HOW TO LEAD LOUSY TEAMS

websitebuilder • May 19, 2015

Leadership is able to influence the team to move forward. Leadership provides the team with an affirmation of their individual and collective personhood that mobilizes them to achieve great things. Genuine leaders recognize that their job is to serve the team. In so doing, the team responds by rallying around the leader, thereby enlivening the old acrostic about teams (Together Everyone Accomplishes More).

As powerful as those leadership and group dynamics are, is it possible for the leader to have a team that is impossible to lead? Can every team be led? Will the leader succeed in spite of the team? Gary Kelly (president and CEO of Southwest Airlines) articulates a painful leadership lesson concerning the nature of the hand you are dealt in your team (“How Did I Get Here?: Gary Kelly” Bloomberg Businessweek , 4/6/15–4/12/15, p. 68):

“ No person can overcome a lousy team. ”

Although Kelly identifies an agonizing truth, I think that we have to be careful about how we use it. Just because something is true does not give us the right to misapply it as an excuse. I believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle.  The leader has two choices:

A Leader Can Rebuild A Lousy Team. Sometimes the leader is able to work intensely with the team in a way that perhaps no one else has. This demands building relationships that are characterized by authenticity, vulnerability, openness, trust, and caring. When a leader invests this way, a lousy team can be rebuilt. Obviously, many diverse factors will come into play, but the point is, just because the leader has a lousy team, it does not automatically follow that the team and the leader shall fail. Every genuine leader should first ask the question can this team be rebuilt? If the answer is yes, then terrific things can and will happen.

A Leader Can Leave A Lousy Team. In spite of all the above effort at rebuilding a lousy team, a leader might face a set of circumstances such that the team is virtually designed to fail. The leader should not jump to this conclusion too quickly. However, after carefully analyzing all factors related to the team dynamics and the business conditions, it is possible that the leader may arrive at this sad conclusion. This is not a conclusion that should be immediately cast in concrete, but rather should be arrived at with careful counsel from various sources. Leaders all have blind spots and you don’t want your blind spot to rob you of what could be a unique opportunity. Assuming all this is done, in some cases the leader must make the painful yet realistic decision to leave a lousy team. The leader does that team no favors by staying. In fact, in many ways the leader’s departure may motivate the remaining team members to step up their game. And if that happens, then perhaps both the leader and the team have won.

DEGREE OR NONDEGREE, THAT IS THE QUESTION

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HOW I EMBRACED A 2020 LAYOFF TO CAPTURE A NEW LIFE SEASON

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FIDELITY TO SCIENCE

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Honesty, honest, honestly

A BETTER WORD THAN HONESTY

By James Meadows • August 9, 2023
We explore the overuse or inappropriate use of the words "honest," "honesty," and "honestly." Much of the overuse or inappropriate use of these words is in contexts that intrinsically message the audience that the speaker is not trustworthy. I call the overuse or inappropriate use of these words in this context HONESTY VALIDATORS because the speaker believes they validate the truth being spoken. We need a solution to this problem. My solution is to replace these honesty validators with CLARITY VALIDATORS. Instead of trying to be honest, try to be clear. Replacing "honest," "honesty," and "honestly," with "clear," "clarity," and "clearly," produces significantly more benefit to the speaker and to the audience.

WHEN THE ORIGINAL IS NOT THE BEST

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MILLENNIALS AND GENERATION Z FAVOR HIGHER EDUCATION

By James Meadows • August 13, 2019
Although anyone can and will criticize higher education, millennials are evidently smart enough to know its value. In spite of the horror stories about student loan debt, academic disasters, and wrong career turns, millennials have boasted one of the highest graduation rates of any generation to date. Generation Z may soon surpass them too as Laura A. Scione, managing editor of eCampus News reports : “ Despite growing questions around the value of college and return on investment in tuition, just 25 percent of Generation Z students say they believe they can have a rewarding career without going to college, compared to 40 percent of millennials. Eighty percent of Generation Z respondents and 74 percent of millennials agree that college either has a fair amount of value, is a good value, or is an excellent value. Only 20 percent of Generation Z students and 26 percent of millennials said college has ‘little value’ or ‘no value at all.’ ” Good for them! The statistics remain on their side—and the side of anyone who pursues higher education. Anthony P. Carnevale is the director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Based on his research, that trend will only continue (Gillian B. White “Those Savvy Millennials” The Atlantic , May 2015, p. 38): " In 1973, 32% of jobs did not even require a high school diploma, 9% required a bachelor’s degree, and 7% required a master’s degree or higher. It is projected that by 2020, 12% of jobs will not require a high school diploma, 24% will require a bachelor’s degree, and 11% will require a master’s degree or higher. " Derek Newton wrote an article entitled “Please Stop Asking Whether College Is Worth It” in which his opening declaration gets right to the point: “ Colleges and universities are still the best, most direct path to a good career that pays well. ” In addition to those insights, the unemployment figures consistently reveal the enduring value of higher education. The seasonally adjusted July 2019 unemployment rate for persons not having a high school diploma is 5.1% ( Bureau of Labor Statistics ). Having a high school diploma drops that rate to 3.6% and some college or a two-year degree drops it further to 3.2%. Pretty good trending, would you agree? Finally, if we look at people having a four-year degree, a graduate degree, or a doctoral degree, the unemployment rate is a low 2.2%. Higher education’s edge is especially clear when you consider the range of these numbers over the education level. Look at the two ends of the spectrum: less-than-high school (5.1%) versus a four-year degree or higher (2.2%). Consistently, regardless of the measured time, the unemployment rate for a less-than-high-school-educated worker is two to four times larger than for the college-degreed worker. This is why, when people seek my counsel about career planning, higher education remains one of my most significant emphases. Education pays. Degrees still rock. Regardless of how good or bad the economy is, regardless of how many individual academic and career disasters can be cited, and regardless of how loudly the antidegree crowd howls, you are still in a better position having a degree than not having a degree. The good news for the millennials and Generation Z is that they have arrived at the same conclusion and now they will enjoy the benefits.