Oil and Water?

I sure hope that none of my team follows my blog. As I write here I see a few patterns or categories to my writing. One is family and home life, one is personal thoughts and learnings, and another is work. Each of these effect me and shape who I am. For that reason, I'm not wanting to stop writing about work. I just hope this blog remains far under the radar until I don't manage them anymore.

We've been doing a team reconfiguration lately. As with most teams, I have top performers and low performers. This team reconfiguration allows me the opportunity to sort of clean house and send some people back to other teams if they're not working out. I've been researching performance, thinking and planning all week. Yesterday I felt stressed and worried about all this. This was odd because I have been feeling quite good about all the rearguing until that point. As I analyzed what was going on and asked God to help me figure out what's wrong, the answer eventually came later this evening in the quiet of my bedroom. Alicia was out grocery shopping, the kids were asleep and I was unaware that the daylight in the room had slowly vanished as I focused on my laptop and my thoughts.

It eventually occurred to me that I was not approaching this correctly. I was looking at this as an opportunity to get rid of dead wood and was not thinking about the development of the individuals on the team. Put in other words I was not caring about them. This kind of warm, squishy talk and business is an odd mix and on the surface they may seem like oil and water. But I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually a hidden secret to success. When people are appreciated they excel. When people care about each other, they do not hold back positive and negative feedback - because they are interested in the development of each other. Open feedback and correction with a foundation of understanding invites growth - both personal and in business. As long as every person is progressing along with the business unit, we have a good match. When people stop progressing, it doesn't work.

So, I took a different approach by identifying key values that needed to be exercised in this team and then I rated each team member according to my perception of those values. I'll place people in teams according to how they rate and then talk to each of them, one on one to provide feedback of how they can improve or head back to other teams if they want to develop elsewhere.

That feels SO much better.