attack the Gaps" as individuals and within our teams, be creative in the way you address skill-building. Watch this video to better understand the intelligences and how we can use them to increase effectiveness when we train.
Hopefully, this will give you ideas for stretch assignments for yourselves and for your teams as we identify and attack the gaps in our organization! Happy Stretching!
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