Developing a healthy and productive team is the goal of every leader that approaches organizational effectiveness through the vehicle of teamwork. With that in mind, we are focused presently on exploring three core attributes that we have found to be essential ingredients for developing (and maintaining) an effective team culture.
Though there are a wide variety of suggestions regarding how to effect positive team results, we have found in multiple settings that when we are pressed to articulate the irreducible-minimum essentials, we always return to the same three core attributes, namely, viewing one’s teammates as fellow workers, committed colleagues, and mission partners.
Leadership discussions are replete with advice on the value of teamwork – and, yes, I have put my own oar in the river on this topic more than once.
That said, we have not previously addressed the elements that work together to comprise a healthy and productive working community - namely, those key factors that serve as a catalyst to build and sustain a truly effective team.
Over the past several weeks we have been exploring the value to growing organizations of delegating responsibility and authority. Thus far we have reviewed the principle of multiplication, the linkage between responsibility and authority, and outlined the value of a succinct job description to augment clear communication.
Last week we discussed the critical link between delegation and responsibility when assigning tasks to others in a growing organization. As we continue this discussion we consider another key principle in effective leadership: clearly communicating what is being re-tasked to each person.
We continue the conversation on delegating to others – which is a key strategy for a growing organization. A central principle in looking at this topic is the critical linkage between responsibility and authority.
The graph, above, is a prime example of the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words" because it illustrates a simple insight:
Responsibility and Authority must be connected in equal and full measure when delegating tasks to others.
From the graph above we observe the following:
We continue the conversation on delegating authority as a key strategy for growing an organization. A central principle in looking at this topic is affirming the axiom of multiplication.
We consciously select the word “axiom” because we observe in the laws of organic science that multiplication is the norm for healthy organisms: cells multiply, plants multiply, animals multiply – and in the natural order of human beings, people multiply.
Multiplication is the growth-pattern that we observe in living science.
Note: We are pausing in our discussion of delegating authority to provide the following guest article written by Dan Zimberoff.
Dan is a former US Navy commanding officer, combat veteran, and graduate of Top Gun. He coaches youth hockey and is a Partner with Barker Martin, P.S., a Pacific Northwest law firm focusing on community association law.
By request, Dan graciously provided the following insights...
When companies or non-profit organizations begin, they are normally composed of a relatively few people who work together closely with the owner or owners on a day-to-day basis. Over time, however, as the enterprise begins to grow in scale, there will come a point when the founder/owner cannot continue to handle everything personally and must therefore add personnel to help carry the workload. Accordingly, knowing how and when to delegate effectively is a critical skill in the tool belt of effective leaders.
