Teamwork
All in One Boat: Navigating Team Harmony
Drawing inspiration from ancient Greek warships for effective teamwork
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One of the problems leaders confront is that of team members who constantly pull in different directions and as a result, slow down, disrupt or even cripple the progress of a project.
You’ve probably come across any number of pieces of advice from business professionals as to how this can be addressed. No doubt it’s occurred to you to question whether the disruptive person actually has a point and whether it’s your own bias that is stopping you from taking the time to hear what’s being said. Alternatively, it might be better to transfer the person to another business area where their skills are better suited than to your team, assuming that a talent misalignment was causing the issues. But let’s take a different tack and see what we find if we do that.
Some of what I’ve written elsewhere can apply here, from the Achilles Mosaic and the importance of finding the right staff in the first place, to the entry on handling conflicts and what the Spanish Empire can teach us. But here’s another metaphor, that of the ancient Greek warship par excellence, the trireme.
