The Metiss Group's Blog

We have always advised leaders when defining jobs to assign a percentage of time to the major accountabilities.  This helps the incumbent know how to focus their time.

In a recent Inc. article, Yuriy Boykiv, CEO of the New York-based global advertising agency Gravity Media breaks down his time as follows: 50% Psychologist, 25% Sales, 15% Finance and HR, and 10% Strategy.  Really, 50% Psychologist?

It is important for leaders to understand how individual personalities impact team dynamics.  No one disputes the power a team has over a bunch of individual contributors (we’ve all seen the Successories poster showing a team rowing the boat together with the sun in the background and TEAMWORK captioned below).  However, a team’s effectiveness is greatly diminished when one of the team members is a jerk.  Jack Welch defines a jerk as someone who exceeds performance metrics but demonstrates poor behaviors.  On teams, jerks disrupt team chemistry, are ostracized, and often create an over reaction by the other team members.

A leader needs to put on the psychologist hat when this disruption occurs.  The leader needs to confront the jerk and the whole team on their behaviors.  Failing to do so damages trust in the leader, stifles team motivation, minimizes core values, and saps energy.

Empower your leaders to identify team jerks to address the impacts and you’ll have more success.

This entry was posted on May 5, 2014 at 5:00 am and is filed under Leadership, Performance Acceleration. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.