Don’t let this vampire sink her teeth into your organization!
Taproot Foundation recently explored a premise:
“Do star performers make great team leaders?”
The answer is: They do not.
While they might bust every sales quota set before them and schmuze all their clients, it turns out they are not good for team motivation – and in fact – suck the living life out team work.
But how is this possible? They are strong individual performers, so why can’t they be a good team player?
They have a blind spot: They are so focused on themselves – their interests, their numbers, their contribution – that there is literally no time or focus on others.
Here are a couple of real-life examples:
I have a good friend who is a mid-line manager at a large, Fortune 10 company. While I believe he is a good manager, his boss is an energy vampire. Patrick (the boss) requires one-hour conference calls, several times a month, with his team and proceeds to talk for 45 minutes of the hour about…himself, his accomplishments and his challenges. His team is disengaged during the call and some of Patrick’s team is actually starting to find excuses as to why they cannot participate.
I have a client who spends most of her time trying to find out what the President of the company is trying to accomplish. She has weekly staff meetings with him and comes out with an armload of to-dos. But rather than prioritizing projects and saying no to ineffective campaigns, she rattles every cage in the organization to get what she wants. Everything is an emergency and has to be accomplished now! She has no respect among her team members because she takes credit for work that is not hers and quickly throws people under the bus if things don’t go according to her plan.
Taproot’s Founder, Aaron Hurst, states the following:
- 10% of your employees are energy vampires;
- When you identify them, they must be fired and
- Once they are gone, employee engagement and retention increase by 25+% for the organization.
However, when you can’t fire them or box them out of the team, what can you do?
Consider bringing in a leadership team development expert! Larry Lipman, owner of Fun Team Building will help your team work on employee motivation and employee engagement. Don’t let energy vampires drain the blood out of your organization. Call Larry today at 770-333-3303 to learn more about his team building activities!