I spoke to someone recently who expressed the frustration of having to carry people on projects that she was running. An Expert – she was suddenly presented with the fantastic position of running a number of great projects, which she could not deliver, by herself – she therefore found herself in the novel position of having to employ a number of people to work alongside her in various capacities. I believe this should have been an exciting experience for her – people with different experiences and expertise that she had self selected to help make her dream projects become reality. Instead she was sadly frustrated as she felt she was winning work, but having to carry people alongside her.
It reminded me of Jake. He had done a great job of selecting people for a project on the basis of their expertise. – He had really pulled a great team together. When he shared the vision with me, I was impressed. To be honest I was disappointed that I was not actually involved in it. The only thing is that he hadn’t actually shared the full vision with the team members. He was, however, frustrated that the team members were not full engaged.
The only thing is that since the team had been formed, whilst he had, had the odd one to one conversation about things that he needed done, he had never had a team meeting just the odd conference call. This meant that the team had not actually met as a group or had the opportunity to engage together strategically, understand what other members of the team brought and really share the excitement of the project.
The bottom line is whether they are employees, contractors, partners or what have you; you can’t take highly skilled people, just tell them what to do and expect to get the best results from them you tend to get the best from people when you engage them.
Copyright 2013. This document is the specific intellectual property of Susan Popoola. Content may not be reused or reproduced without the specific permission of the owner or a reference to the source. Opinions may be generated