How Good People are the Secret to a Good Team
To harness goodness, it’s important to have good people on your team, people with integrity, compassion and convictions.
This is a story about a guy called Peter who is working hard on building a thing. It’s a big job, but he knows what he’s doing and his instructions are clear, he’s got all the right materials, he’s double checked the plan, and he feels good about it — he feels like he is going to be able to meet the timelines. He’s even considered that there may be changes along the way and factored extra time in.
After a few weeks into the build, Jane comes along, picks up the instruction sheet, suggests that the instructions aren’t quite right, and writes down some new instructions. They discuss it, and while this new set of instructions provides a slightly different direction, Peter reviews the new instructions carefully, he makes sure he understands, and agrees to the change.
The build takes time, and over the course of a few months, this same thing happens a couple more times. Each time the plan changes, Peter assesses the changes carefully, validating the necessity of the diversion. Peter sets back to work, he works hard, he checks his work, he talks to his colleagues about the plan, and he makes sure he’s not veering off the path. He pulls back his shoulders, takes a deep breath, focuses on the goal, makes a new commitment to the work, and starts building again. The path is clear, and he’s going to be ready.
Peter had a good feeling about the first set of instructions, and each time the plan changed, he agreed to the change. The changes didn’t change his conviction, or his commitment to completing his work. When the changes came, they didn’t make him less valuable, because Peter had been careful in his assessment of the changes.
If Peter had just accepted the changes each time, without conviction, he would have been flip flopping. This is something we see politicians doing all the time. They agree with something and then later disagree with it, then later agree with it again. The indecision can be painful, and it seems manipulative.
There is never one path, and there is never one set of instructions. We want to know that the people we hire have convictions that won’t waver, we want to somehow know that they have opinions, and that they are righteous. I don’t know if it’s possible to test for that at the beginning, because we can’t always know that people are going to be like Peter. It is possible though to test the work along the way, to validate that they are working hard, that they understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. It’s also possible to assess goodness. That’s why we have probationary reviews and one-on-ones, not just to look at the work they’re doing, but to tap in to who they are, what they’re here for, what they want.
Good people are like candles — they burn themselves up to give others light. Good people don’t have to say they’re good, it just shows.
