How to get the Right Foot In. Raj Nair

different roles, and the nature of commitment varies from personality and culture. One of the things that you as a leader need to do is define, understand and recruit people with the right level of commitment to take to the team, organization or project and position them correctly. Otherwise it’s like a boat stuck in a whirlpool in a storm or like a kite with its thread broken floating up in the sky.

      2. Understanding People

      As described above understanding people is a key factor. This depends on their cultural background, values and key motivation factor.

      Waterfall, Agile, stand-up calls, virtual team management– we hear a lot of these phrases now a days. The bottom line of all this is that we need to have a good understanding of each of our team members’ goals and what makes them work with a great level of comfort with their ‘Right Foot In’.

      A couple of years back, I was watching my kids put together 300 piece puzzle. I was quite impressed by how they opened the box, spread all the pieces out and then looked around to pick of two or three pieces to start with. Within a few minutes I was quite impressed with how they put together the entire model.

      The project team is also like this. Most of time we are assigned to a team to manage the project. Not many people , get the luxury of forming the team and running the project. What we really have to do is look at each puzzle piece. What are their strengths and more importantly what would they like to do for the team?. Align them to the project objective with the roles they have and then your life will be peaceful.

      I know it’s not that easy but this is a critical task that we often forget or don’t find the time to do.

      I agree that some pieces won’t fit well, some may have sharper edges, some may have already worn out to fit well to a position. We have to identify and respect the differences which can promote our success to run the project.

      Sometime full level of commitment can be a roadblock for creativity and out of the box thinking etc. But my point here is that is the team needs to fully fit into their roles and they should know what and why they are doing their tasks. Some people don’t work with a great level of understanding or alignment. The only way can find this out by understanding them little deeper than through status meeting and e-mails.

      We don’t need to consider this approach as selfish or black mailing folks. But as the understanding of resources, their motivation and where they want to go in this journey. This will help you to guide them, lead them and get maximum potential out of their effort.