Page 214 - Make Work Great

Mobilizing Groups

the forefront at the right time and in the right way, and if you help
your team to address the issues at hand smoothly and with minimal
trouble, you will essentially be invisible. A select few may consciously
recognize what you did, but the vast majority of participants will
leave feeling good about what “they” accomplished and will have
little understanding of the importance of your role. Some of them will
say as much to you.
You must learn to absorb these inaccurate and frustrating com-
ments silently and with humor. Actually, you should feel good about
this outcome, because it is precisely in line with your culture-building
goal: to present opportunities for others to benefi t from and absorb
your new patterns of behavior. All of the people who leave feeling
good about what they accomplished may not associate that feeling
with you, but they will associate it with the way in which they were
working. This is positive reinforcement at its best; it is those patterns,
not your personality, that they take with them. And when these sat-
isfi ed people naturally attempt to repeat some of those patterns in
other contexts of their own work lives, your cultural crystal grows.
Over time, as you become recognized as the common element
across multiple engaged, productive group work scenarios, your infl u-
ence will likely also increase in a more tangible way. Sooner or later,
you’ll fi nd others approaching you for advice on how to successfully
structure group work that falls into their area of responsibility.
When this happens, you can rest secure in the knowledge that
you’re getting better at fi nding the balance point between not enough
change and too much change. You’ve found ways to make meaning-
ful improvements in the output and pleasantness of the group work
around you without activating fi ght-or-fl ight responses by asking for
too much too quickly.
Regardless of your title, your background, or your previous experi-
ence, when you fi nd yourself walking this balance beam successfully,
you are practicing leadership within your cultural crystal. You have
moved from advisor to defi ner.

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