Radiators not drains!

The type of people we want our teams to comprise of

Leaders lead teams - and though teams are comprised of individuals, they are different, more complicated organisms than any of those individuals on their own.

The successful leader must understand and manage their own and their team’s growth towards excellence and a critical part of that is managing your collective energy levels.

Achieving greatness is hard work, but the successful leader recognises how draining this can be if the results don’t appear quickly or if the team’s dynamic isn’t working. A team must be able to maintain and develop it’s energy levels to carry it through periods of highs, lows and everything in between. This cannot only be the responsibility of the leader - he or she must build a team that can self-sustain and self-recharge.

For many roles today, attitude massively outpunches skills. For many roles, including the highest paid and responsible, the functional parts of a job just aren’t that difficult to learn. What is difficult to replace is experience, and what is hard to train is attitude.

The people we want on our teams are people who bring energy, whatever their job title or background. Energy is the lifeblood of a successful team culture.

Drains take away a group’s energy. They may be bright, driven, ambitious and they may even be right, but they sap the life from a team. They sponge the energy from others; when they enter a room the mood worsens - the elusive answer edges away.

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Radiators energise a room.

Sam is an radiator. He instinctively knows his role within a the team, and more than that he knows what the team needs in order to make it work. He recognised that for every team his role would change because each team needs different things to make the whole. This isn’t to say he could or would be able to fill all roles himself but he recognises the bits that aren’t working and finds ways to fix them - or finds someone who could.

A team is a complicated organism designed to complete a given task. The task, not the team, is the objective. Sam understands this is prepared to do the things that need to be done to make the whole and successful. Sometimes it is the carrot; sometimes the stick. Sometimes it is a stern talking to; sometimes it is listening to someone rant. Sometimes it is cracking people up and making the whole room smile. People love Sam. They love having him in the room, and when he enters the room, the answer edged a little closer. He was the ultimate radiator - it got cold when he left the room.

To understand why is not just to understand that positive energy trumps negative energy, it is to understand the power of individual attitude in making teams work. Some people instinctively know how to be the glue that binds the egos and insecurities of members of a team into a formidable whole.

They might not do the sexy stuff that people write case studies about like creativity and strategy. They do the often unnoticed and unseen stuff that allows the time, space and security of others to shine. They are people who recognise the talents of others in the team and, like water flowing across a cracked floor, simply fill the spaces that others don’t.

We want our teams to comprise of radiators and not drains. We want people who when they walk into the room immediately make everybody feel better, not worse.

As the leader you must intentionally build a team with more radiators than drains and guess what?

You must be radiator-in-chief. Are you?

Love and Light,

DAO