Will Lukang, PMP, CSM, CLDC

On Saturday May 18, I went to Twin Willow to take my golf lesson.    After all these years, I decided to do something about my game, partly because my daughter is playing golf.  I can envision in a not too distant future that she will be better than me in playing the game.    In fact, she took a hole from me today.

As I go through the lesson today, I find my tee-off erratic because of the new grip that I’m not comfortable with.  I stayed with it because when you’re uncomfortable that is when you’re learning the most.  As I played my rounds, I felt confident to take any shot under 30 yards and my short game was improving.   As I discussed this with my instructor, he indicated that in days when your tee shots are not great, you need to learn to manage the situation.   Enjoying the game comes from learning to strike a balance between your short and long game.    The reality is even pro players face the same challenges week in and week out.   It is hard to be consistent at all times, but the way you manage your situation will dictate your outcome.

What I learned from that day’s lesson is that our ability to manage our situation is key to overall enjoyment and success.   As I draw a parallel to my work life, I can’t help but pinpoint that if you’re a team lead, manager, or leader, the reality of life is that you don’t get to choose who will be on your team.  Your ability to manage your team and maximize the strength and capabilities of the best people while enabling the others will be the key to your team’s success.   In essence, our ability to manage what is available to us can help propel us or sink us.

In order to succeed in the endeavor at hand, it helps to understand the capabilities of each of the member of your team.   Put in the effort to truly understand what makes them tick and why they come to work every day.    What’s their career goal?  Do they want more responsibilities? Or, do they have enough with their family situation and just want to slow down?   By spending the appropriate time to understand them, you can better assess the overall capacity of your team. Using that information, you can put the right people on the right seat in the bus to enable them achieve their goals and help accomplish the team’s overall goal.

In the end, having a good understanding of the overall goal is crucial to your ability to enable the people working with you and make things happen.  At the end of the day, adding value to them is important, as it could help increase the overall capabilities of the organization.