adminFredrick Qaphelani Mabikwa Successful Solutions
IN the last article I discussed the laws of Mount Everest, the Chain and the Catalyst. In this article I will discuss the following laws, the law of the “Campus” and the law of the “Bad Apple”. John Maxwell lists 9 qualities of a catalyst. A catalyst has intuition, they sense things that others don’t sense. In a small business the catalyst may be an entrepreneur who can smell an opportunity when no one else is aware of it. Catalysts are communicators; they say things that other team members don’t say in order to get the team moving.
They are passionate; they feel things that others don’t feel. They are passionate about what they do and they share that love with their team-mates. The catalyst is talented, creative and initiative. A catalyst is responsible, generous and influential. If the team really has no catalyst there is no harm in recruiting people from outside the team to cover that role.
The Law of the Compass:
John Maxwell says ‘Great vision precedes great achievement. Every team needs a compelling vision to give it direction. A team without a vision is, at worst, purposeless…a team that embraces a vision becomes focused, energised and confident. It knows where it’s headed and why it’s going there”
How does one measure a vision? How do you get to know whether a vision is worth pursuing? A vision is measured by checking one’s compass and John Maxwell gives six “compasses” to be checked before one embarks on a journey. A team’s vision should therefore be aligned with the following compasses.
First there is the “Moral Compass”. Is your vision within the confines of what is moral? Is there any integrity in the vision? What are the motives of the team members? Are the motives of building or destruction? There is the “Intuitive Compass”. This is where the members of the team must look within themselves. Our Leadership writer says; “Where integrity brings fuel to vision, passion brings fire. And the true fire of passion and conviction comes only from within…if necessity is the mother of invention, intuition is the mother of vision”
A vision must resonate deep within the leader of the team. It must be something he feels he believes in from right within himself. In other words it must be part of him and only then can the vision be cascaded down to the other team members. The “Historical Compass” demands that every vision should be built from the past. In other words a good future is built on the past. The team members should uphold everything useful that was put in place by the other teams in the past. The team cannot successfully reach the future until they have touched the past.
John Maxwell talks of the “Directional Compass” A vision must provide direction for the team. There has to be a purpose for the vision, a goal motivates the team. The “Strategic Compass” says that a goal won’t be of any use without the steps to accomplish it. A vision without a strategy to accomplish it is kindergarten play. There has to be a process of accomplishing the vision. Lastly John Maxwell talks of the “Visionary Compass” The vision of the team should have a long range lens; it must be able to look beyond current circumstances. Charles Noble observed “you must have a long range vision to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures” If you want to have people to reach their full potential they must be challenged and when people are challenged they are stretched and they move.
I have up to now discussed seven of John Maxwell’s 17 Laws of teamwork. That leaves us with ten more laws to go. We will pack them for the second quarter of the year but in the interim let us in the workplace try and see if we can operationalise the seven I have discussed from Maxwell’s inspiring book.
The Law of the Bad Apple:
The law of the bad apple says “rotten attitudes ruin a team”. John Maxwell says “good attitudes among players do not guarantee a team’s success but bad attitudes guarantee failure”. Success is rooted more in attitude than aptitude. For a team to be an “A” team, you need good people with great talent and awesome attitudes. When attitude increases so does the team’s potential, the opposite is true. When a team member, especially a leader begins to have a positive team ethic others imitate him. Human beings have a tendency of adopting the attitudes of those they spend time with. There is a certain pressure that comes for them to want to be like the others. They imitate their mind-set, beliefs and approaches to challenges. So attitudes are contagious.
Attitude is what defines a person, how he acts. The manner a person will act, that is, what they show outside comes from the way they feel inside. There are certain bad attitudes identified by John Maxwell which we must always be on the lookout for. There are certain people who have an inability to admit wrong doing. Some people no matter how glaring their mistake is, they will never admit that they are wrong. This is a very bad attitude.
Certain people will not forgive. This tears apart the team. They will not forgive and will always be looking forward to hitting back; revenging.Petty jealousies also destroy the team. They are people who believe that we all deserve equal treatment, regardless of talent, performance or impact. Life is not like that, we are different. That is why even in the workplace we have different titles and we have different pay cheques. So we cannot be treated the same. Same people will thus have some petty jealousies on those who get more on merit. This scenario makes the team dysfunctional. The petty jealousies can easily turn into hatred and a team of people who hate each other cannot move.
There are certain people who have the disease of “me. “This is the disease of self-importance. It demoralises the other team members. I have heard some fathers/husbands say, “My wife, my car, my house, my children, my business, my lizards” (those that hang around his walls).Such an attitude kills the team spirit in the family. Such people have the desire to hog all the credit and limelight that actually belongs to the team.
You will hear them say, If it wasn’t for me…, if it wasn’t for me…” Connected to the “me” attitude is the critical mind. Some people will never see anything positive in other people. When you can’t see anything positive in other people how do you bond with them. Generally most bad attitudes are a result of selfishness.
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