leadership dot #1956: team building

I continue to be astonished at how many organizations leave some of their most important people to fend for themselves and leave critical relationships to chance.

In organization after organization, I see people promoted to a supervisory role with little to no training on how to be effective in that drastically new position. Managers assume that if they had a star employee doing X that the person will remain a star when now supervising those who do X, even though the two skill sets are vastly different.

I also see too many organizations that believe because a group of people has a common function that they automatically become a team. Putting a group of people together under a heading on the organizational chart does nothing to take into account the dynamics of that relationship, the trust required to form a solid foundation or the challenges in communication that arise when multiple people are involved. Yet the organization offers little in terms of formal team building experiences or aid to the leader on how to create a cohesive unit.

This does not need to happen! There are many excellent resources and opportunities if only the organization wished to be intentional about building capacity in its key staff.

Don’t assume strong supervision or effective team development will happen on its own. Proactively investing in those who lead others permeates many levels and provides value throughout the whole organization.