Imagine you are the brightest member in a team. Your knowledge and skills are above everyone, and you are able to solve even the most difficult problems and have a good reputation of achieving outstanding results. With such a strong show, can anything trouble you at work? However, it seems you are not really happy as you see mediocrity all around you - a bunch of average people struggling to do their job. You regret that no one displays the drive for excellence. It does not work out whenever you entrust someone with any task. They make mistakes every now and then, and have to be corrected very often to ensure the outcome. With such people, it is a big effort to have a useful meeting. They do not talk sense during the discussions and there is no focus on the outcome in their approach.
You feel overburdened with work as you end up doing everyone else’s work besides your own tasks. Work piles up on you as you take on more and more. Your only wish is that if only other people can be made to contribute more productively, it will be a big relief to you.
Another problem you face is that most people at work try to keep a safe distance from you. You find it impossible to get close to people even when you try hard.
One fine day, you get to overhear a water cooler gossip at office about a person affectionately nicknamed ‘The Bully’
People are describing him as a dominating personality who does not show respect to others. He is constantly interrupting others and does not allow people to talk in meetings. He is intelligent, but full of himself. Don’t know why he is so critical of everyone and everything. He wants to have things done in his own way (my way or highway syndrome).
This discussion makes you wonder, “This person is really unpopular in the team. Who can be such a bully? You try to match with everyone you know in the office, but do not succeed. It perplexes you. Whom are they talking about?
What if I tell you that they are talking about you?
Shocked? You may find it hard to believe. What a bunch of ungrateful people. After all you have done for them; they have the guts to gossip about you in this manner? You don’t enjoy correcting them. Why do you have to correct them if they do not make so many mistakes? These people have got it all wrong. You wish someone can make them see the reality.
What has gone wrong here? Why is everyone against you despite such herculean efforts from your side?
I believe that the single factor responsible for this situation is your own attitude and behavior. Read what people are saying about you again and think carefully – are you not doing some of these things? I can say it from experience that the best way to alter the way people perceive you is by changing your own behavior.
You may be asking, “Why should I change? What do I lose if I continue like this?” You know that if you continue to be a lonely star, it will seriously limit your overall effectiveness. You can achieve much more if you can manage to take others along. Work situations are more like a relay race, not a solo sprint. You cannot win if you rely on your brightness alone. You have to pass on the baton to other players and let them run forward with it. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs are some finest examples of super smart people who achieved outstanding success. Did they do it all alone? In fact each of them took the help of hundreds and thousands of people to turn their dream into reality. What makes you believe that you can do it alone? In fact if you do not change now, you run a risk of reaching a burnout stage soon.
You may have an objection, “But when I try to get others to work, it causes loss of my own productivity. It is far better to do it myself rather than trying to explain it to someone else.” This is your dilemma. Should you try teamwork and lose your productivity or should you take on everything yourself, and get overloaded in the process?
The answer to your dilemma is simple - go for teamwork. I agree that you may lose some time in teamwork; still this is the only way you can multiply your output. Let me use some simple mathematics here. Even if you lose half your productivity in teamwork and get a team of four going at half the efficiency, you still multiply your output 2.5 times. And if you work on developing more leaders in the team, it can have an exponential effect on the productivity. With one more leader who can guide four more members, the output goes up with a factor of five.
And with the team pitching in, you can take yourself out of the critical path. So, things continue to be in motion even when you are away. When you work well with other people, you become people’s hero, and they enjoy working with you. Who does not want to have a heavy lifter in the team?
However, you may need to alter your approach towards others if you want teamwork to succeed. Here are some ideas on how to make these changes. Apply these ideas one at a time and you will find that gradually you will start liking working in a team.
- You are smarter than others, but do maintain a healthy respect for all. Everyone has his own unique capabilities. Be sensitive to others. Do not insult people with your words, gestures, or actions.
- When people talk, listen to them carefully, do not keep your mind busy in forming your response and do not interrupt.
- When you talk, watch you language. How often do you use ‘I’, ‘me’, or ‘my’? Consciously change it and try to use more ‘we’ and ‘you’ than ‘I’.
- Do not assume that people understand you. Take time to explain yourself and your purpose behind what you are trying to accomplish.
- Let people try their own ways of doing the job. Do not force your way on them.
- When you give feedback to someone, criticize the action and not the person.
- Take time to develop soft skills. Do not see it as an unnecessary frill for the job you have to do.
Most of us have experienced being a lonely star and working with one at different times. I hope that with this post I could manage to highlight its downside and stress the benefits of correcting your approach towards others. A small step in this direction can go a long way to help you multiply your effectiveness.
More about this Post
The thought discussed in this post was echoed when the board of Housing.com, a real estate listing site, sacked its CEO and co-founder Rahul Yadav in July 2015. Rahul is such a brilliant person that he is a perfect example of the star mentioned in this post. He took the company from 0 to 1500 crores in a short span a time and gave his shares worth 200 crores to the employees; yet he had to face ouster from the company, possibly since he forgot the basic principle that you need to take people along to sustain a brilliant idea.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/With-good-coach-he-can-come-back/articleshow/47903141.cms
Here is another view of the episode from Haresh Chawla of India Value Fund, who gave the following advice to Rahul:
"If you are a lone-player with great talent - like a sportsperson or an artist or painter - you are then free to work alone, without regard to what the world thinks of you...
But if you’ve chosen to be a manager, you’ve then got to be among people, collaborate with them, lead them or be led by them, be able to handle their frustrations, to handle their competence and their incompetence. It's an ego-crushing journey where you need to learn to allow people their space to work. It has very little to do with intelligence - it is more about developing sensitivity - finding a way to motivate people, to pull them in one direction. A journey of frustration, but equally one of triumph when you see the team working together and winning."
http://www.foundingfuel.com/article/the-rahul-yadav-story-youve-never-heard-before/
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