Ever feel like your employees just don’t really care

One thing I absolutely love about my son’s new soccer coach this year is that he always makes the team do the behind the scenes work.

Not just training, not just conditioning but setting up the field for the next team coming on to practice or play and showing up to our other club teams to support and cheer them on.  

Their U13 team is their family.  The CapCity club is their community.  They need both.

Not only does moving goals around the field to set up for the next team coming on make the players learn team work - a bunch of 12 year old moving those big goals around calls for collaboration and team work but it also teaches them to be cognizant and respectful of setting things up properly for the teams coming behind them. 

Just today in a team call I was on we were talking about the frustration with employees working in silos. Working through their todos and task list, but never thinking of where that work goes next, or how they can set it up to pass on to the next team member so they can grab the baton and run with it without stumbling or slowing down. Instead, they work in a silo completing their tasks, but in a way that causes bumps for the next person or even worse embarrassment for the attorney when they present work to a client. And I can’t say the employee doesn’t care, they’ve just never been taught to come out out of the silo and make sure the part of the race they are running smoothly transitions to the next person.

Just like these kids set the field for the next team so they can immediately get to work.

Let’s teach our teams more than just tasks - show them the entire process and the part they play in it - and the difference it makes to the client.  The why.  

Let the tasks become real to them - affecting real people and making the firm shine.