Business leaders take chances. They don’t always have crystal balls to predict the future. They pay attention to the pros and cons to mitigate the riskthey make a decision and act on it. Often courage is called for. Risking lots of money on developing a new product based on existing market research is not a slam-dunk. What if the current market doesn’t like it? What if the costs that we’ve estimated don’t work out as we’ve planned? What if our overseas manufacturers copy our idea? There are all kinds of risks.

In a growing company delegation is a strength that many leaders develop under duress. It’s easy to do everything yourself until you realize you’re the bottleneck. Then you have to train other people, delegate and give up control. To grow you need to grow the company infrastructure and see your own role evolve. This brings up fear, fear of loss of control, fear of failure in a new role, fear of change. This can keep the leader stuck.

Whether it’s about a product or a personal leadership issue, we are told to ‘face the fear and do it anyway.’ “I miss 100% of the shots I never take.” There’s an easy way to think about change that mitigates the power of the obstacles. Instead of thinking about fear, needed courage, obstacles and other negativity, phrase your language positively around ‘the growing edge.’   Picture a plant leaf. It starts out small and it grows bigger and bigger, fed from the center veins. It has an outer edge that keeps expanding. It seeks sunlight and overcomes possible problems with lack of water or nutrients. It  doesn’t pay attention to the obstacles. It just keeps focused on its job to grow and handle the possible bumps in the road along the way.

I have a growing edge. I continually take risks to expand my business, be bold, take on unreasonable projects, challenge myself as a leader, spend money to make money. I look at these decisions to proceed as my ever expanding ‘growing edge’. I create the outcomes I want by stepping forward and creating growth experiences on my growing edge.

I told this to one of my clients. She said ‘edge’ makes her think of the edge of a cliff. I thought about this and expanded the metaphor. When you’re on the edge of a land mass, and you want to expand, can you extend the land mass? Yes, in two ways.

You can do it in inches by adding more and more dirt. I’m thinking now about Holland building a canal system that reclaimed their land mass from the effects of erosion. They could extend the landmass by trucking in dirt and adding inches from the existing land.

The other way is to pick a spot further out where you want the land mass to extend to and build a bulkhead, and then backfill between the bulkhead and the existing land. Explaining the metaphor  - you can take baby steps over a long period of time to inch your way to the results you want to achieve. It’s less risky as you never step off the existing land. Or you can move forward quickly by declaring an unreasonable outcome, drawing a line in the sand, and then leading your team to develop the skills to make it come true. An example is when John F. Kennedy declared that the USA would put a man on the moon in ten years. Afterwards government and science did the ‘backfill’ to make it come true.

That’s really extending your ‘growing edge.’ Leaders who want superlative results use the second method to take leaps and bounds. More risky? Yes. The first way is slower, less risky and may never get to superlative results. Both ways get you to focus on the outer edge of your growth rather than on the obstacles blocking the path.

Where is your growing edge, how are you extending it, and how far/fast do you want to see it grow?

We’d love to hear from you. Please tell us about your ‘growing edge’.

As children and teenagers most of us have played on a sports team. Can you remember what it felt like to be part of a winning team or a losing team? Remember the elation you felt when your team won a big game and the despair of losing the big game or championship? It is something special to experience being part of something bigger then yourself.

In my experience the concept of a “team based culture” is something a lot of entrepreneursbusiness owners and executives want but find very difficult to achieve. The difficulty begins with the definition.  Plato said that wisdom begins with the definition of terms. So what does Webster’s Dictionary have to say about teams: “a number of persons associated together in work or activity”. Webster’s goes on to describe teamwork as: “work done by several associates with each doing a part but all subordinating personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole”.  This is a good start but does not give us enough practical detail and guidance in the business world. Steven Yelen a New York based Business Coach with over 20 years experience in supporting organizations and teams give us some guidance with his ideas on fundamental principles and behaviors that work, then it's also worth having your GDPR checked by professional consultants as you need to be totally sure that it is perfect.

Fundamental Principles of a Successful Team:

• Common Purpose
• Clear and mutually agreed to working approach
• Appropriate balance of task focus and relationship focus
• Agreement on Measurements and Aligned Rewards

Behaviors that support Successful Teams:

• Push for high quality communications
• Help create a climate of trust
• Play your position and bring talent to the team
• Help drive discipline into the team
• Be prepared to sacrifice for the team-be a good sport
• Help new members make the entry
• Strengthen the leader through good followership
• Play down yourself and build up others

Why Teams fail to deliver results?

The biggest root cause of team failures in business can often traced to the lack of establishment of clear purpose, goals, measurements and rewards. Without these foundations pillars in place trust is often the first casualty followed by a lack of energy and sense of helplessness.  Finally, if the leadership is not walking the talk, then you can expect cynicism to spread quickly and undermine any opportunity for success.

Final Thought:

There are many examples of organizations that have achieved excellence and delivered exceptional results by creating a team based culture. Some examples include GE, Motorola, McKinsey and Pall Corporation.   Do your research and look at the top players in your industry and you will often find a team based approach separating the leaders from the followers.

You’re out on the town with some good friends hoping to have a great dinner and a memorable evening. There’s a diner on the corner and a great Italian restaurant down the street. Which one are you going to choose

The Diner – You May Want to Stick to the Basics
Want a Steak? They’ve got it.
Want Crab Cakes? They’ve got it.
Want Veal Parmesan? They’ve got it.

They’ve got it but I’m not sure you’d actually want to eat it. The focus of a diner is to satisfy everyone by providing every type of food imaginable. Howeverquantity and quality are two very different things. Go ahead, ask the waiter what he recommends and you’ll get a blank stare.

You may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with employees? The goal of most managers is to create well-rounded employees. They try to achieve this by identifying the employee’s weaknesses and trying to fix them. What about their strengths? They languish and dull due to lack of attention. The result of this focus, at best, is an employee who can do most things but is not remarkable at anything. Sound familiar?

When you order from a diner, you should probably stick to the basics. I’d do the same with your well-rounded employee.

The Fine Restaurant – Go Ahead, Try the Escargot

The fine restaurant has a much more limited menu but what they have is incredibly good. They make the conscious decision to forego many types of foods to focus their efforts on what they do best.

Great managers treat their employees in much the same way. They help employees to focus on what they do best, rather than trying to improve their weaknesses. Employees will rarely become strong in an area of weakness. The best one can hope for is that they will rise to become mediocre. However, where an employee has talent, they can become world-class. In addition, focusing on those areas where we have true talent is incredibly motivating.

Imagine a team of people who are all the best at what they do. Imagine your competition running scared.

Would you rather have well-rounded employees or remarkable employees?

How to Allow Employees to Become Great

Traditional management methods will not create great employees because they don’t focus on what each employee does best. Here are four steps to make it happen:

1. Identify your employees’ strengths – This task is not easy. It requires a much more individualistic approach to management. Here are the best ways to make it happen:
   Observe - The best way to identify your employees’ strengths is to observe their actions. What types of work are they attracted to? How do they act in group discussions? What do they like to do when they’re not working?
   Use Personality Profiles – There are several profiling tools available on the market which can help you to identify people’s tendencies, talents and styles.
   Conduct 360 Degree Surveys – This can be a great way to get feedback from supervisors, peers and subordinates as to an employee’s strengths and tendencies.
   Ask The Employee – Ask your employees what they feel their strengths are. The danger here is that most people are not self-aware enough to accurately answer the question.

   
   

   
   

2. Determine how to take advantage of those strengths – Once their strengths are known, you should:
   Encourage Improvement – Additional training and experience can turn strengths into incredible talents. Michael Jordan wasn’t born great; he practiced.
   Refine Roles – Find ways to allow your employees to spend a greater portion of their time on tasks that lend themselves to their strengths.

   
   

   
   

3. Figure out how to manage around the weaknesses – Focusing on what employees do best doesn’t mean forgetting about their weaknesses. Here are three strategies to deal with weaknesses:
   Shift roles – If possible, change the employee’s responsibilities to shift focus away from their weaknesses.
   Partner – Find an employee whose strengths offset another employee’s weaknesses and team them together.
   Training – Training will probably not turn a weakness into a strength; but it can get their performance up to more acceptable levels.

   
   

   
   

4. Build a team of people who compliment each others strengths – Traditional teams are made up of many interchangeable parts. This new, remarkable team is more like a jigsaw puzzle of talents. Place the right people in the right roles and change any job descriptions and performance measures that no longer fit.

Back to the original question…Would you choose the diner or the fine restaurant? It’s nice to have a few diners around for when you want something cheap or don’t know what you want to eat. But, if you want something truly remarkable and memorable, hit Zagats and find a great restaurant.

How do you help your employees develop their strengths like a fine restaurant?