In yesterday’s Meeting of the Titans, a newer Member was in focus and shared his challenges in relation to building a strong and positive team culture within his asphalt business.
After my initial questioning, coaching and advice, the brains trust provided valuable insights, perspectives and experience from their personal journeys of creating and achieving strong cohesion within large teams, providing food for thought, fresh ideas, and encouragement to do the things that he’d wanted to do, however hadn’t.
This discussion highlighted one of the gifts of being surrounded by like-minded leaders – having a whole group of comrades to ensure that he granted himself full permission to do only the parts within his business that he loves and is great at, and being committed to outsourcing everything else to internal and external team members who love and are great at doing the other things.
This is a different view from the old-school idea many of us have grown up with; that it means we have a good work ethic and perhaps respected discipline if we do the things we don’t like. From this standpoint, we’d likely also expect our team to do the same, which doesn’t support a truly enjoyable workplace or magnetic team culture. As a leader, we might even feel that pushing ourselves to do these things is expected of us, and necessary to properly fulfil our role, possibly leaving us feeling stressed and frustrated.
This idea is a form of compromise which may have been intrinsically built into our world view, and which would perhaps remain uninspected and adhered to, if it wasn’t for the inspiration and valuable input from others who have discovered how to successfully do things a different and much more enjoyable way.
It’s a great example of where ingrained beliefs and ideas can be silently limiting our enjoyment of life and business; hampering our ability to conceive of what we’d really love to create or experience.
A valuable question is; if you had full permission to do, be or have whatever brings you the most fulfilment and joy in life and business, how would things look, and what would need to change to support that?
Whatever your answer… know that full permission is always granted to enjoy that exact experience.
