The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization by Douglas Smith & Jon Katzenbach

Author:Douglas Smith & Jon Katzenbach [Smith, Douglas & Katzenbach, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business, Business Communication, Personal & Professional Development
Amazon: B00WDDOS7I
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2015-09-21T21:00:00+00:00

4. Manage relationships with outsiders, including removing obstacles. Team leaders are expected, by people outside as well as inside the team, to manage much of the team’s contacts and relationships with the rest of the organization. This calls on team leaders to communicate effectively the team’s purpose, goals, and approach to anyone who might help or hinder it. They also must have the courage to intercede on the team’s behalf when obstacles that might cripple or demoralize the team get placed in their way.

Almost always the mutual trust so critical to a team begins with the leader who must show that the team can depend on him or her to promote team performance. Greenwood of the Intermodal Team did this with the hub proposals, as did Janacek of Deal-to-Steel with the request for budget authority. So did Rockefeller. Early on, for example, Mayor Koch posed an obstacle to the Partnership because he may have felt threatened by them; he certainly felt strongly that they occasionally stepped out of bounds. “In the early days,” Koch recalls, “they were too full of themselves. They didn’t understand that they were not the answer to New York’s prayers. I was offended by their tone. So they changed.”

In fact what happened was that Rockefeller was savvy enough about government and urban affairs, and about Koch’s ego, to encourage the Partnership to strike the most constructive tone possible in their communications while simultaneously making sure the mayor appeared at key functions and was recognized for his mayoral leadership. It did not have to happen this way; Rockefeller could have taken on the mayor. By not doing so, he demonstrated again how patience can be the best guide for a team leader trying to further the team’s cause.

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