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How to Create a Great Team out of Unique Individuals

Written by: Peter Nicholls

Article Overview: Each person is unique in the course of human history, past, present and future. We are each born with a unique set of skills, abilities and talents. We have unique life experiences. Creating an effective, cohesive business team from such diversity can seem well nigh impossible. Every problem is actually an opportunity waiting to be discovered. In this case the answer lies in capitalising on the diversity and uniqueness of the various individuals comprising the team. It's time to view your team as a mosaic rather than a melting pot.

How to Create a Great Team out of Unique Individuals

You are reading this article differently to any other reader. You will see the same words but they will have different meanings and interpretations to those perceived by anyone else - including me!
If this was a speaking presentation to, say, 50 people, I would be making 50 presentations. Each person in my audience would be hearing something different.
When you communicate with your staff, each of them receives that information differently, based on their own unique perspective.
Every human being is unique in the course of human history. Every person is born with a unique set of skills, abilities and talents. These are developed through a set of unique life experiences.
The uniqueness doesn't stop there. The recipient,including you, of any communication is on two main journeys. One is during the course of daily geographic travels between waking up and going to bed. Only some of that journey is in the workplace. The other will be an experiential journey from yesterday to tomorrow. Your message will be greatly influenced by what is significant in those journeys.
What does all this mean for you as a manager?
You readily embrace people's difference when it comes to determining the needs of your customers. But it isn't so easy when it comes to managing employees. Many bosses simply say that's the way we do things here and you can take it or leave it.
As a manager, are you therefore supposed to treat each employee individually? No more so than in the way you deal with customers. Just as your business success depends on respecting that each buyer is different, so you need to respect that each member of staff is different.
And you really wouldn't want all your staff to be the same. In a world of knowledge management, business thrives on the diversity of thinking.
Successful managers embrace diversity in their staff positively and with enthusiasm. They see the people in their business like a mosaic. The pleasure of an attractive mosaic is found in the overall picture, based on a creative arrangement of separate pieces. The excellent manager respects, acknowledges and encourages any process that promotes individual diversity to maximize corporate productivity.
Instead of a pyramid organization chart,with the CEO at either the top or the bottom of the pyramid, we need sometimes to see the organization as a flat line structure, showing all staff as equals, irrespective of their corporate status. The flat line approach highlights staff as unique beings, sharing part of their personal journeys for differing reasons and lengths of time. Round table discussions can do much to increase the harmony between personal dreams and corporate goals.
Now comes the acid test of this article. I wonder how you received it, what it meant to you, and how/if it will change your thinking in any way about managing staff? I wonder where you are in your life journey and what in that journey brought you to read this article? Whatever your answers, I wish you well in your personal journey and in your efforts as a manager to harmonize your personal goals and those of your staff with the goals of the business.

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Article Tags: achievement, goals, potential, structure, success, team



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Re: Twiiter an sales - Twitter is very useful for sales and marketing specially for the promotion of products and services. Do the following while active on Twitter:- 1. Follow the people having same interest 2. Post Unique and eye catching content 3. Post Images 4. Take your user name as your favorite product name or brand name. 5. Re tweet, replies and make favorite the posts 6. Create list of people interacting with you 7. Try to active at least 5 day a week.
Where's the Entrance? - that's true I've been seeing a lot of construction going on to the City of Toronto's sidewalks and even Movie shoots sometimes block of access to stores for a week sometimes.. Guerrilla techniques should be at play here. 1. Get a Can of Paint and some Footstep Stencils and paint footsteps all the way from the accessible street right to your temporary entrance. (may be illegal but the store owner could plead innocent and say he has no idea who did that - maybe a "fan" of the restaurant) 2. I remember when there was the SARS outbreak in Toronto a lot of the Chinese restaurants were not doing so well except for Lee's Garden. I noticed they created a special Menu with prepackaged Menu Items for $20. 3. Create some buzz like with a Unique expereince - "Someone stole all my Plates! Now serving food on Banana Leaves - Guess What! The Food tastes better than ever! Blah Blah...
Re: Anyone Uses Elance.com? Guru.com? Rentacoder.com? - I've had quite a bit of success on oDesk.com. I've never used Elance so I can't compare. I like oDesk.com 'cos I get to sort thru people (e.g. within a certain bid range) with a single click. I find their help response very quick and I like the oDesk Team software that "providers" must install. This gives me the Buyer more insight as to what I am paying for. The Team software takes screenshots of the Providers screen on 10 min increments so I can see that the person is infact doing work for me.
Re: This is Marketing Warfare! - Hey GT, I guess this was from a while back, and it'll test your memory a bit but could you possibly elaborate on Unique Selling Proposition? Can you give us some examples of good USPs?
Re: FILL IN THE BLANK: One thing I did to grow my business today - Website: Posted a new article on my main business website and bookmarked it. Team: Contacted new affiliates and invited them to join my training list.


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