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As the Business Wingman, you are tasked with supporting your team and ensuring that there is collaboration and motivation across each of the members of the team. A happy and unified team is a high performing team and you are the enabler of that.
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Dealing with the Team’s Weak Link
Key Points • Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, learn what they are • Offer them the opportunity to succeed, but allow them to fail • Build a culture of collaboration, the weak link will self-‐identify In every team in every business, there is always that one person who either is the low performer or is perceived as the weak link of the team. But, what do we mean by weak link? Here are some possible characteristics that may fit the description: • Is always finishing projects after the agreed upon due date • Is never fully completing projects and needs others to help him/her finish • Needs frequent explanations of ideas and concepts that the rest of the team is
familiar and well versed in • Needs hand holding on starting projects or organizing thoughts • Needs constant motivation to perform at work • Needs to be asked to join in on team sessions, meetings, and outings
Art of the Wingman for Business is dedicated to the businesswomen and businessmen who seek greatness beyond their own and find their successes through helping others succeed. The Business Wingman follows the path of the selfless person.
As the Business Wingman, you are tasked with supporting your team and ensuring that there is collaboration and motivation across each of the members of the team. A happy and unified team is a high performing team and you are the enabler of that. Now, before we go ahead and make judgment on individual members of our team and begin pointing fingers, let’s first take the optimistic approach and try to understand this weak link’s behavior and what could be at the root of it. Ultimately, we want to determine whether their actions truly define a weakness in skill or aptitude (relevant to the job role) or whether this is just a recent behavior that is the byproduct of some lack of motivation by management. Because management trusts the team to consistently perform at a high level, the last thing you want to do is to start complaining to management about this person and draw negative attention to your team; thus opening a can of worms. So let’s start to break down some of these behaviors and try to rationalize each and identify the root cause. And by using this strategy, we can then make an educated and rationalized decision before we take any actions and make this public to management. 1) Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, learn what they are If you carry the assumption that everyone excels in what you do and thinks like you, then you are destined for failure and will never get it. Everyone is different, everyone thinks differently, and everyone is unique in his or her strengths and weaknesses. Don’t just accept that this person is the weak link; maybe you will learn that he/she is misplaced in the business and that their strengths are not being utilized by the team. As the Business Wingman, you are essential to that team as the one with strengths like: activator, relator, achiever, responsibility, strategic, includer, positivity, or any strength necessary for helping to drive the success of the team. A good way to catch up on the list of strengths is to reference Now, Discover your Strengths by Clifton.
Wikipedia definition: Now, Discover Your Strengths, Clifton The theory behind the book is that each adult individual possesses a certain number of fixed universal personal-‐character attributes, defined by the authors as "Personal Themes" which in combination effect the individuals tendency to develop certain skills more easily and excel in certain fields while failing in others. The authors claim that by identifying the individual strength of the members of the organization, its members can be utilized in more suiting positions, hence developing the required skills easily, helping to reduce turnover, improve employee morale and the organization's overall performance.
By identify and learning the strengths and weaknesses of your team and the weak link, you can better determine if he/she truly is the weak link. You may also discover that his/her strengths really don’t apply to your team or that they will never have the opportunity to succeed in your team environment because they naturally focus on areas of the business that just don’t apply to your team. Either way, this should be a great gauge for you and help you with defining your next actions. 2) Offer them the opportunity to succeed, but allow them to fail Every once in a while, a team member will be at fault and create an action that really turns out to be detrimental to the team’s revenue or key customer relationship or something where they know that they did something wrong. But many times, a team manager will be sure to help to cover that mistake and make sure that the team member never fails. But in this situation, where we are looking to identify and deal with a team’s weak link, and we must be sure to allow our members to fail from their poorly thought out actions. As the Business Wingman, you’re chartered with the success of the team, and you must ensure that the team dynamic is not soiled with distrust in the team. It seems like a trivial situation but you must be there to support your team and open opportunities for them to look like rock stars, but 3) Build a culture of collaboration, the weak link will self-‐identify In this situation, you are embracing the team dynamics and the strengths of your team to self-‐identify any weaknesses that the individual may have. In this scenario you are encouraging your team to work together utilize each other’s strengths to accomplish tasks. During these collaborative team functions, the weak link either will step up to the plate to show his/her true strengths or they will fold and admit defeat. As the Business Wingman, you’re job is to enable success and build upon the strength of your team members. Even one weak link that shows a poor demeanor, public scrutiny of the team/company or lack of respect for the role can turn a performing team into troubled team quickly. Visit our blog at http://www.artofthewingman.com.
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