Get to Know Your Team
February 17, 2009 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
Think fast: How much do you know about your team?
Do you know…
- What their spouse’s/significant other’s name is?
- Children’s name (or a pet’s name if that’s important to them)?
- Why they first looked at the job they’re currently in?
- Do they have any friends that work with them?
- Favorite sports team?
- Favorite TV show?
- Favorite book?
- Favorite movie?
- Are they a morning person or a night owl?
The point of this is not to think about EVERY possible thing you can know about your team. The point is, you need to know what IS important to each member of your team, and make it important to you. You also should make every effort to learn a little more about your team whenever possible, so you can better relate to them, better understand them, and better reward them for the great work they do.
How can you get to know more about your team if you don’t have a lot of time?
- Ask questions.
- Listen to the answers.
- Share the answers with your boss.
- Repeat.
Last week we had a team meeting at 6:30 AM.
Yes, I know, I’m a terrible manager. 6:30 AM is REALLY early.
What can I say? I run a call center that requires coverage from 7:00 AM – 5:30 PM Monday through Friday.
Anyway, for the first 15 minutes of the movie, I asked everyone to share “What is the most recent movie you’ve seen?” or “What movie were you looking forward to seeing?”
KEY: I went first by sharing my movie, Friday the 13th (the new one) and how I enjoyed the original, even though it was cheesy.
I realized my team is VERY diverse. They watched Kung Fu movies, classic movies, no movies, artistic movies, wrestling movies, and computer terrorism movies. They teased each other a little about the choices in movies
I shared as much specifics as I could remember with my manager.
And then I asked her about HER recent movie. And we got to know each other a little bit better.
What movie have YOU recently seen or what movie are YOU really looking forward to seeing?
Ask questions. Listen to the answers. Share the answers with your boss. Repeat.
Movie theatre sign courtesy of geocam2000
Hi Phil,
Great reminder. I think that I know about half of my teams children’s ages and names. I have work to do.
It also struck me that we use the cultural diversity of a team as an excuse to not know names and interests. I, for one, can do better.
Thanks for the reminder.
Don
this is one of those ideas that see so evident to some although is totally foreign to others.
Once you care about your team and learn about them they will have a satisfaction in work that increases effectiveness and production.
You must really care about your team, while asking questions is good just going through the motions fails to accomplish anything!
Phil: I’m in agreement that you need to know this kind of info. But how do you use the info? After all–and this is not a cynical reminder–you’re in a business that hopefully makes profit.
Dan, you use it when you show you actually care about that person. Like when you hear that they are sick or had to take a child to the hospital and you can ask a few days later, “If Sarah is home and feeling well now?” Instead of just asking, oh, “You have a daughter? How old is she? Really, she has health problems. Oh, so what about project X, how is it coming along.” Which would you rather know and show to your team?
Using team members name’s is a very quick way to build a relationship and trust with someone.
Mike: It is nearly impossible for a person with two ears who manages a team of people not to known relevant info about them. I’m aware that TV and movies don’t present business that way, but having worked with Fortune 200 firms and some of the most prominent firms in America, I’ve not seen successful managers who didn’t know what’s going on with their team. In addition, most teams quickly let their manager know when another member is having difficulty. Obviously, there are exceptions to the rule, but I work out of the above rule.
We differ on the role of manager. When you’re watching industries crumble, Wall Street firms disappear, unemployment spike, and unprecedented government intervention, the manager whether new or experienced needs to primarily stick to business. Support, delegation, guidance, direction are his business…and that’s what’s needed.
I remember a director of a Fortune 100 company tell me that the CEO would probably fire his mother if she wasn’t delivering. And, she went on to say, that would be appropriate. Like that colleague, I would have a lot of difficulty with a manager who took care of his team and not his business. On occasion, “the children of this world are wiser than the children of light.”
Providing jobs, steady income, and a future are the social tasks of business. I recognize plenty of readers will disagree, but so be it. Your family, your friends, your community and your church exist to take care of most of your other needs.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one then Dan. I agree that there must be room for the business side of decision making but without the factors of relationships in the work environment, I wouldn’t care how good or poor that business is doing, I’d leave. I want more meaningful lasting effects on people’s lives in what I do all day. Do that enables the business to happen, not the other way around.
Congratulations! This post was selected as one of the five best business blog posts of the week in my Three Star Leadership Midweek Review of the Business Blogs.
http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2009/02/18/21809-midweek-look-at-the-business-blogs.aspx
Wally Bock
Based on training and coaching supervisors for over twenty-five years, I have a few observations.
It’s important to learn about your people and for them to learn about you. In my experience that is less likely to happen through a formal process like a meeting or questionnaire than in it is through the simple behavior of touching base a lot. When you do that, and have the natural conversations that happen when you do, you learn about your people and they learn about you.
What do you do with that? Your job is to both accomplish the mission and care for your people. Knowing them helps you do both.
But if you’re thinking that you’ll come up with some magic motivational buttons, you’re probably going to be disappointed.
Wait… I’m not sure I understand correctly: you called a meeting at 6:30 AM, and then used it to discusss your employee’s favorite movies?
Really?