Thoughts Decoded

There is a difference between Team success and Team building OR Leading a team.
Team building is a process while team success is the outcome of how nicely you followed the process.
So concentrating on process and not the outcome…

The Purpose: Find out the purpose for which the team members are working, of course every one has his/her own purpose of doing anything. Once you relate the task you want your team to do, with their purpose of living, surely team member will put their 100% in it. Commitment, Hard work etc will come automatically.

Build Relationship: The deeper your relationship with others, the more effective will be your leadership. People will not follow you if they do not trust you, and before someone will lend you a hand, you must first touch their heart. For relationship building careful listening, keeping promises, caring are the key features.

Lead by action: we can not lie to our team members, they will smell if we ourself not doing something and expecting them to do it. It goes like monkey see monkey do. Try to set higher benchmarks by your actions because no matter the benchmarks are good or bad every team member going to follow it.

Be a liberator: Great leaders are always a liberator not a dictator. Leading a team is not about completing a project successfully or doing the assigned task, its about taking a team to a higher level. Let your team perform at its fullest without fear, don’t dictate just lead. of course their will be mistakes, might be blunders.. so what, if its not allowed to fall no one can learn to run.

How to Manage Failure:
This excerpt is taken from the speech of Former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam given at Wharton India Economic forum in Philadelphia on March 22,2008.
A Leader Should Know How to Manage Failure

Question: Could you give an example, from your own experience, of how leaders should manage failure?

Kalam: Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India’s satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India’s “Rohini” satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources — but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.

By 1979 — I think the month was August — we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order. My experts — I had four or five of them with me — told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel.

So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal. It was a big failure.

That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Satish Dhawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am, and the press conference — where journalists from around the world were present — was at 7:45 am at ISRO’s satellite launch range in Sriharikota [in Andhra Pradesh in southern India]. Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself.

He took responsibility for the failure — he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed. Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization.

The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite — and this time we succeeded. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, “You conduct the press conference today.”

I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team. The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience.

Lead by Heart: So many times it seems like few team members are not sincere or not committed or not trying to understand what we want them to understand or simply they don’t have the attitude, and we blame on them.
But the reality is they are not simply under your leadership. To overcome this we simply need to strengthen our leadership. If every team member is having all the good qualities then whats the need of a leader. Yeah its easy to blame but the fact is a true leader never blame on his team, they take responsibility, they build a team, they lead ..and lead by heart.

And one more thing, don’t try to relate leader with post/position.
A leader is a person who take responsibilities without blaming others, help to grow every one, build relationship with every one . He can be a team member, team lead, project lead or may be a third person, whatever doesn’t matter.

The bottom line is every one of us is a leader ,
So for team building be a leader of your team, and success will be the byproduct.