Bring The Joy!

Perhaps one of the most essential components in team building is generating and maintaining passion and excitement for a vision or project. Being a taskmaster is not the way to accomplish this. Checking off items on your to-do list doesn’t necessarily mean ‘mission accomplished.’ Paperwork isn’t always productive work.

The following three questions have helped me narrow down what’s important when casting vision, assigning projects, and implementing administrative systems.

1. Will it inspire the TEAM?

When assigning projects, you must decide if they will fuel excitement and motivate the team. Ask the team to define their goals and how they should hold themselves accountable to them. Help them flesh it out. Let them present a picture of their goals and create a system of task management that works for them. Inspire them to dream. Enthusiasm and energy are key. With this mindset, nine times out of ten, your team will maintain their tasks and accomplish their goals with increased speed and efficiency.

2. Can I keep the PACE?

When developing team procedures, you must determine if you can manage and maintain what you’ve assigned? The larger your team, the greater responsibility and more work you will have to do. Administrating efficiently is eliminating unnecessary and non-essential layers. Blankets make you feel warm and secure, but too many blankets can smother you. Likewise, you must simplify and streamline your procedures. Remember, the protocols that apply to your team will be more multiplied for you.

3. Does it bring the JOY?

Hard work isn’t always fun. However, if the work moves you towards your target, then it makes the work worthwhile. Committing to tasks makes sense if, in the end, they accomplish the desired goal. Also, goals are not tasks, and tasks are not goals. Goals are the big picture, while tasks are the steps needed to accomplish them. This must be clear. When you focus on the tasks instead of the main goal, you get bogged down in the process and kill real productivity. You have to keep the joy to bring the joy.