“This event is going to be a disaster!”

That’s what my project lead said to me with a key conference just months away. It wasn’t just stress — tension had been brewing in the group for a number of weeks now. 

Despite having a skilled (and resourced) team, along with a solid plan, progress was slow and communication was breaking down.  

Early in my leadership career, I thought success was all about getting the right people with the right skills into the right roles. That formula — matching tasks to the people with the technical expertise —had served me well. But, this time it wasn’t working.

The project lead was a very organized person and he had created a detailed project plan for the event. But, he was struggling with the fact that the project was not going according to that plan, and he felt that he was the only one seriously worrying about it being behind schedule.

A couple of other project members were currently focusing on a conference that was coming up earlier, and struggling to keep to the agreed timelines. While, on the other hand, a different team member felt the project was doing just fine, and that there was plenty of time ahead of the event to make things successful. He was just irritated that the project lead wanted to move (what he saw as) unnecessarily fast.

I noticed that a few times after their project meeting, one or the other team members would go for a coffee with a team member who wasn’t on the project. I’d often see her sitting with different project members and could overhear her listening to their challenges and trying to smooth over some misunderstandings.

When doing a check-in with the project lead, it was obvious he needed more support. Clearly, the group needed to talk through the issues brewing before they boiled over. He was already overwhelmed and as things were behind schedule, it wasn’t fair to expect him to become an expert in conflict management overnight.

Rather than offering to jump in myself, which would not only undermine him, but take away a valuable learning opportunity, I suggested he could try bringing the other team member into the project. 

I’d seen from the informal coffee meetings that she had a natural gift for getting people to open up, and that seemed to be exactly what this team needed. That way, he could capitalize on her natural strengths — effective listening and facilitating discussion — to get the group to open up and start working together more effectively.

Almost overnight, the group transformed. 

Her presence helped to create more discussion within the meetings, which meant the different team members could understand a bit better where everyone else was coming from. Communication started to flow more naturally and soon afterwards the team started to hit their stride.

That experience taught me that it’s not just about the technical skills team members bring to the table, it’s also about how to best capitalize on their individual strengths.

Full blog available on Medium.

Credits:

Read aloud by the author.

Image credits:

Photo by Mapbox on Unsplash

Music credits:

True Feelings: Relaxing Lofi by The Turquoise Moon

Relaxing Lo Fi Chill by Sondé

Sofa Sleeping by Jon Presstone

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nikkiparsons.substack.com