Tag Archive - team leader

Credit Given When Credit is Due

July 13, 2010 in Business, Featured, Leadership with 9 Comments

Give Credit To Your Team2 274x300 Credit Given When Credit is DueA real time player is not concerned about individual credit. Like a true leader, he or she knows that they would not have deserved the credit without the other team members input. And a true leader knows that the credit will come in the long run… that having been part of a successful team will put him in line to be on other successful teams, or earn a promotion, or simply make him or her more valuable when it comes to looking for new objectives.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. – Harry Truman

It’s hard not to care who gets the credit. And even though it takes everyone’s concentrated efforts to get the job done, you need to feel positive about your work even on those occasions when just a few get the credit that perhaps the whole team deserved.

Together Everybody Achieves More

A good team leader will make sure to credit the whole team. When announcing results of a team’s efforts, the leader will emphasize how hard the team worked together, and what each employee contributed to the bigger effort. Don’t worry about team members who didn’t work as hard as they might have or that others might have wanted them to–they will be penalized when they are not picked for a new team. It doesn’t matter once the team’s work is done; it matters for the next time around.

How do you make it known who gets credit when credit is due?

Merging Talents One Piece at a Time

June 15, 2010 in Business, Leadership with 11 Comments

Merging Talents sm Merging Talents One Piece at a TimeBritish Admiral Sir Sydney Smith believed that talent should be nurtured. Our culture widely admires artistic, musical, and creative talents. But talent is a wide-ranging concept. Business talents can include being good with people, being good with numbers, or being good at thinking innovatively.

As a team leader, choose members with diverse talents. Don’t stick with the obvious…there are many talents that aren’t good fits on a project but that end up becoming useful. For example, musical talent may not seem like something handy on a business team. But a classical musician’s (or rock musician’s) disciplined focus, or ability to recognize complex and harmonious patterns, might have a calming influence on others when the team begins to spin out of controls. Or, a rock musician might just be what you need to fire up the team when morale seems at a low. And any musician who plays in a group will help a team be successful because of their ability to work cooperatively for a common goal without hogging the spotlight.

Find out what talents your team members are proud of outside of the office, and use their seemingly nonrelated strengths to support the entire organization. It will help your team succeed.

How are you currently seeking out your team’s talents?

What Bad Habits?

June 8, 2010 in Business, Leadership with 17 Comments

judging others What Bad Habits?How often have you heard someone criticize another when you know that they have the same bad habits themselves? As a team leader, it’s best to foster an atmosphere that isn’t judgmental. I think it was John C. Maxwell that summed it up when he said: “Most people’s natural inclination is to judge themselves according to their best qualities while they measure others by their worst.”

For example, just because someone is late all the time doesn’t mean you have to talk about it endlessly when he or she isn’t around, or even when that person is around. If a team member gets into a habit of being late for meetings, business outings, and/or conferences…after the second or third time you should address it directly with that person. The team shouldn’t waste time and build negative energy by complaining about it before the person gets there, or even later in a smaller group. Make it clear to the person when he or she finally arrives that they’re late and that being late is unacceptable. The offender should be put on notice that if the poor behavior continues there will be consequences for being late.

Don’t let meetings devolve into a place where people sit around and talk about others viciously. Unfortunately, it’s a part of human nature to try and pump oneself up by bringing someone else down. But this personality trait isn’t attractive at home or at the office. It’s your job as a team leader to squash this behavior before it grows out of control.

What kind of things do you do, to help tame the “bad habit beasts?”