May/June 19 - ChannelVision Magazine

channel management As a sales leader for nearly 20 years, I’ve had my share of both good and bad teams. Building a good team takes time and patience, but good teams most always generate greater productivity than a group of talented individuals who don’t work well together. On good teams, members will align on the best strategies to reach any particular goal. On a bad team, individual agendas and egos take precedent over the success of the team. A leader’s job is to foster an environment where team goals mean more than individual achieve- ment, and where team members take on different parts of the whole in order to gain success. A lack of alignment within teams or organizations fu- els negativity, and negativity can spread to other team members much like cancer spreads between organs. When times get tough, any bad situation can become worse when negative players are part of the environ- ment. The halls (gossip and complaining) start overtak- ing the walls (the organizational mission), and tough times can accelerate into long lasting failure. Much like an upset customer, negative team members tend to speak their mind to anyone that will listen, attempting to recruit other members of the team or organization into their way of thinking. By contrast, positive team mem- bers (especially when there are few of them) tend to be more conservative with sharing their mindset. I think great parallels can be drawn between busi- ness and sports. In sports, a team can go out and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the best free agents on the market and still end up without a win- ning record (i.e. the L.A. Lakers and LeBron James). Why? If a team filled with superstars can’t work together between the lines of a competition, talent quickly becomes overmatched by cohesiveness from the opposing team. This is also true in business; a team filled with high-producing sales professionals that don’t work with interdepartmental peers also can be overcome by failure. In these teams, contributing players don’t feel appreciated, and resentment can build over time causing irreversible damage. When it comes to bringing new members onto my team, I try to ask questions that tell me how an individual will fit into the culture of the team and the organization. I want to know how that individual has worked with teammates in the past, how that person handles adversity, and how he or she communicates to the rest of the organization in both good times and bad. I listen in the interview for cues that reveal blame or lack of accountability. I also want to know that the individual is truly doing the job that serves their purpose, as I believe that purpose fuels attitude and creates positive interactions and relationships. In even the best constructed teams, negativity can creep into the equation during tough times. A bad installa- tion or deployment can lead to cross-department blame: sales blames operations for misconfigurations or poor communication; operations blame sales for lack of clarity and bad information gathering. A bad month can lead to a bad quarter, and before you know it team members are blaming each other all the way to the end of a bad year. It is vitally important for leaders to sniff out these interac- tions early or the snowball effect will take place. Negative team members must be dealt with as soon as bad habits manifest. Coaching sessions must be clear that negative behavior will not be tolerated, and those teammembers must know the effect that their actions can cause on the team. Sometimes negative employees (especially ones with less experience) don’t realize the effect that they have on productivity; they aren’t looking TeamBuilding M any managers hire team members based exclusively on talent and past performance. They’ll look at resume history, education, certifications and statistics in order to make a decision on a candidate. I go about building my teams very differently. Of course, I want talented and qualified professionals on my team. However, if those professionals demonstrate that their own success is more important than the success of the team, I generally will avoid hiring that person. By Bruce Wirt Teamwork tops talent for fostering success 58 Channel Vision | May - June, 2019