I was looking around my house for new items that would help me convey a sense of team dynamics to a group I will be speaking to later this week.  I have a speech I will use about the disconnect in most teams and how the dynamics of getting a team to embody a message is difficult, but not impossible.  Great speech if I do say so, but it was missing an element.  Something for the audience to “visually” hold onto while I made my story come to life.

I thought about using a knife since you need to cut through the clutter of “stuff” that gets in the way of delivering and receiving a message.  Can you image a speaker holding a knife in front of a group talking about slashing through the outside junk that builds up between you and your employees?  I came to the quick conclusion that they would wheel me out in a straight jacket if I did that.

I thought about bringing a peach.  Peaches smell nice and no one will think I lost my mind.  (That last sentence will not stand on it’s own)  Anyway, back to the peach…sometimes you need to gain a person’s focus with something that draws on one or more of their senses.  Peaches smell nice, taste great and feel soft and comfortable.  Most people know the taste of a peach and can see themselves eating it.  The point of using a peach is to say that there is a lot of reasons to just focus on the outside, tasty side of a peach, but if you want to grow, you need to dig through that part and get to the core where the pit is.  You can either focus on the one peach (the comfortable side of business) or you can focus on getting the team to put the pit in the ground and have each member of the team add their skills to growing a peach tree (the business) that will give you peaches (money) for years.  I am not sure I would be able to make a good point of team dynamics by talking about a peach, but it is a good visual…and tasty.

I kept wandering around my house thinking about how to get a message across to a group of people who are glad to have a job, but want to do as little as possible to make a living.  Then it hit me.  No, really it hit me.  My son threw a ball at me and yelled “catch!”.  How’s that for finding a visual?

Once I regained my senses and reassured my son that he was not in trouble, I looked at the ball and and I went through what happened.  In one word and in one action, my son made the point he wanted to get across to me.  “Catch the ball!”  Often I will clutter up my own words, actions, and attitude with too much stuff.  Stuff is the junk that makes every simple thing more complicated.  Holding the ball, I figured it out…toss simple, clear, understandable ideas to your team.  If they don’t get it, then get rid of them.  They aren’t trying and you do not have time to slow down for them.

Clear messages are the thing that most people have a hard time with when they want something done.  The best leaders make a clear statement.  They don’t spend time trying to get you to understand the history of why they are making the statement.  They just talk clearly, with one idea and one message.  I wish someone had thrown a ball at me when I was younger.  I would have saved piles of time and effort.  I probably would be a lot further ahead in life and business had I been jarred with a round object hurled at high speed.

Great team dynamics happen when you slow down and clear out the “stuff”.  Stop wasting time with explanations or trying to fit every message to everyone.  Either they trust you or they don’t.  Follow up on your directions and you will see who is listening and part of your team and who is not.  There is no way to please everyone and there is no way to have a group of people who are not on the job to follow you and find success.  Don’t feel bad for the ones who don’t get it.  They need to find their own clear message…with a different team.

By the way, I am going to use the ball.  I had already eaten the peach.

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