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Oil, Water, and Teamwork

Written by: Gary Silverman

Article Overview: Did you ever wonder why a professional sports team that seems to have so many outstanding players, never wins the championship? Often times they don’t even make it to the playoffs. Perhaps you live in a city plagued by this team. Frustrating isn’t it? The same malfunction occurs in many businesses today. You have an all star team, but you are getting a sub par performance. Does top management do more refereeing than managing?

Oil, Water, and Teamwork

You may not have the wrong people, you may have the wrong team. When each member of your team was hired or promoted it was done in a vacuum. You assessed the individual attributes and abilities of each candidate without taking into consideration how they would interact with each other. Hence, the Oil and Water analogy. The conflict is born out of the difference in personalities. There may not be a quick fix as you would have to change the behavioral attributes of the individual, a monumental task.

If you have this scenario you have to solve the root cause of the problem and that starts at the hiring stage. It would be a good idea before you seek out an individual to become part of your team that you analyze the personalities of the existing members. Take the time to determine if they are all very similar and that’s why they get along, or they may all be different providing an interesting synergy in how they work together. From this analysis you can get a clearer picture of the type of individual you would need to promote or recruit. Not everyone is the pitcher on a baseball team. View your team in the same way.

Granted we should always manage for results but if one individual is dragging the team down, and yet he or she is very talented, you may have to make the difficult decision to remove that person from the team. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just “trade” them to another team. No such luck. When everyone feels that they have the support and respect of one another your results will improve. We became entrepreneurs so we could call our own shots and have fun...not necessarily to make a lot of money. Maintain peace and tranquility in your environment and everyone will become more productive.

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Article Tags: analogy, baseball team, behavioral attributes, conflict, difficult decision, money, monumental task, oil and water, peace and tranquility, personalities, root cause, synergy, taking into consideration, vacuum



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