How is YOUR team like lava...
and how can you use those similarities to help them move?
#1: Bubbling, boiling, unlimited potential beneath a dormant surface.
- The first thing you have to do as a manager that wants to move your team is to evaluate the current state of your department and then evaluate the traits and characteristics of your team players. A volcano may seem unassuming. It stands there sometimes for years with nothing, no activity, covered in homes, animals, and vegetation, maybe an occasional warning rumble.
- BUT BENEATH. Beneath there is a hot flowing river of unlimited potential that when unleashed can consume everything in its path. It is the power of our abilities that keeps us boiling. Recognizing the strengths and potential in each member, speaking to it, praising it, growing it, is an important place to start.
- Whether you are a new leader in your environment or you have known these people for years, you will be surprised at what you will learn as you critically evaluate each one. This task is different from the typical annual performance evaluation. Rather than looking at performance overall, you are to genuinely search for talent and character traits that are key to your team's success. I think it will feel great, and maybe unusual or strangely optimistic, to be focused solely on the good for a change.
- We will talk later about critiquing and coaching for improvement when you see the not-so-good behaviors, but in order to start your "explosive" journey, I want you to start on the right foot, the good foot. I guarantee that even your worst performer will have something that they do well or that they can grow or can teach others.
- Even something as simple as attention to detail (which sometimes may actually make them your lowest volume producer) can be a characteristic that they take pride in, something you can appreciate, something that is unique to them. Start considering how you can use these strengths to encourage them, build their confidence, how it can benefit others in the team where they are weak, and how can it benefit you.
- It may sound like capitalizing on someone else's abilities, but in truth, your goal is to be successful as a group. There's no "I" in a team scenario...Well there's no "I" in lava either, and you will be surprised how powerful your team can be. But you won't consume the village with one drop, one player, it takes the whole body moving as river.
- So, step number one: identify what are the strengths that make up the potential of your lava.
Picture borrowed is kilauea-volcano-lavakilauea-lava---wordlesstech-eslozttl (from www.travelsworlds.com).
