building blocks for a successful team
Lawler Kang
T he key to management is
making teams work. It
doesn’t matter if you are a hospital
administrator running a wing or an
order-entry manager looking for
six sigma perfection. If you can’t
make a conglomeration of skills,
experiences, backgrounds, values
and mindsets called a ‘team’ be
productive, both your organization
and your personal success will be
severely thwarted.
So how does this collective
catharsis come about? Here are a
few building blocks for creating a
team that not only dents the door
of poor performance, but
potentially blows it off its hinges.
The first and most important
building block is to make sure
you, the leader, are passionate or
inspired about the focus of this
effort. This is absolutely critical
as the leader sets the tone and
culture for the team. How do
you identify and align your
personal passions with this
mission? Look back through your
range of life experiences to cull
out those brilliant nuggets of
what you absolutely loved about
particular experiences. Look for
patterns in these nuggets and
connect the dots with your
current mission.
If this doesn’t tie out, then you
may not be the best person to run
this particular team. Although this
may seem like career suicide, do
you really believe taking on
projects you could care less about
will boost your career without
burning you out? It may be heroic
to boldly shoulder projects and
teams that are heavier than a black
hole, but the odds of your energy
being sucked over the time
horizon, never to return, are quite
real.
The second building block is to
ask potential team members to go
through a similar exercise to
explore their personal passions
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 and current mission. The reason
behind this is simple. A surefire
way to minimize risk of team
dissonance is to align the missions
and passions of the leader with
those of the rest of the team. Once
you all are on the same impassioned
page, the ability for group speed-
reading with excellent retention
and comprehension will suddenly
appear.
Building block three is to take a
good inventory of your potential
team member’s offerings, bearing
in mind that you want to
emphasize their assets while
minimizing their liabilities. Ask
them to fill out a ‘personal balance
sheet.’ List short-term assets and
liabilities that are skill sets. Take a
close look at the functions they
excel at and those that repeatedly
appear on performance reviews as
‘areas for improvement’.
Separate the long-term entries
into two categories: values and
experiences. Values are those
qualities with which team members
respectively love and hate to work.
Experiences, on the asset side, are
those life experiences you want to
draw on all day. The liabilities
entries are those life experiences
you still want to have (your
dreams!). The reason they are
‘liabilities’ is that they haven’t been
realized yet and they are accruing
lifetime interest.
Why is this detailed and squishy
information so important? A few
reasons. First, you want your team
not to be an agglomeration of
pitchers; you want the best pitcher,
the best catcher, first baseman, etc.
you can find for your specific
8
needs. Matching up requisite skill
sets with those on their balance
sheets is a good way to select your
squad.
Second, skill sets are only a
small part of what makes teams
really thrive. Having a common
set of values is absolutely critical
to the success of your efforts.
Additionally, the more your
team members can draw on their
life experiences in their daily
affairs, the more fulfilled (and
productive) they will be.
Once the team has come
together, generate a mission
statement for the group.
Something short, sweet and
perhaps a little sassy that plainly
spells out how you will measure
your combined success.
The more you can align your
team members’ dreams with the
goals or outcomes of your
project, the more of their
personal passions you will be able
to draw on. It could be
something simple, like giving
someone who has always wanted © Lawler Kang is a nationally
to visit the Grand Canyon a free recognized author and speaker
ticket for outstanding specializing in helping people and
performance. It could be giving a organizations align their missions
team member a savings bond to with their means. In his
help send their child to college. forthcoming "Passion at Work,"
Being able to understand the real (Prentice Hall), Lawler shows how
reasons why your team members to bring your passions to market.
are going to give this project their Garnering an MBA from The
best is understandably a blessing Wharton School, Lawler has
in terms of motivating and followed his own passions into
compensating them for their fulfilling efforts in strategy
(impassioned) efforts. S consulting and management,
V
entrepreneurial forays, leading
turnarounds, and working with
non-profit bio-tech concerns.
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