Unless you’re the manager!
A group of talented individuals can only produce the best team performance if it is well managed. How are you managing your talented individuals?
With the Olympics in full swing, and the memory of England’s success at the Euros fresh in our minds, I thought I’d talk about teams again.
A few years ago, I joined the marketing team of an international publisher on a temporary contract, as one of three managers. But I had virtually no publishing experience!
I wanted to quickly play my part, but this wasn’t about me, it was about the team. When the team succeeds, we all succeed. We all needed to work together. What should we do?
So we sat down and agreed on what the team needed to achieve. We then honestly reviewed our individual skill sets and re-distributed the workload accordingly. This was difficult for some, as they had to give up things they wanted to do because it was more important that they did what only they could do. And I was the spare pair of hands that could make that happen.
I knew nothing about publishing, but I was a dab-hand at copywriting. I may not have understood the organisation’s politics, but I was a whizz at presenting and presentations. So I ended up tackling all the non-specific marketing work, letting my expert colleagues focus on publishing and education matters – and a very successful placement it was.
And the other secret of sporting success is hours and hours of hard work, day after day for several years by those individual members, to hone their skills. You could just hope to be lucky, but as the saying goes, ‘I’m a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.’
