Play Nicely

I read the incredible story in Fortune this month about how a CEO of a global company that allegedly played favourites, second guessed decisions, micro managed, humiliated colleagues and was a workaholic that eventually brought the organisation to its needs.

I highly recommend the article as a lesson on how important team working skills are in every leader.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/28/pfizer-jeff-kindler-shakeup/


The kind of behaviours described in the article are what we would expect a new line manager or a junior operational team leader under immense pressure to exhibit; not in a team led by someone that has been in the executive team of successive public companies

All of my working experience has helped me to understand the importance of personal relationships in getting things done. In fact, I attribute most of my success in delivering projects and campaigns within large organisations to building consensus across different teams with often conflicting objectives. I call this approach “play nicely.”

Playing nicely means show respect and be transparent in your decision making as none of us get it right and deliver 100% all the time. There is no "perfect". If we judge ourselves against this benchmark we will never be happy. Equally, if we judge everyone else in this way, they will only ever disappoint us.

The kind of products that are offered by learning development teams that help people to become practitioners of all the competencies that help people to "play nicely” have been thin on the ground in most companies in these lean times. I’m sure there is lots of evidence based academic studies to support the case either way, but having read the Fortune story, and from own experience, this is one cost that should never be compromised on.