A theme that I kept noticing pop up this past week was techniques on leadership: How to lead peers, how to supervise different kinds of people, and how to remove oneself from the equation if helping another person with their project. All of these require some finesse and the ability to be flexible with your own skills in order to get the job done. In the next few weeks, I’ll be talking about each and my experiences with them.
In the end of March, John Baldoni wrote “How to Lead Your Peers,” and gave great tips on inspiring others and helping get work done through leading by example and listening skills. The dynamic at my job has me in this position a bit and there have been a couple of times this week that we’ve stepped up and got projects done and had great results because of it.
One such example was when a client told us to jump and we actually stepped up to the challenge – with minimal griping. We were told by the client what had to be done and when it was due. We all met and plowed through ideas. We went back to our departments and equally brainstormed. We all came back to the table the next day with a number one plan and solid back up plans. I then helped build a presentation with a colleague in another department that baked in everyone’s work into a cohesive product which was then presented to the client by other people (alas, I was triple booked that day with meetings). I really feel that had the colleague and I not stepped up and stayed late to build the deck and if the creative team hadn’t done the same on their end, the presentation to the client would have floundered and they would have lost confidence in us. But we rocked it and morale that day was great.
Do you have any examples of your team becoming a well-oiled machine and how when everyone stepped up as leaders (and didn’t sit back waiting to be led) that you got some stellar work done?
Patti is still learning 