What Would Dad Say: You Are the Boss of You

Chances are, you are about to join or have joined a company where the stated strategy is basically to, somehow, with meetings (typically), strategy sessions (usually) and goals-missions-targets (daily) is to get you and the other members of your team to perform better and in alignment with what the company needs to get done.

Some people do better in this environment than others.  They are perfectly willing to belong to a group, especially one that can achieve more than they could have achieved alone.  Sport teams are like this, each team member has his or her role, and they know that if everyone does their job,  all win.  Think about the baseball team–one missing fielder can spell trouble if that is where the other team hits the ball.

Companies are like that, traditionally. The trick in management has always been to somehow meld individuals into a fine, functioning team.  Some management (s) are better at this than others, of course.  The successful ones use a variety of methods and techniques, motivation and training to get this group, er, team, to perform better.

Here is the interesting part, at least to me.  Too many team members look to management, ie. the team leader/coach/boss, to make the team work. These team members say, in effect:  It is ‘their’ job to train me, motivate me, teach me, explain things to me, manage me if ‘they’ want me to do THIS for ‘them.’

Luckily, at my current company, most of the team members are taking personal responsiblity for their skills development.  They understand that skill development is the ticket to a successful worklife.  Instead of sitting around and waiting for someone to give them the magic secret to success, they are working on it every day.

I hope they know they are actually in charge of this.

Posted via web from AndyWergedal