More and more good ideas are surfacing on how to be a leader who inspires and empowers, completely shedding the command and control approach . Most often the concept advocated expresses the new leadership style as a series of key behaviors by the leader. This checklist approach is helpful. but it is critical to keep another key point in mind: it is not just about the leader. The chemistry and personality mix of the team will have an enormous impact on team performance. When team members understand this factor, they can make the adjustments needed to perform as an empowered team. Otherwise, they can struggle for results, despite inspired leadership.
Understanding and anticipating team dynamics is much easier where the team members take and receive individual feedback using the Four Groups 4G assessment. The assessment ranks and color codes the relationship between each pair of team members as follows: Green – Extremely Strong; Blue – Quite Strong; Yellow – Somewhat Weak; and Red – Quite Weak. Team members who are coded green together will quickly get to productive work. As the strength of the assessed relationship decreases, individuals will spend more time figuring out how to work together, reducing the time spent working productively. The 4G tool actually contains quantitative measurements of lost productivity from weak relationship pairings.
Once this data is assembled, the leader and the team members will have powerful insights on improving team working relationships. It’s called adding insight to inspiration and empowerment!
