The Unsqueaky Wheel

Transcript

Hey, how's it going? It's Jonathan, I wanted to take a moment this morning to talk about drama. And actually talk about the benefits of not having a lot of it. I was thinking this morning, you know, it's just kind of listening to the news a little bit in the car, as I was dropping my little one off at her kindergarten, in that we have this a bit of a pause in the amount of drama out in the world, and I for 1am, enjoying it immensely.

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And I think, you know, one of the things that we've seen in the outer world in a dramatic way, over these last couple of years, and these last couple of months, in particular, is that the squeaky wheels tend to get a lot of grease, right, a lot of attention. And especially the way our world is set up with technology and media, maybe even more so.

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And so I started thinking a little bit about my team. And maybe you can think about your team in this way a little bit. One of the things that I know that I could do a better job of, and I suspect probably many of you could do as well is looking out for the folks on your team that are not as squeaky one of the things that happens to us as leaders and managers is that we inevitably spend a lot of time talking about having conversations about figuring out how to manage how to optimize the squeaky ones. And it doesn't mean the squeaky ones are bad, right? Sometimes you have people who are really high performers, that they're just a little bit noisier, right that the conflict is a little bit more complicated. And you do have to spend a little bit more attention on them.

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But what about the people who aren't squeaky? What about the ones who show up, get the job done, add value to your team in less dramatic ways? And it's really important to reach out to them to let them know that they also are matter, right, and that you also see them and that you also value them. It's easy to think, well, they sort of know that and of course they know that I value them. But from their perspective, if you're spending all of your attention and your time and a lot of your care, right, trying to solve the problem of the squeaky ones. It's easy for them to feel a little bit left out.

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So take a moment today and reach out to maybe one of the less squeaky ones. Let them know what a good job they're doing, how much you value them. Give them some specifics about the ways that they add value to the team that are maybe hidden or not as obvious to others. I know that's what I'm going to do today. Have a good one.

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