How is your chess game?

Leadership is people-oriented and purpose-driven.  A leader is a trainer and coach.  They are the cheerleader for the team. Being a team builder is the key to success.  This leads to enhanced team effort and quality results.  You must focus on the people that you are working with. They are the ones that make you successful.  You need to develop them to their fullest potential.  You need to develop a team and acknowledge that it is a team effort.  The emphasis has to be on the team.  Everyone has a role to play.  Not everyone has the same talents.  Everyone contributes to the team effort in their own way.  

While I was writing my book, Faith Guided Leadership, I was bouncing ideas off of coworkers and the subject came up about how different people approach the same situations in their careers.  The topic of where to position your staff to accomplish your goals has a major impact.  You need to figure out the individual talents of the people that you work with.  At that point, you need to assign the tasks that are needed to be done to the best people for the job. 

It centers on your vision. What do I mean by your vision?  Take a look at your goals from a different perspective.  Take a bird’s eye view of what you want to accomplish.  This is what I consider to be your vision. Step back away from the team enough to see the big picture.  You need to see and understand the flow of the projects.  Where can they be improved?  What are the stumbling blocks?  It may not be that a person is wrong for the team.  They just need to be repositioned to an area where they have stronger talents.  I compare it to a chess game.  Both players have the exact same set of game pieces.  It is what they do with them that wins or loses the game.  

My brother, Mike, used to whip me in chess while we were growing up.  For some reason he always could position his pieces throughout the game, short as they were, to beat me.  He did not have any special pieces but knew how they interacted and could see into the future where he needed to move them to execute his plan.  We should take that same approach as a leader.  Why are we so quick to say that we do not have good talent working for us?  “Why does the competition have much better people working for them?”  We are too quick in wanting to turn over our staff and start fresh.  We need to look at each of their individual talents and see where they can help the team succeed. In many cases, we have failed to lead them properly.  We have not utilized their potential or placed them in the right position to enhance the team’s performance.  

I have made moves with my staff that completely changed up their job description and approach to the business.  Later on, they saw where I was going with the move and realized that they were much better off than on the path that they were on before.  Take ownership of your team and do your best to enable them to reach their potential. A leader is someone who is confident enough to take a different, more creative approach. They think outside the box and are thinking more long-term in designing their team roles.

They are not thinking about just short-term results.  They are in it for the long haul and approach their team this way.  Effective leaders focus on building strong relationships with others which allows them to be creative in their team building.  They maintain their positions by inspiring trust and confidence in other members of the group.  This takes time. It does not happen overnight. 

Are you getting the most out of your team?  If not, take a look at each team member’s role.  You might have the right people, but they are just in the wrong role.  Everyone has potential.  The key as a leader is to get the most potential out of every member of your team.  Share your successes by commenting on this blog.