Page 19 - Business Coaching #11 - JUN 2021
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ry skills in yourself or your teams are fairly In their book, The Wisdom of Teams: Creating
self-evident. Individuals are better able to the High-Performance Organization, Katzen-
move beyond their silos to work effective- bach and Smith describe high-performing
ly as a team. Teams build greater trust and teams as “a small number of people with
rapport with their project customers. Individ- complementary skills who are committed in
uals are themselves better leaders and men- a common purpose, performance goals, and
tors for their peers and colleagues. And, of approach for which they hold themselves
course, customer outcomes are greatly im- mutually accountable.”
proved.
This isn’t a new idea. We’ve been build-
I’ll give you a personal example. ing cross-functional and multi-disciplinary
teams for decades. What is important is to
When I was a practice lead at IBM, I used to lean into the diversity of people beyond just
run a game called presentation karaoke for primary skills. We know that a cross-func-
my teams and those around me. Wikipedia tional team with developers and testers are
describes presentation karaoke as “an im- more effective than a team of developers and
provisational activity in which a participant the second team of testers. But look deeper.
must deliver a presentation based on a set Can the complementary skills of one person
of slides that they have never seen before.” complement the complementary skills of
What it doesn’t say is that it is absolutely hi- another? (I apologise for that last sentence
larious and fun to play. Players get 1 minute, - but you get my meaning).
a random topic, and random slides — GO!
And, as a leader, you need to build teams that
Many of these folk had no intention of public compliment you and that you can comple-
speaking, but the skills of rapid thinking, im- ment. In other words, if you know more than
provisation, and giving an elevator pitch were your team, you have the wrong team.
(and are) invaluable to them. It was also a
good way of creating camaraderie, but that’s Let me end by sharing what I consider to be
a topic for another article. the most beautiful thing about complemen-
tary skills. And it is a simple fact that you al-
For leaders, there is also ready have them. With the right mindset, the
a second dimension to skills we learn as a parent, as a friend, and in
consider. Complimentary our hobbies, have much broader applicability
people. than perhaps we realise.
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