Teams

There are many reasons that teams function successfully and there are many academic studies to identify the characteristics that make a good team or team player.

You could identify people with the right characteristics and ethics etc and put them together and may be if would work for a while.

What teams really require are leadership from behind not out front. A great leader is one that encourages  and allows others to succeed.

In fact a leader has to be a gardener! Identify what will make the team grow and flourish and provide as much of that as is needed before the team starts manufacturing its own nutrients and conditions to grow.

For another view of teams read this

http://www.thinkbrilliant.com/2010/06/6ways-employees/

Alan

The Art of Listening

Recently I read a piece by Tom Peters about the essential skill of listening.

As a manager in the public sector for many years you have to develop the skills of listening. Listening to the politicians and listening to the constituents. Coupled with that is a professional understanding of the situation which  involves listening to the researchers, consultants, your peers and the staff (all in no particular order).

While listening is important it  is also the synthesis of that information into a workable solution or at least a point of view.Once that has been determined a sound decision based on the information is required. In some situations much of this can be done very quickly and so called instant decisions can be made and in other situations a longer period is required to get to a suitable solution where a decision can be made.

Tom Peters (2009) suggests that Listening belongs on the short list of "strategic competencies,"  people need to Study listening! (Study = Become a serious student thereof!), Treat listening as a "practice"! The Big Idea here is that (1) this is a strategic strengths (or weaknesses), (2) this is a disciplines that can be mastered  and (3) these are disciplines that must be mastered to be effective.