How Not to Listen — Adding Too Much Value
View CommentsWhen we’re part of a team, when we’re faced with a problem, we’re taught that to add value is a good thing. Employees and team players who add value are contributors who raise the bar. They make everyone’s game that much stronger and worth that much more.
The truth is that one person can add too much “value.” Adding too much value can undercut our credibility as a manager, a contributor, and a team player.
How to Know When You Are Adding Too Much Value
Being part of a team, particularly leading one, is being sensitive to balance. It’s allowing space and helping to foster an environment, giving every person room to contribute. We can unconsciously get caught up in our work and lose track of our responsibilities to the team by “adding too much value too.” These are the ways it happens most often.
- If my focus is on the work, not the people I work with, I get a picture of what I think the finished idea or outcome might be. Unfortunately it’s only MY picture. Without checking in, I can’t be sure that vision is where the team wants to go.
- Because I’m focused on the idea, my mind is busy molding it, changing it, on my own tangent. It’s human nature that I only give credence to those ideas offered that support the vision that I see.
- With my thoughts on my own vision, I see more and more refinements to add to the idea. Other folks on the team who are not where I am, see me going off on my own and buy out further from the idea and from my thoughts of added value.
Bang! Zoom! I have just shot my idea and myself in the foot, by doing what I thought was adding value.
I was simply finding another way not to listen.
Liz Strauss
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http://brainbasedbiz.blogspot.com Robyn
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http://brainbasedbiz.blogspot.com Robyn
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http://www.lettingmebe.blogspot.com Liz Strauss
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http://www.lettingmebe.blogspot.com Liz Strauss
