Choose to be a player…
It brings new life to all!
In all areas of life, it’s important that people make a real contribution in all that they do.
Consider the workplace. When I was in business, I once asked one of my Direct Reports, how many of their team they would employ if it were their own business? Very few was the answer. The obvious response…What are you doing to change that! How do you develop your team, to make them all players?
At Solution Focused, we adopt four categories:
- Players…High Energy and High Commitment
- Spectators…Low Energy but Good Commitment
- Terrorists…High Energy but Low Commitment
- Corpses…Low Energy and Low Commitment
The aim is always to have as many people as possible in Category (A)…PLAYERS…Good 121s. Good communication both upwards and down, and having a real focus on developing your teams.
You also need to work with your Category (B)…SPECTATORS…Good commitment but clearly need stretching as the energy levels displayed are low. They do enough…But surely you want that bit more!
Beware of Category (C)…TERRORISTS…These are the people with high energy but in the wrong areas. More intent on poor work attitudes but with the energy to infiltrate others…
You need to work on your category (B) before Category (C) infiltrate them! Can you convert their high energy into more positive areas and create PLAYERS out of them!?
The Final Group is Category (D)…CORPSES…They just about muddle through without much interest in anything around them, including both people and work! What is your plan here? Are they in the wrong job?
For a team to succeed it needs as many players as possible. Leaders need to work with their people identifying strengths and weaknesses but equally important identifying ATTITUDE. Skills and knowledge can be learned, the right attitude is entirely different.
Never shy away from challenging conversations in your drive to create a team of players. Understand the issues of the others and step in to ensure that your Terrorists don’t infiltrate your Team.
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford