Week 10

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: Explain and give examples to argue why the following statement is true or false: “Get the right people on your team, and get the wrong ones off.”

 
“Get the right people on your team, and get the wrong ones off” is a good strategy for success but you must remember to invest in a diversity of team players.  A team full of like-minded people may mean that things run smoothly at first, but opportunities for growth and overall success could be jeopardized.   “All successful organizations in a culture of change have been found to a certain extent to seek diversity of employees, ideas, and experiences while simultaneously establishing mechanisms for sorting out, reconciling, and acting on new patterns (see Lewin & Regine, 2000, and Pascale et al., 2000).”

Schools need leaders who help develop a culture of understanding that brings members together to help students. Michael Fullan, in his book “Leading in a Culture of Change” points out that quality leadership is about “enhancing the skills and knowledge of people in the organization, creating a common culture of expectations around the use of those skills and knowledge, holding the various pieces of the organization together in a productive relations with each other and holding individuals accountable for the contributions to the collective result” (2014). 

Fullan states “It should come as no surprise then the most effective leaders are not the smartest in the IQ sense but are those who combine intellectual brilliance with emotional intelligence” (2014).  Effective leaders not only work on their emotional development but they help others with their emotional development as well.  In a culture of change there will always be people who have differences of opinions but quality leadership welcomes diversity.  Resistance and disagreement can be seen as a possible source of new ideas and breakthroughs.

However, I also believe that if a person is unwilling to grow and work towards the moral purpose of the team then they need to find another team.  Jim Collins in his article, “Good to Great”, points out that successful leaders start with the ”who” they want to have on their team before they even decide the “where”.  He writes “You are a bus driver. The bus, your company, is at a standstill, and it’s your job to get it going. You have to decide where you're going, how you're going to get there, and who's going with you.”  He writes, David Maxwell CEO of Fannie Mae when hired to rescue the company told his management team “that there would only be seats on the bus for A-level people who were willing to put out A-plus effort.” (Collins, 2011)

Judy Malan writes in her article “Get the right People on the team (and the wrong ones off)” that “determining the membership of a team is frequently the most powerful lever that a leader can use to shape its performance” (2011).  She goes on to say that some leaders fail to do this early enough while others fail to do this at all.  The key is being clear about the moral purpose.  “Ensuring that the right people are on the team requires conscience attention and courage from the team leader; without these, the team might not be able to deliver.” (Malan, 2011)

As a leader I want the right team.  I want “A-level’ people, who put out A-level effort on my team.  I do not want a team full of quarterbacks.  On my team I want diversity and members who believe in a common moral purpose.   
 
 
Resources:
Collins, J. (2011, October). Good to Great. Retrieved November 6, 2015, from http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-great.html
 
Fullan, Michael. Leading in a Culture of Change. Somerset, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2014. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 6 November 2015.
Lewin, R., & Regine, B. (2000). The soul at work. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Malan, J. (2011, October 4). Get the right people on the team (and the wrong ones off). Retrieved November 6, 2015, from http://www.managementexchange.com/blog/get-right-people-team-and-wrong-ones
Pascale, R., Millemann, M., & Gioja, L. (2000). Surfing the edge of chaos. New York: Crown Business Publishing.