Grounded: Leading Your Life With Intention by Dahl Nancy M

Author:Dahl, Nancy M. [Dahl, Nancy M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MCP Books
Published: 2017-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

17

BUILDING A STRONG TEAM

I have this vivid memory of arriving to work on my first day as a new leader. I was twenty-three years old, just six months out of college, and only three months into a new job. I had been promoted to a supervisor position in a new division of the company in which I worked. I was assigned to an area that had two small teams of four people. Only one of the eight people was close to my age; the rest were older. In fact, one of the team leaders was more than twice my age. I was excited to be in this area because I could use my marketing, business, and communications degrees, but I was worried about whether these two teams would accept me as their leader or just tolerate me.

As the days progressed, I learned more about my team members’ individual jobs, our overall accountabilities, and the importance of building strong relationships with our field offices. Since I had lived my life under the rule of work first, play later, work is where I focused. Everything else was secondary. This approach wasn’t new to me. I had done it while growing up too.

As a supervisor, I took special care to keep my conversation only on work and to leave my personal life at home. I arrived extra early and stayed late to ensure that everything was done and I was on top it. The supervisor of the other teams did the same thing, so I felt like this approach was the right way to do things.

In the end, I did gain their respect despite our age gap and built a solid relationship with them that was more personal and authentic than the previous supervisor. However, while I had successfully used a work-comes-first approach in high school, college, and even on this first job, I realized that learning to be a good leader was so much more than working hard night and day. I could see this was a shortcoming of the previous supervisor and the VP of the division I was in. I needed to unlearn it in order to achieve an integrated life that wasn’t just about work.

When I left that company and was promoted again, I learned the importance of sharing more of your personal story. This too was a learned response, and something I had to unlearn and relearn. I grew up in a small town where everyone was in everyone’s business. In college, I enjoyed building some separation from my small town story, and I liked it. I thought it made my life easier.

At work, I couldn’t see the value that sharing my personal interests would provide in getting my job done. I thought it would just get in the way. What I missed by carrying forward this old belief was the power in sharing who I was as a person so my team could relate to me on a personal level. My personal story was the missing link in allowing a relationship to be built.

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