Smith Individual Advantages

Be the &quote;I&quote; in Team
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-0983-4631-7
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 220 Seiten

After helping over 18,000 CEOs, entrepreneurs, managers, and employees worldwide, Dr. Brian Smith and his daughter, Mary Smith, share their knowledge of being a great leader in their second book of The I in Team Series. Individual Advantages: Be the 'I' in Team emphasizes that one's greatest responsibility is their influence. Building on the lessons taught in the first book, Be the 'I' in Team aims to guide current and aspiring leaders towards being a positive influence on their teams. The authors use real-life experiences working with and leading teams to discuss: •Being your best self so you can contribute your unique influence •How to delegate, hold accountable, define values, and find balance •The benefits of slowing down and staying in the moment •Remaining humble, mindful, honest, and consistent •Paying attention to details and investing in self-education Designed to engage, empower, and challenge current and aspiring leaders with the information needed to be a positive influence and grow unique strengths, this book does not adopt a 'one size fits all' methodology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Brian

Smith, Mary

Leseproben

1.0

Influence

You don’t have to be a ‘person of influence’ to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they’ve taught me.

– Scott Adams

We risk diminishing the value of our influence when we ignore the influence we have over others and focus solely on the influence we have on ourselves. This is something that can happen to anyone, and probably will happen to you from time to time. This tendency can be recognized in those who are consistently selfish or think the world revolves around them. Those who purposely ignore their influence can create chaos and destruction in their lives and the lives of others. By understanding our influence and using it properly, we must understand that we are a product of all that influences us.

We have one request to ask of you as you prepare for this reading journey: be honest with yourself. We aren’t going to ask you to change anything about yourself (unless you want to), we just ask that if there are some negative or not-so-positive traits about yourself (as defined by you) that you be honest about them. In order to learn from our writings and beliefs, and to be the best influence you can be, you must be honest. As with our first book, we will share stories and experiences that have happened throughout the course of our lives.

These stories resonate with our belief that “individual” and “influence” are synonymous and hold the keys to being a positive leader for yourself and your teams. This stems from our belief that you cannot have influence without the individual and vice versa; they are so closely associated that their mere mention brings the other to mind. We believe it would be impossible to be an individual and not have influence. Being alive means being influential. As previously noted, our influence begins at conception. When we are born, we create a larger Individual, our family, and together we begin to influence the lives of those around us.

As we age, we begin to join other Individuals–work, sports teams, community service, friend groups, and any other team-like environment where we have an opportunity to work with other individuals. For my team, my Individual Advantages (DBA IA Business Advisors) team, I have not always been a great leader or peer. I will not pretend to be anything but human in my ability to make bad decisions and allow other internal and external influences to affect how I influence myself and others. I strive to do and be my best for all my teams and anyone I influence, but as a human I make mistakes daily. I learn from my mistakes and expect my teams, peers, and family to hold me accountable. My hope in telling you this is that you will not be hard on yourself when you recall or make mistakes or failures. Mistakes and failures are springboards for opportunity and learning.

Influence opportunities are abundant when we work on a team. Most of these opportunities stem from the differences, shortcomings, and advantages (or strengths) we have. We live in a world where we need to celebrate and embrace our differences in a way that is both objective and constructive. One of the beautiful things about working on a team is that you almost never have the same differences, shortcomings, or advantages as other team members. This means that the team can grow and become stronger as team members support each other and make up for areas that are lacking. Therefore, teams can work together in the ebb and flow of advantages and differences to make a balanced team effort potentially more successful and influential. My team has developed most of the solutions to the challenges I bring with me, and I embrace their efforts to overcome my individual issues as their efforts were developed under a certain amount of duress (negative influence). To offer an example of this, one such trait of mine comes to mind.

Early in my career, I was a bit of a lone ranger. I micromanaged as much as I could, to a fault. My micromanaging tendencies weren’t such that I was hovering over my team’s shoulder 24/7, but that I believed my solutions for our clients were always right and that my team should follow my solutions blindly. From day one, I made assumptions about my solutions. I assumed my team understood the context of every problem we were hired to solve and would therefore understand, in detail, my solutions. My assumption and unwillingness to budge in my solutions created obstacles for my team during the implementation process of our projects. Despite repeated scope issues brought to my attention by my team, I continued micromanaging the solutions and then left my team to their own devices to figure out the rest.

Essentially, I managed the clients and micromanaged the solutions for our clients. I would then hand off the project and solutions to my team, but wouldn’t allow them to drift from the solutions I had created. Interestingly enough, our projects always ended successfully, although our path there was full of obstacles. As we grew, I began to recognize the issues I was creating in our team culture through my tendency to micromanage the solutions. Unfortunately, my ego and hope to be seen as a leader got in the way of me acting like a true leader. I ignored my observations and doubled down on my position to go unchallenged.

It wasn’t until 2002 that the culmination of this immense character and leadership flaw came to light. It was after 9/11 and external influences, such as the drastically altered economy and changes in how we viewed security as a nation, highlighted my views on leadership and shed some light on how much I was allowing my ego to negatively influence myself and my team. I had a moment of clarity and realized how damaging my micromanaging tendencies and ignorance were to my influence. This is when I started to consider what influence really means, how we can use our influence for the benefit of ourselves and our teams, and I felt some weight in the responsibility to share this philosophy with others so that they too could begin to feel the weight of their responsibility.

To be a positive influence on your teams, you need to consider more than just yourself. It is not sustainable to try to always be the sole beneficiary of success. Rarely are humans the sole beneficiary of success (this relates to our philosophy on the use of the word “we”). One of the key traits of someone who has a positive influence is the ability to view themselves and situations multi-dimensionally. To be the “I” in team and reach great heights in whatever area of influence you choose, you must be in it and put forth effort for more than just yourself. Because I have a history of negative influence to learn from, as I am sure you can think of moments to learn from, I have more context to use as a guide to be a better leader and positive influence.

During your reading journey, you will hopefully find the equation to realize how you can be the “I” in team and how to tailor that to your unique individual. While I use my own life experiences as guidance for these lessons, I believe their messages will help you become a successful and positive influence, especially in situations where inherent human action can interfere and short circuit positive influence and experiences. There is a place for each of us in this world, celebrating our differences, to provide positive influence for ourselves and others. You don’t always have to be in complete control, and it is in our spirit as human beings to collaborate with one another.

Communication

Communication is something that will be addressed throughout The I in Team Series, because it still seems to be the most common and biggest failure of humans and greatest asset of leaders and influences. How we communicate with others and ourselves is grossly under-appreciated by some, completely misunderstood by others, and taken for granted by many. Communication is the foundation of being the “I” in team, so each lesson in this book heavily relies on communication.

Communication is more than just speaking or providing information. It’s about listening and interpreting the ways in which others communicate with us. It’s how we analyze information and disseminate that information to others. Context also plays a huge role in communication—let’s not forget about body language, tone, and inflection. If you can control how you communicate, you can control your influence as a leader. People can and do use communication for nefarious reasons on a regular basis, so understanding communication and all that it encompasses can protect you from those who choose to abuse their communication skills.

I believe that one of the first things people judge you on when they meet you is your ability to communicate. How you speak, write, look, and react all affect how and what you communicate. Communication is the foundation of the first impressions we have or leave with people. The impression we provide someone when we first meet them is a form of communication that can have a dramatic influence on how any future relationship with them progresses. How we present ourselves to others is vitally important, and most of us attempt to take great care in managing our first impressions with others, in many different ways.

I have lost several potential clients because I don’t come across as the “typical” management consultant. Communication doesn’t solely rely on what we say or write; we communicate who we are by how we look, how our team looks, and how our company looks. In our friend group when we...