Your Team is INCOMPETENT; You are NOT

And as a Leader, your main job is to build the COMPETENCE

I often get this complaint from my reporting managers.

“Ravi, the team is not competent. They have less experience. This will not work.”

“How can you expect me to deliver this project with this team? I want a better team.”

I have only one answer for this question.

“We are all living in a world where the BEST people are not only scarce but are fiercely guarded”

“Either we wait for that “good” resource and lose the project or we take “AVERAGE” resources and make them the BEST”

“And as good managers, we are expected to do the latter. That is our Unique Selling Point as a COMPETENT leader.”

“And here is what you can do to transform this “rag-tag unruly bunch” into a “cohesive collaborative perfect team” which is the need of the hour.”

The Glowing Greenhorn

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life — Gilbert K. Chesterton

As the name suggests, they have either no experience or very little experience in their roles. But they make up for their lack of experience with a glowing zeal for learning new things and a very infectious attitude of teamwork and collaboration.

Unfortunately, their lack of experience makes them non-productive and an initial liability for the leader.

How to get results out of the Glowing greenhorn.

· Invest in them, train them, and exploit their attitude. Remember, Skill is temporary, attitude is permanent.

· Set them goals, monitor the goals and raise the bar higher after every completion.

· Protect them from organization “bullies”. Keep their motivation high always.

The Withered Greenhorn

Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude. — Zig Ziglar

They are also greenhorns but with zero attitude towards work. They are characterized by a marked laziness and lethargy towards anything remotely resembling work and tend to escape when the pressure becomes high.

They may be strikingly intelligent guys or out of the world dumb guys, but that often does not matter, as everything they have is effectively neutralized by their laissez-faire attitude and unwillingness to go that “extra mile” to learn new things. They love being spoon-fed and dollops of it!

How to get results out of the Withered greenhorn.

· Have a candid talk with them and align your objectives with their career aspirations into a perfect fit.

· Adopt a dictatorial attitude. Set them goals with deadlines and monitor the progress closely every day. Don’t give them time to breathe!!

· Align them with teams having the “highest” workload. Use work to cut through their slimy, muddy exteriors and expose the real gold they have; Their untapped potential.

The Dead Dodo

The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for — Will Cuppy

The dodo bird inhabited the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, where it lived undisturbed for so long that it lost its need and ability to fly. It lived and nested on the ground and ate fruits that had fallen from trees.

Thus due to its own deficiencies coupled with human exploitation, this wonderful bird became extinct in less than 100 years.

Our “Dodos” are the old timers in the organization who have years and years of experience but lack of new learnings have made their skills obsolete and redundant.

They are mostly bestowed as “largesse” to leaders, as part of “corporate restructuring” exercises. Thus the Leader gets a set of individuals who are very experienced on paper but of no use when “actual” work needs to be done.

How to get results out of the Dead Dodo.

· They have spent “years” in the organization, Respect that. Use empathy and compassion to get your point across softly but decisively.

· Learning new things is both “alien” and “difficult” to them. Give them extended support and all opportunities for them to update their skills.

· Use their existing experience and find out ways and means where that can be leveraged in the current setup. Keep their morale flying high!!

The Mysterious Yeti

I thought I saw him once, but it turned out to be a yeti — John Scalzi

In the folklore of Nepal, the Yeti or Abominable Snowman is an ape-like entity taller than an average human that is said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibet.

Although many sightings have been reported from time to time of this mysterious creature, lack of credible evidence has confined it effectively within the realms of mythical folklore.

Our “Yeti” is no less mysterious. He revels in his remarkable ability to stay as far away as possible from the team which he called the “crowd”. He is reclusive, aloof and sometimes a bit of a maverick in his work.

He may be skilled and experienced but this total lack of collaboration and unorganized way of working makes him more of a liability than an asset to the leader.

How to get results out of the Mysterious Yeti.

· Understand the reasons behind their behavior. Pluck the “low hanging” fruits first to get them into the “groove”.

· Align them to teams where collaboration is “mandatory”. Make them “accountable” for the final result.

· Push them to participate in team building activities. Assign some “Greenhorns” to them and ask them to “mentor” them to success. Break the ice, weld them into the team DNA!

The Barking Dog — Which seldom bites.

If you are a junkyard dog, you assume that that’s what life is: chained up, barking all day — Bruce Robinson

They are supposedly the most experienced and most knowledgeable guys in the team. The only problem with these guys is “lack of accountability”.

They claim to do this, do that and what not but when it comes to the crunch time of taking the ownership and delivering results, they conveniently escape out of the volcanoThey excel in wasting time in irrelevant nitty-gritties, ignoring with disdain the mountain that looms ahead of them

How to get results out of the Barking Dog.

· Adopt an assertive attitude. Confront them, allay their fears and stress on them the “expectations” required out of them.

· “Put them in charge” and make them accountable for the success and failure of a particular team. Merge accountability with career aspirations.

· Push them to participate in pieces of training related to time management and organized work. Ask them to prove themselves by “walking the talk”.

Bringing it all together

It takes great leadership to build great teams. Leaders who are not afraid to course correct, make the difficult decisions and establish standards of performance that are constantly being met — and improving at all times.

Whether in the workplace, professional sports, or your local community, team building requires a keen understanding of people, their strengths and what gets them excited to work with others.

Team building requires the management of egos and their constant demands for attention and recognition — not always warranted.

Team building is both an art and a science and the leader who can consistently build high-performance teams is worth their weight in gold.

As rightly observed by Chris Hadfield:

Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It’s about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others’ success, and then standing back and letting them shine.

About the author: Ravi Rajan is a global IT program manager based out of Mumbai, India. He is also an avid blogger, Haiku poetry writer, archaeology enthusiast and history maniac. Connect with Ravi on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.