ELEPHANT ALERT!
A team in Windsor, Canada is kicking butt. Faced with a significant challenge, they need to deliver more product, faster, with greater quality, while using fewer resources. Here’s why they’ll succeed.
As they launched their healthy culture initiative each person was asked to identify what strengths the person to their right possesses. As people spoke the confidence in the room went to an all-time high. That’s when Jeff summed it up.
“When you add up the qualities we just heard you have the complete list of what it takes to be a great leader.” He looked around the room. “This team has everything it needs to be a success.”
Few organizations function at this level.
Here’s the elephant in the office: Most organizations espouse the importance of teamwork and then reward the individual. Teams don’t get promoted, individuals do; they don’t do performance reviews for teams, they do them for individuals; and endless conversations are had about the people who are “ruining it for everyone” versus having a dialogue around “how our culture lifts the standard of conduct for all.”
STOMP THE ELEPHANT
Take teamwork beyond rhetoric for your team today by using this exercise: collectively identify the greatest strengths each person on the team brings each day. Keep a master list. Then ask these questions:
1) How can we leverage the greatest strengths in each other?
2) What will it look like as each of us is free to live these strengths even more?
3) What outcomes are possible when we collectively approach the obstacles in front of us?
The greatest successes are achieved by those who discover and leverage the brilliance in each other.
Where will you lead – where will you stomp elephants – today?
