Recognizing the environment today is a job skill

When I write about sports, specifically the Green Bay Packers, my readers yawn. I get a few sports fans, especially those who are focused on the team, but rarely any comments from people who work in cubes.

While sports doesn’t relate to business (business has no off-season), the management, players, and building a team principles do relate to Cubicle Warriors.

The background

Here comes Brett Favre back into the Green Bay Packers business after retiring in March – but the Packer management team isn’t playing to Favre’s script.

Essentially, Brett, at  the eleventh hour, decides he doesn’t want to play for the Packers any more. He wants to be unconditionally released by the Packers – something no player has ever achieved – and go play for another team.

Management basically said “no,” told Brett that he would be the backup quarterback and – oh, by the way – all of this is moot unless Brett requests back into the league and out of retirement from the NFL Commissioner. A specific, required act, that Brett has not done.

Team building

Building a professional team in the NFL is obviously different than building a team around a manager. In practice, not theory. In theory, people on a team have specific skills and other team members count on those skills to do work.

Building a team means that each person is accountable for his or her role on the team. A person who can be counted on in their role means the team becomes stronger.

This is an important lesson for people working in cubes.

Leadership on teams

The lesson about Brett, though, is about leadership on a team. He has, in my opinion, ruined his personal and professional brand by making his fans significant emotions about his retirement (including mine) cheap by waffling on retirement.

But the other leadership dynamic is that teams have emotional attachments as well. And teams move on. If one of their highly respected leaders changes roles, the team goes through the same grieving process we all go through with a significant event in our lives.

And then they move on. The Packers management team has worked through this emotional transition and have spent months doing the same thing with their team.

Brett, waving the “I’m the most important person here” flag is running right into that emotional transition. The Packers are being respectful of the legitimate accomplishments Brett has made to the team, but they have moved on.

Brett, in threatening to come to training camp and make a spectacle of the whole thing, simply claims to want to compete for the starting position. But management – rightly – has already determined that Brett’s skills may be there, but his mental attitude is questionable at best and is no longer the leader of the team.

Now is what matters

All fame is fleeting. Teamwork is about leadership now, not how great you thought you were in the past. People make emotional transitions and what was a given yesterday is no longer today.

A person who was a leader under one manager is a pain in the rear with a new manager. The team that tolerated behavior under one manager because a manager put up with it no longer tolerates the same behavior when conditions change. A person sliding by on questionable skills and poor deliverables under one manager will be fired by the next.

The ability to recognize what the truth is today about your environment is a job skill. “What have you done for me today” means the past doesn’t matter.

What situations have you encountered where you were golden on one team and not on the next?

Scot

Picture credit: Green Bay Press-Gazette