The Abc's of Building a Business Team That Wins

This book is written with many different parallels to our Supervisor classes in general. It is written by Blair Singer under the Richard Kiyosaki tree of success books. Along the same vein of personal mission statements that we learned about in Supervisor III, this book discusses a central theme: code of honor. Blair writes that while in the Marine Corps as an officer and a pilot, it was this code that gave his men and himself the courage to operate as a unified team, overcome their fears, and perform tasks that seemed impossible.

It is the belief of the author and this book that this code of honor will help build trust, cohesion, and energy. We had learned in class that trust is one of the four elements of leadership and a critical part of a leader’s makeup. By establishing a code it can be the difference between “good and great” as it pervades every part of the team, every statement, action and heartbeat. One great point the author makes is that in the absence of rules, people make up their own. It is the code that enables a team to build a culture of successful people that will accept personal accountability, something sorely lacking in this day and age of corporate America.

Who you surround yourself with will determine your wealth and success- who’s on the team? Blair discusses how a true team must have a clear set of priorities where the mission is first, needs of the team second, and the needs of the individual being third. Blair reveals what he sees as the 6 qualities of a great team player: 1. Energy, 2. unstoppable desire to win, 3. willing to let someone else win, 4. personally responsible-no blaming or justifying, 5. willing to submit to the code, 6. unique talent or ability.

The key to success is playing to people’s strengths. Blair Singer writes that this is the most important element to remember from this book. He writes that during a performance evaluation we are shown on paper our strengths and our weaknesses. As we are told to improve our weaknesses, he believes this to be a colossal waste of time. Blair points out that perhaps our weaknesses are chromosomally programmed and rather than attempt to improve something that we are lousy at why not focus on using people for what they are truly good at. I find this to be an interesting theory as it allows people to be bad at things but to use their true talents and to focus on those talents.

Results are always a function