In this section, we will help define the playing field—the business—in which you (the ME) and your team (the WE) operate. To do that, we provide key strategic and tactical questions that define the why, what, how, and who of your specific business. Asking the right questions will help your team gain clarity and collective creativity as well as find alignment with each other. When you and your team answer these crucial questions from your minds and hearts, the results are rarely rational and objective. Instead, you access creativity, inspiration, and innovation. Any conflict that arises in this process is the power source for creativity on your team.
You want this conflict. You need this conflict.
Properly handled, conflict increases your team’s IQ and capacity for powerful solutions for your business. The answers to the questions we’ll share in this section become a resonant chord by which the team and the rest of the organization will live. The business becomes a living, breathing, multi-dimensional organism all pulsing together.
You may be wondering why hasn’t the business been the main focus of the book? After all, it’s what most business leaders talk about first. And, often, all they’re interested in investing is their time and money.
We believe teams and businesses need to be healthy and smart. In fact, if you focus on the business, the smart side, without also understanding and developing the healthy side, yourself, then your team, and your team’s engagement remains one-dimensional, like a machine without a heart. That’s because the heart of a business is its people. People are the billows that inspire and fuel the heartbeats of the business. By nature, people are complicated and far from one-dimensional. As untidy as that can be, a business will fail or remain flat without the resiliency of people to flex and grow as time and space demands.
Start by attending to yourself (the ME) and develop vulnerability and curiosity. You and your team will engage in more healthy, open, and honest conversations (the WE). From there, talking about the business, the smart side, is inspired with e-motion (energy-in-motion).
That’s why we have waited until now to talk about the business. It’s important to make sure your organization first has the energy to fully come to life. Next up, learn why some businesses are so successful.