“Tell me, Madison,” I prompted. “When you think about your team, what are the characteristics you find most valuable in a team member?”
“That’s a tough one,” she replied. “I have a pretty good team. I could look at it by who produces the most output, but I manage the incoming work and spread it out evenly, so no one person gets overloaded. I could look at it by who produces the highest quality work, but we have a defined set of performance standards that every project has to meet. And, these are not mediocre threshold standards, but identify the quality that sets our company apart from our competition.”
“I understand, pace and quality are good measures of output, but still, you have team members you lean on more than others. Step through your team, one by one, what are the characteristics you look for?” I pressed.
“When things run smoothly, there is little difference,” Madison pondered out loud. “But, you know things never run smoothly. There are always wrinkles, bumps in the road and the occasional calamity. My best, and there are only a couple on my team, are those who take the wrinkle in stride, hurdle the bumps with a little adjustment and gather themselves to meet the occasional calamity. It’s when things go wrong that the best people shine.”
“Example?”
“When things go wrong, meaning something unexpected happens, most people tense up. Their logic narrows. They force solutions that don’t work, rely on old fixes that didn’t really fix. My best team members feel the same tension of uncertainty, but open alternate solutions. In fact, my best team members think about alternate solutions before the wrinkle occurs. It’s as if they are in flow in ambiguity. They remain calm. Their focus narrows, but their logic opens up to see underlying causes to the bump in the road. When they fix something, it addresses the specific situation AND provides a lesson in anticipation. In short, they make wrinkles, bumps and calamities go away. Those things still happen, but I rarely hear about them until we debrief the project.”