I didn't pick these people...how to work with a challenging team.

"Not being able to work with a team simply because you didn't pick them is an excuse, not a reason." ~ Mack Story

I've led hundreds of teams through thousands of hours of process improvement, organizational change, and cultural transformation....and I seldom got to pick a single team member myself.

Note: The following is an excerpt (Chapter 22) from my book, MAXIMIZE Your Leadership Potential: Moving Beyond Management & Supervision.

SUPERCHARGE YOUR TEAM

Focus on character first and competency second.

"Do not tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is too high." ~ Reed Hastings

Supercharging teams is what I love to do! With over 11,000 hours of leading leaders and their cross-functional teams through change and transformation, I’ve learned how to take a team of strangers, often who don’t know me or each other, and achieve amazing results in just five short days.

Working with these teams is where I truly learned to lead and apply the leadership principles I’m so passionate about.

You must understand, often they didn’t like me because I was an outsider. Often, they didn’t like me because they didn’t like the last consultant. Often, they didn’t like change. Often, they didn’t want to change. Often, they didn’t like their boss. Often, they didn’t like each other. Often, they didn’t want to be on the team. Often, they had been there 20 years, and I had been there 20 minutes. All of these challenges were happening at the same time. I loved leading these teams.

Imagine that’s your team, and you get a new one every week just like it. By the way, there’s one catch. If you can’t get them to work together and achieve amazing results within five days, you’re fired. The team simply goes back to work and isn’t held responsible. You carry the full responsibility of failure alone. However, there’s another catch. If there is success, the team gets all the credit as you stand in the back of the room on Friday while they all stand at the front of the room and share with the executives what they were able to accomplish as a team.

There are very few leaders that can lead the team I’ve just described. Managers of people don’t stand a chance. I’ve seen them try. It’s really ugly to watch. High impact leaders are the only leaders capable of leading teams like this successfully.

I learned how to quickly supercharge the teams I led. How did I do it? I always started by focusing on character, not only theirs, but also mine. I applied everything in this book and much more. I had to learn to do it quickly. Five days isn’t a lot of time to connect, build trust, develop relationships, develop people, teach them how to analyze the process, allow them to study the area and develop a plan, allow them to execute the plan and make changes, allow them to validate the results, allow them to create a presentation, and finally allow them to present their achievements to the executives and other leaders.

Most often, these teams had no experience in doing what they were expected to do. The only one that knew what to do was me, but I wasn’t going to do it. I was the leader, not the doer. They were being taught to do it while they were doing it.

I remember one team improved output per person per hour 376% in one week. Another team reduced changeover/setup time from 108 minutes down to 17 minutes in one week. (Click here for more examples of actual results.)

I never had a bad week or a bad team. I’m not special. However, I am intentional. I intentionally and methodically applied the character-based principles of influence (leadership). These principles are special. They apply to all people in all situations. Not sometime. Every time.

What did I really do to make it all happen? I dedicated most, if not all, of the first day to leadership development. I didn’t care who was in the room, what their title was or wasn’t, and I didn’t care what the mission was. I wanted to get everyone on the same page thinking the same way. I call it “priming the pump.”

I was helping them look in the mirror and understand why it was important to their success for the team to be successful. I helped them understand why and how they should work together. I helped them understand their success was important to me. I made sure they trusted me and knew they would get all the credit for the team’s success. I helped them begin to think like high impact leaders.

Your success depends on your team’s success. I want to help you be more successful. How? By helping you help your team be more successful. I want to help you help your team begin to think like high impact leaders no matter what level they are at in the organization, no matter what position they do or don’t hold, and no matter what type of job they have.

I wrote Maximize Your Potential: Unleashing the LEADER Within specifically for leaders to use to develop their teams. If you truly want to be a high impact leader and build a high impact team, I highly advise you to order it now since you are almost finished with this one. You will also learn a lot from it, and you will see how beneficial it will be for your team to learn from it too.

I wrote it in the same format as this book. 30 easy to read, three page chapters. High impact leaders will be excited to purchase a copy for each of their team members. The most effective leaders will not only purchase it for their team members, but they will also lead them through a 30 day book study, one three page chapter at a time.

The best teams read each chapter together with each person underlining their key points. Then, the leader briefly discusses his/her key takeaway. Next, each team member briefly discusses their key takeaway and shares one thing they can do to improve in that area. Then, everyone is dismissed.

This is a powerful learning model for developing your team and building relationships. We learn more subconsciously listening to others speak about what they learned than we do by listening to someone tell us what we should have learned.

"The ability to mobilize the skills and competencies of the people around us has a bigger impact on our performance than does the amount of experience we have." ~ Liz Wiseman

FREE downloads available:

Click here now for a FREE download of the entire leadership principle-packed Chapter 11, "Get Out of the Way and Lead" from the first book in my Demystifying Leadership Series: Defining Influence. In this nearly 20 page chapter, I share about:

·      Managing vs Leading

·      Scarcity vs Abundance

·      Formal Authority vs Moral Authority

·      The 5 Types of Leaders

·      Compare/Contrast 17 Manager vs Leader Perspectives

Click here to access the first 5 chapters of “Blue-Collar Leadership: Leading from the Front Lines.”

·      Ch. 1: I’m one of you.

·      Ch.2: I believe in you.

·      Ch.3: You’re in the perfect place.

·      Ch. 4: Common sense is never enough.

·      Ch.5: There is an “I” in Team.

Note: I encourage you to be a river, not a reservoir. Please share my blogs with others if you find value in them. I believe in abundance and write them to help others become more effective, successful, and significant.

Make an impact!

Mack Story

My passion is to help you live with abundance, achieve success, choose significance, and leave a legacy. In other words, I want to help you make a High Impact !