Hello to everyone!
I am excited to be a part of such a fantastic community. There is a tremendous amount of technical content here on the site. I love the passion surrounding this site…everyone is trying to add value by sharing his or her technical knowledge and expertise. But there needs to be more...much more…
There needs to be a focus on maximizing the performance of people developing creative solutions. Why are development projects late? Why do development projects succeed? The answer typically comes down to the people/teams on these projects and the leadership of these teams.
"Leadership is not a magnetic personality that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not 'making friends and influencing people'--that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to high sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations." Peter F. Drucker
Right now, there may be many of you thinking of your own teams and confidently saying to yourself, “…This doesn’t apply to me…I tell my people exactly what to do and they do it…”. First, this is a VERY small percentage of reality. Almost every team has some type of conflict/bump-in-the-road and how you address these situations is critical. Second, almost no one likes to be told what to do…and if they do then you could be creating an environment where they are completely dependent on you telling them exactly what to do. Good luck taking vacation time.
Ask yourself….are you creating an environment within your team that allows the person to truly own their obstacles and are able to come up with their own solutions? You may have technical skills, but if you are a leader then your ultimate goal should be to make the members of your team a little better every day. Of course, there are times when a leader has to tell someone what to do. This should be the exception but based on my experience it is the norm.
Now you may be thinking, “Great Lou…thanks for exposing this weakness…now what?”. My friends, I look forward to working with you. Much more to come!
Look for my next article during the week of August 14, 2017.