How much of your energy do you squander on internal politics?

Thanks Trimmy for great HBR article and there is a lot that I take from that article.

Last week I was brought in at short notice to be the 'team builder' for a kick off meeting on a major IT project. There were limitations on how much I could do with them as there was a lot of information sharing that had to be done, but when I left them they seemed to be in a good place.

My final messages to them was that they need to be positive and think how they can make it work, not why it can't. To work as one team caring enough about one another to challenge what they don't believe will work, and to do this in the spirit of openness and trust.

To end with a quote from Tony Schwartz ....

I'm convinced that it's the strength of our community at The Energy Project which has allowed us to become a truly high-performing team. The safety and trust we feel with one another has freed us to focus our efforts on our mission. We have a small full-time staff — 14 of us, along with another dozen working part-time — but we've been able to work at senior levels in some of the world's largest companies. One reason is that we squander almost no energy on internal politics. We're in this together, including when one or another of us is struggling and needs help.

I've always thought of our core team as a living laboratory for the practices we teach our clients — whether it's the power of renewal, or focusing on one thing at a time, or learning to deal more skillfully with conflict. What I now realize is that I've been overlooking one of the most powerful elements of our work.

Each of us is far less likely to succeed by forever pushing to stand out from the pack than by building communities of care and trust committed to raising the bar for everyone.

Transformation takes a village. None of us can truly do it alone.

 

 

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