The Situation: Establishing more balanced team communication styles
Jim is the owner of a highly successful company in a service business. The company employs twenty professionals including his senior team. It is in the process of hiring additional lower level professional support staff. His senior team and existing support staff have a highly assertive communication and behavior style. Their strengths are quick decision-making and high energy levels. They need to improve their listening skills and consensus-building capabilities. A missing ingredient in some of their important decisions in the past has been full ownership by all team members.
The Solution/Action Plan:
Jim realizes that hiring additional people, even in junior positions, represents an opportunity to begin to balance the communication and behavioral culture of his company. The new people could have stronger people skills and be more attentive to details. They could also demonstrate the importance of follow-through in ways that complement the less patient approach of the current style. Of course, these new hires must also have the professional expertise to assure that they can earn and maintain the respect of the current employees.
The Outcome:
Jim’s team is a work in progress and coaching continues with his team. Emphasis is on eliciting opinions and suggestions from all team members and taking the time required for deliberation and consideration of alternatives. The decision to hire new employees with communication styles that contribute to a more balanced decision-making climate has been highly successful. Jim believes that it has been a key part of higher customer satisfaction scores and landing several new projects. Internally, employees report less turmoil and stress.
A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
John A. Shedd