| If you see a situation differently to the rest of the group you are with, the level of stress this generates can undermine your ability to influence matters. Malcolm Sleath of 12boxes considers how to adopt the right mental attitude. |
| Learning to love being the odd one out |
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| | By Malcolm Sleath
Question: You
often write about
one-to-one encounters
with clients, but most
people work in teams.
Sometimes I find clients
are the easy part; the
difficult relationships
are with colleagues.
What do you think?
Answer: It’s
often not the colleagues
themselves that are
difficult, but the lack
of team-working. But
what does this mean,
beyond just being kind
and considerate to one
another? It takes
self-discipline to work
effectively in a team,
and most people need to
find out that simply
doing what you are
already doing to the
best of your ability
does not make you a good
team member.
Here’s a simple | |
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| | illustration. I’ve been
having a new home office
built. Most of the time
I have been able to
manage the process by
relating to people
working on the project
individually, or
delegating to someone.
But on one particularly
memorable day, there
were nine people in the
space. Among other
things, the electrician
wanted to get on with
wiring up the mains in
the skirting trunking.
The IT guy needed to get
at the channel for his
data cables. And both of
them were trying to work
around the cable
broadband installers who
were grappling with an
unfamiliar piece of
kit.
Nobody, including me,
thought things through.
The result was that the
electrician took
advantage of the IT | |
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| | guy’s absence to pull
some of the data cables
through so he could put
the lids on the trunking
and ‘finish his job
properly’.
Unfortunately, the reel
of data cable had a
fault, which meant that
several cable runs had
to be replaced. But
before this could be
done, the painter had
made everything look
nice by filling any gaps
he saw between the wall
and the top channel
trunking lids. The
result was that yours
truly spent a morning
with a Stanley knife,
trying to ease off the
trunking lids without
damaging the paintwork.
Yet each person (IT guy,
electrician and painter)
had been working
individually to the
highest professional
standards they knew.
Admittedly, that was | |
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| | team and maintain
teamwork.
Doing the right
kind of work: Teams
undertake two kinds of
work: ‘activity work’
and ‘process work’.
Activity work is what
everyone thinks work is
about: getting stuff
through the door and
delivering value to
customers outside or
inside the organisation.
Process work is about
holding the group
together, maintaining
its boundary (who you
let in and who you
don’t) and helping it to
function effectively. In
times of change, the
amount of process work
required rises
dramatically, resulting
in a loss of
productivity.
... continued on
page 14 | |
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| | a relatively trivial
example and the
technology involved was
hardly groundbreaking.
But you only have to
scale things up, imagine
the kind of project
where there are several
unknowns, and throw in a
few cultural
differences, to see how
easy it is for highly
intelligent and capable
people to really screw
things up.
Despite this being
something that
‘everybody knows’,
people continually
underestimate the effort
and investment required
to build an effective | |
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