Two Quick Thoughts: Challenge and Discipline

Posted by Charley Hughes on Sep 7, 2016 10:30 AM

Every four years the world turns its attention to the Summer Olympic Games and the athletes who inspire us. Is your favorite part of the Olympics the opening ceremony, closing ceremony, an event like swimming, track, or gymnastics? Or, as a manager of people is it instead the medal ceremonies where you recognize the emotion of victory won by hard work and the coaching that helped get them to the podium?

trophyIn your data integration team, as in the games, if you have selected correctly you have talented people on staff who want to excel at what they do. Our job as managers is to help them succeed through proper coaching. Here are two quick thoughts to consider as you coach.

Challenge

What type of healthy challenge are you putting in front of the people you wish to see succeed? That’s a loaded question and must be stepped through carefully. The challenge must be healthy for each individual based on their talent, tenure, and personality among other considerations. Individualization aside, one thing is constant. Performers love to be properly challenged. Challenging and coaching performers to exceed their own perceived limitations of capacity or capability pays dividends in molding confident capable leaders within your EDI, EAI, or MFT team.

Discipline

What about those who are resistant when challenged? Assuming we have individualized the challenge correctly, they usually fall into one of two camps. Refuser or Reluctant. Refusers may be hardwired to avoid challenges not of their own design. This may take some time to diagnose, but if you don’t address the issue Refusers may have adverse effects on their teammates. The Reluctant on the other hand is likely this way because of a missing discipline, NOT to be confused with a lack of work ethic. The Reluctant just hasn’t yet had a coach willing or able to help them find a disciplined approach to meeting challenges that works for them. Once coached to the podium, a reluctant turned performer will want to go back again.

So as you look around your integration team today, who are your performers, refusers, and reluctants, and what tools, training, challenges, and processes would help raise their game? Remedi clients leverage our expertise daily to improve their data integration environments, and in the process we sometimes witness that which exceeds a mere technology solution and instead turns into a gold medal experience for a member of their internal team. Gold!

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